The result of this adaptation is mixed to put it favourably. There are times when this anime ascends to brilliance, but there are also sadly many instances where it falls to outright trite. One of the first problems evident is the appallingly slow pacing – the sisters arc takes 16 episodes to tell its story, whereas the original Index adaptation covered it more concisely in 4 episodes. The Index adaptation was a frenetic battle arc with well placed comedy, by comparison the Railgun adaptation drags its feet and peppers the storytelling with dull filler scenes.
Unfortunately there is a painfully high amount of filler present in Railgun S – which seems unforgivable given the amount of material they could adapt for this anime, all the more so since the moeblob (which the director likes inserting) feels so out of place in a battle shounen. Switching scenes from outright terrorism to moe-moe tripe about swimming costumes is pretty jarring.
On the plus side, the series introduces ITEM and the four episodes where they appear are some of the best seen in the animated Railgun/Index franchise. The battles with ITEM are fantastically choreographed and provide the much needed energy which so lacking throughout the rest of the series, they also provide a much needed change of characters (the Railgun anime all too often focuses on the same central group). This is followed with a fantastic newly animated battle between Accelerator and Touma, the production values are at the highest for this section of the story and it’s well worth watching that section of the story.
Unfortunately the series really nosedives in quality once the sisters arc ends. Once again, the show resorts to filler to plug the last 8 episodes, and delivers some of the most abysmally scripted rubbish you’ll ever see. It’s no exaggeration to say that these episodes rank amongst the absolute worst of all anime: the plot is contrived and predictable with mad scientists running around to conduct experiments to test powerlevels; it also introduces an awful mascot character whose presence on screen for some reason reduces other characters to cooing morons.
Worst of all, the filler arc greatly contradicts major storylines and plot devices present in the main series – quite why this happened when there is an enormous amount of excellent canonical content available for adaptation is extremely sad. Such is the immense dislike of this butchery that the fanbase have come to label it “Nagaispace” (there is even a wiki entry for this).
It’s worth mentioning that the animation has improved exponentially since the previous three series: it’s now actually presented in 720p HD; liberal use of keyframes makes everything look incredibly smooth too. Backgrounds (as usual) are well painted, and in some cases interestingly make use of hand-painted 3D models. If future Index series look this good I’ll be pretty happy.
All in all, I can’t help but feel like the manga did a much better job of telling the story; it’s a shame that overall it turned out to be such a poor production. I would hope that a subsequent series would address many of these issues – but after two weak series I’m not going to hold out much hope.
