For the small minority of people who've only seen Index and never bothered with the Spin Off, from the beginning the fight scenes are much different on Railgun.
The male led Toaru shows are very Shounen in their approach to action. Touma wins by somehow getting his super special punch in, and Accelerator just proves himself to be ridiculously OP even when the antagonist claims to have neutralized his OPness.
Now even Railgun still sometimes needs to have Misaka simply overpower the bad guy so we don’t forget she’s a Level 5, but a lot of that is in the show’s Cold Open episodes, where it can be quite satisfying to see some random goons have no idea who they're dealing with till it's too late.
But even in season 1 Railgun has scenes like when Kuroko has to take on one villain in an abandoned building. Episode 2 I advise new fans to skip on their first viewing because I worry about the bad first impression it gives of Kuroko, this episode is the one that proves there is more to her then clingy Lesbian with boundary issues. And then Railgun S has Shinobu’s awesome introduction and later the really intense showdown between Misaka and ITEM.
But the third season has outdone itself in this area. Railgun S is still the best season overall, but failing to top S is nothing to be ashamed of, I’m seriously considering letting Railgun S dethrone Noir. Railgun T is in my opinion the Anime of the Year for 2020 and in my top 20 of the last decade.
Now I know most people who care about voting in the best Anime Fight Scene category for the Crunchyroll Anime Awards probably aren’t looking for what I’m looking for, they just want fast paced fist pumping action. I can enjoy those kinds of fight scenes when I’m into the story around it, as I usually am for Raildex shows. But if I’m going to praise something specifically as a fight scene, I want tactics, I want some level of actually needing to outthink your opponent.
A Certain Scientific Railgun T first gives us a taste of what it’s up to with the Daihasei Festival itself, the three legged race and the glorified Dodgeball game are both a lot of fun to watch.
Then comes episode 6 and all of the sudden two of the most peripheral characters of the show are our main protagonists for the week, and it’s awesome, instantly a best fight scene in all of Anime contender. Where else but in Anime does that kind of thing happen?
Then we enter the last act of the Arc and we have two intense chess matches going on at once contrasted with Touma doing his thing.
The second part of the season is the Dream Ranker Arc, the Dream Ranker arc is a lot of fun, I’d perhaps have preferred it as the first half of a season rather then as an ending. But as a follow up to the three preceding epic sagas it’s kind of like Star Trek IV The Journey Home giving us something more fun after an intensely melodramatic trilogy. A modern Satyr play.
In the fight scene department we first get the two part episode about Frenda randomly befriending Saten, where the fight is mostly in part 2 but you do need the context. Frenda has to outwit a sniper and there is a moment that I may in the future use as a case study in why voice over narration is good actually.
Then we get into the Arc proper where the show manages to endear us to Scavenger and we get to see Misaka herself have an interesting battle for the first time this season.
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