Toaru Kagaku no Railgun S Episode 10
とある科学の超電磁砲（レールガン）S
To Aru Kagaku no Railgun S

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

An exhausted Mikoto walks through the corridor, no longer under attack, but realizing that her opponents are probably waiting for her and that she doesn’t have the strength to do battle with them all. She notices Freda’s ignition tape on the ground and decides to follow it where it leads her to one of the doll bombs. Mikoto decides she can make use of this and follows additional tape trails. Meanwhile, Frenda and Rikou evacuate the facility. On their way to meet Saiai, Frenda suddenly remembers she forgot to clean up all of her bombs and becomes very worried.

Shizuri is waiting for Railgun when Mikoto finally arrives. She’s not happy to see Mikoto with several of Frenda’s doll bombs. After Shizuri easily defends against single bomb attacks, Mikoto sends a swarm of the dolls, all filled with metal so she can control them, at Shizuri. Shizuri uses a special card to cause her Meltdowner attacks to divide up (Silicon Burn), thus allowing her to destroy almost all of Mikoto’s dolls.  Shizuri’s rant about being the 4th ranked level 5 causes Mikoto to realize whom she is fighting. With only three more doll bombs, Mikoto manages to quietly have one slam into Shizuri’s head, knocking her out.

Mikoto struggles to the command center with her final bomb, where she blows up the place, causing a fire. She doesn’t hang around and upon her return, she finds a very angry Shizuri waiting with a kick to the gut. Mikoto manages to flee despite the damage taken and considers the only viable escape option left to her. Shizuri slowly pursues, taunting Mikoto, when Saiai calls in with a report on their situation. Shizuri has Saiai pass along a message for Frenda before continuing her pursuit. Mikoto is forced to a metal gantry where Shizuri catches her. However, the gantry was booby trapped by Frenda, which Mikoto sets off, sending Shizuri to the depths below.

Mikoto escapes while the injured Shizuri realizes she needs to work on breaking falls. However, she decides to find out why Railgun was so intent on destroying these facilities. Beating one of the scientist up, Shizuri discovers the truth of the Level 6 Shift project and why ITEM was hired. She’s amused by this, but decides it will be more interesting to let Mikoto roam free and suffer from the dark side of Academy City. Mikoto crashes at a hotel and the following day, infiltrates the final facility, which has been abandoned. She finds the data wiped in the computers but also learns that the company went bankrupt. Mikoto now believes she has set her clones free. Heading to a certain vending machine, she finds Touma there, having just lost his money to the machine.

Thoughts/Review:

This episode was adapted from the end of chapter 29 and all of chapter 30, completing the materials from volume 5 of the manga.

Additional materials came from Mikoto’s flashbacks after learning of the company’s bankruptcy she encounters Touma at a certain vending machine. Otherwise, this episode was a spot on adaptation to the manga portion, which is as it should be.

With this, we have an end to ITEM’s role in the Sisters arc. The battle between the weakened Mikoto and Shizuri was way more incredible in the anime than in the manga. Little things, such as Mikoto observing the unconscious Shizuri were lost due to time/space constraints in the manga, so it is really nice having them all here.

I didn’t consider this when I read the manga, but watching the anime, I realized that Mikoto’s being forced to come up with alternate strategies (to which Shizuri had utter disdain for) is what actually ended up giving her the edge. Her fight with Frenda and subsequent avoiding Shizuri’s target assisted attacks meant she couldn’t do anything flashy.  As such, she adapted and overcame not by digging deep for that one final attack, but that one final trick that gave her the win and her escape.

I find it ironic that Shizuri lectured Mikoto on being prepared to cover one’s weaknesses, which is what her Silicon Burn attack did, but while Mikoto may not have been prepared in advance, she was able to think on her feet and overcome Shizuri’s obvious combat training. Now we know that one element, on top of raw power, that makes Mikoto ranked higher than the older, more experienced Shizuri.

As an aside, assuming that the dialog in the anime was the same as the manga, then it would appear that the manga adaptation took a small liberty with Shizuri’s description of the clones. In this episode, she calls them “slime,” due to the fact that in many Japanese RPG games, one can level up slowly but surely by fighting nothing but low-level slime monsters. The manga called this “popping zits”.  I prefer the RPG reference, but that’s just me.

Now that ITEM’s part is done, I’m glad Kuroko didn’t show up as she’s seen doing in the OP sequence. Despite the faithful adaptation of the source material, I’ve learned to never fully trust an anime production team to not want to go off and do their own thing in the name of creativity or whatever. So my hat is off to J.C. Staff for resisting the temptation.

Next episode links in with the Index part of the story, starting with the humor at a certain vending machine and an explanation for Kuroko’s arrival to catch her beloved oneesama with Touma.