DCEmperor said:SomeGuyWithHair said:We all know that the anime disregards the dates of the manga and light novel as seen in the Pool episode and episode 13. I wanna talk about Kongou for she played an important role in the Poltergeist arc. I'm not sure if it's really canon but I know Therestina is an actual character in the series as she was mentioned by Enshuu in NT 4 and
A Certain Unified Calendar confirms that Poltergeist is in fact canon.
Now about Kongou, she was first seen in episode 1 talking to Kuroko. Episode 1 was before Level Upper (Arc started in July 16). She also appeared in episode 13 (After Level Upper) and this was the first time she introduced herself to Mikoto.
The manga is the original source of the anime. This is where the anime came from. Now in the manga, she debuted in the week of the Three Stories arc (Last week of August). She was a new transfer student of Tokiwadai and the first person she talked to was Misaka. She saw Misaka being followed around by Unabara (Read chapter 40 of the manga for full detail). This chapter is pretty important for Kongou because Misaka was the first friend she had made in Tokiwadai, she grew fond of her, which makes helping Misaka in Daihaseisai a lot easier.
July 16 vs. August 31. Which is the real one? If you picked the latter, Poltergeist will have a massive plot hole. Are we just gonna ignore it and pretend it didn't exist? Or are we gonna see the Level Upper arc as the only canon part of season 1(Eyebrows girl excluded)?
This isn't a problem. The anime and the manga just have separate but very similar canons.
In a similar way, the Railgun and Index animes have slightly different canons, as the episodes covering the Sister's Arc are not identical to each other in terms of the dialogue between Touma and Misaka even though they logically should be. Nothing in the anime is noncanon, it just has a different canon than the source material. The canon of the adaptation of Railgun is not the same as the canon of the source material, just extremely similar.
Plus, if we label the Poltergeist Arc as noncanon, then we also have to label the Silent Party Arc as noncanon because Therestina is in it, and all appearances of Banri and the girl she is with will also be noncanon. That's a lot of material to get rid of. In fact, that's almost half of the Railgun anime.
Additionally, if the Poltergeist Arc is noncanon, then that means that Kiyama is still in prison and she never got to save her students. Also, by extension, negating the Silent Party Arc will mean that Nunotaba is still the slave of some random secret society. We don't want these things to be true, do we?
Kongo is a side character, and her character isn't really that different based on who she befriends first because she still ends up with the same group of friends and she still behaves the same way in spite of the differences between the anime and the manga. She isn't worth making changes to the plot of the Railgun anime on the scale you are describing over, especially not when it isn't necessary to begin with due to the canons not being the same anyways.
In the manga, Kongo first met Misaka on August 31. In the anime, Kongo first met Misaka on July 16. It's as simple as that. The anime shouldn't be forcibly altered to match the manga when the creators didn't intend to make the anime a one-to-one match of the manga. This minor issue definitely isn't worth erasing half of the plot of the Railgun anime and negating Kiyama's and Nunotaba's respective happy endings over.
