A Certain Scientific Railgun T 11
とある科学の超電磁砲T episode 11

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis

Kuroko gets a call about a massive, electrical disturbance. Mitori uses Exterior to access the Mental Out ability. There, she contacts Mikoto and uses Mikoto’s hatred of the dark side of Academy City to have her attack the governing board’s tower building. While Mikoto’s power has massively increased, her massive attack on the building fails to harm it. Misaki uses Mental Out to make sure Anti-Skill doesn’t get in the way.

Misaki sees Touma in the courtyard below. She uses Mental Out to enlist him to neutralize Mikoto. Misaki then finds Keitz and releases him from Gensei’s control. Mitori has her metal clone attack, but Kuroko saves Misaki. Kuroko teleports Keitz and Imouto to safety, then gets Misaki and herself back into the building. Misaki uses Mental Out to give Kuroko all of the information on the current situation.

Meanwhile, Touma attempts to use his one hand’s Imagine Breaker skill to get to Mikoto. He fails. Level 5 esper Gunha joins Touma. Mikoto attacks both of them with lighting, but both easily defend against it, impressing each other. Mikoto raises an iron cloud shield around her, so Gunha punches through that. He then throws Touma at Mikoto. Touma is able to touch her, creating a “clean” spot on her skin before it returns to its new form.

Elsewhere, Kuroko calls Uiharu to monitor cameras in the area. Mitori has her liquid metal clone attack. Meanwhile, Misaki has located Gensei.

Thoughts/Review

I’d forgotten just how much fun the Daihasei Festival Arc was in the manga. Seeing it animated in A Certain Scientific Railgun T 11 was certainly a joy.

Changes to the Source Manga

This episode was adapted from manga chapters 62, most of chapter 63, and a bit from chapter 64. Here is a list of notable changes made in A Certain Scientific Railgun T 11.

• The anime adds a scene explaining how Kuroko knew to get up with Misaki. This actually fills a gap left for the audience to assume in the manga, so I like this.
• The episode has a scene with Saten and Uiharu to show Saten got her charm back. It doesn’t actually do anything positive or negative to the episode, so I’m cool with this minor addition.
• The scene with Gunha was pushed back to roll into the mid-episode splash screen. This actually works better because it doesn’t needlessly break up Mitori’s battle with Misaki.
• There were other scene shuffles from how things were in the manga. I’m guessing that the anime folks felt things would flow better in the anime by shifting things around. Also, it seems that J.C. Staff wanted to delay Misaki’s confrontation with Gensei until next episode. That said, nothing is being lost in the shuffle, so here too, I’ll give this a pass.

So nothing too significant in terms of chances to the source manga.

Fighting Mikoto

Normally, I don’t like possession tales where a main character becomes something else. However, in A Certain Scientific Railgun T 11, Mikoto’s “possession” (for lack of a better term) didn’t bother me. I think part of this is that Mitori used Mikoto’s own hatred and rage against those who did horrible things to her clone sisters to manipulate Mikoto into doing Mitori’s bidding.

Speaking of “normally”, I usually can’t stand Touma. But in this episode, he’s actually tolerable. That’s because his Imagine Breaker isn’t being allowed to deus ex machina out of the situation. Although it helped him defend himself against attacks from Mikoto, Imagine Breaker did not release Mikoto from the Gensei’s experiment to force her to Level 6. And I loved that moment.

Further, “One Trick Wonder Horse” needed the help of a powerful, Level 5 esper, in this case, Gunha, Railgun‘s and Index‘s One Punch Man. Gunha may be a cliched shounen character who spouts a lot about guts. But when he literally threw Touma at Mikoto during the fight, I laughed out loud. Sure, he did that in the manga, but it was funny actually seeing it in the anime.

Final Thoughts and Conclusion

My life is very busy of late, so let me end my review with some final thoughts.

• I mentioned earlier how Touma getting thrown at Mikoto made me laugh in the anime whereas it did not in the manga. A similar thing happened with Misaki used Mental Out to info-dump to Kuroko. Kuroko’s reaction made me laugh out loud for some reason.
• Speaking of Kuroko, I’m really looking forward to seeing her battle with Mitori.
• I’m also looking forward to Misaki confronting Gensei.

In the end, A Certain Scientific Railgun T 11 was highly enjoyable, even more so than the original manga due to the laughs I received.