So this anime is about Misaka, the 'Railgun' (a nickname given to her because of her power over electricity) and her friends in a student city full of espers. It's a serious anime generally with plenty of comedy moments.
Before I go on, I can say now that the quality of the animation and sound are both good. I guess we can thank the people at JC Staff for this, and all credit to them. Certainly it doesn't have a cheap visual feel to it, and there are certain scenes (particularly towards the middle of the show) that I found to be pretty nice.
Still, let's get to the meat of the review - the writing. The writers had a lot to work with potentially here - you could really have any person with any power and they could be justified as existing in this setting. Obviously I'm not going to go into too much detail of the specifics, but I would say the writers attended a course on foreshadowing and plot convenience before setting to the task of writing this. There were several times in the show were something was considered a rumour at the start of a conversation, and then all but taken as truth by the end of that conversation with no reasoning for the jump given. In fact almost all (if not entirely all) rumours come to pass in this show - I for one should not like to be the victim of gossip in such a world. Let's put it like this - if it's speculated by a character, the chances are it's going to come to pass. This does leave one with a taste of unrealism after many episodes, but I'm sure most people will be able to get past it.
To what extent is this an 'off the shelf mix'. That is to say, writers have taken characters and stories from elsewhere and bolted them together? Well I don't watch a huge amount of anime these days, but it does have that sort of feel to it at times. Certainly the yuri undertones (and, often, overtones) wouldn't help in the defense of this point.
I suppose the main question you have to consider when writing a review is simply whether you enjoyed it or not. I have been quite harsh on this show because I feel like they could have done so much more with it. But then I suppose to have made it complicated to a level that satisfied me may have been to cut out the younger audience. Still, I feel it's a fair point. There were times when I cringed or sighed at a character's reaction or the convenience of how a plot was discovered, or how the bad guy gave away the plan when they felt most confident. For all this though, I did enjoy it. It was a non-too complex pleasure which was, for the most part, entertaining and amusing. Be careful after the completion of the first story arc (basically the first half of the show), because after that there are a few quite dreary episodes until the second plot arc picks up.
So good and perfectly watchable. Just don't expect anything too original from this one.
