Ranked #409

Toaru Kagaku no Railgun (Manga)

Let's state the first important fact about this manga: it isn't the same as the Railgun anime. I mean there isn't that much of cute girls doing cute stuff. In fact it's much more like parent story - Toaru majutsu no index, but with only the science involved and story resolving around Misaka Mikoto.
Railgun side story is happening next to Index LN, at the same time and place. Many events are just going on next to each other and it's good to read both, since storylines are made by the same author and you can see protagonist of the light novel appearing here quite a lot, as he meets the magic side for the first time.

Story:
First 18 chapters are the material covered by the anime and they are mostly about dealing with aftereffects from experiments on espers. Since Kuroko, who is Mikoto's roommate works in Judgement (one of the groups maintaining order in the city) they get themselves involved in these dangerous cases and we get to know a little more about dark side of the city. The rest of the currently released manga chapters are about origins of the Misaka clones and level 6 experiment seen from Mikoto's point of view and it shows other people who were involved in the experiment. This part of the manga is much more serious, violent (Accelerator tearing limbs apart from sisters) and sad than the first chapters of manga. The ending is of course the same as the original, since it's the same story just shown from the other point of view.

Art: Not much to say here, besides that it is very good and well drawn. It keeps high quality level from the beggining and maintains it through all the chapters.

Characters: A tsundere-like girl able to create electricity and a thousands of her clones, a certain homosexual teleporter and her two friends, a badass guy controling vector and the protagonist from the parent story. They are the most appearing characters here. One of the groups from dark side of Academy City is also involved, if you've read the parent story - you'll see many of characters from science side from it appear here. Noone from magic side tho.

Enjoyment: Just after few pages you can recognize the style of writing from the original, if you have enjoyed the main story, you will enjoy this and the same goes other way around. The Accelerator arc is really good, when Misaka finds out that someone has her DNA and uses it in the crazy experiments. At some point she meets her own self as an other person. There's quite a lot of comedy thrown between the events, usually Misaka having an argument with a level 0 esper.

Overall:For everyone who enjoyed the universe created by Kamachi Kazuma - it's a must read. What about the rest? A very good manga, maybe equal in terms of quality to the original, with the only difference in main characters and it being a manga instead of light novel.

8 for chapters 1-18, 10 for Acc arc.

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On the side note - manga version of Index is much worse than the railgun one, since the author isn't the same. So if you think that the Index manga wasn't any good, that doesn't mean that Railgun is also bad.


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