とある科学の超電磁砲（レールガン）/Toaru Kagaku no Railgun
A Certain Scientific Railgun Vol. 14 (manga review) 

–> Purchase A Certain Scientific Railgun Volume 14 from Amazon.com!

It has been a little over two years since I last dived into the world of A Certain Scientific Railgun. Since I’m almost completely unpacked from my move, I’m trying to catch up on manga reading. A Certain Scientific Railgun Vol. 14 was next, after rereading the first thirteen volumes.

NOTICE!!! In the interest of full disclosure, I should mention that I am the adapter for the official English translation of the True Tenchi Muyo! novels, which are also published by Seven Seas.

S P O I L E R S ! ! !

The Story, in Brief  

Uiharu takes Saten around town to cheer Saten up. A reluctant Kuroko joins Mikoto, Saten, and Uiharu to participate in a test of a new, private, juvenile prison for espers and such. With ¥1B on the line, lots of people show up to try to breach the prison’s security and break a designated “prisoner” out of their cell. Further complicating it are the AIM jammers that for the most part cause espers to not be able to use their powers.

Among those attempting to breach the walls are Mitori and Dolly, the clone of Mikoto. Mitsuko, Maaya, and Wannai are also there and meet up with Mikoto’s group. After some failed attempts to breach the wall, Mikoto manages to get a hole, and before it can repair itself, other espers manage to keep the hole open, allowing them to enter. Elsewhere, a group of ninja infiltrate over the walls, with the goal of gaining knowledge of Academy City’s technologies.

Scavenger’s leader has Yakumaru covertly tail Mikoto’s group to help them. Her plan is to allow Mikoto to break out the prisoner, then steal the prisoner. Uiharu gets separated from Mikoto’s group. Mikoto declines to wear the special suits Mitsuko has to assist them. The ninja leader, Oumi, uses her child-like appearance to connect with Mikoto’s group. Security robots of various types attack. However, Mikoto had previously hacked some of the droids so they battled each other.

When Mikoto’s group reaches the prisoner location, the prisoner is gone. Uiharu emerges with the prisoner, having hacked the system. She horrifies Saten by stating she’s donating the prize money to a charity for Child Errors. Meanwhile, the director of the prison discovers that a real prisoner escaped. This was orchestrated by the director’s aid, Suzuran, to set her friend Kimi free.

Jailbreak Arc Begins

Except for the first chapter, the rest of A Certain Scientific Railgun Vol. 14 deals with the Jailbreak Arc. I gotta say, this arc started out deceptively simple. I thought Kamachi-sensei (and artist Fuyukawa-sensei) were opting for a fun adventure. After all, the prison doesn’t appear to be run by dark elements. The director may be a bit nuts, but he genuinely wanted a prison facility that could stand up to potential attacks from espers (and I suppose, mages too).

To that end, I enjoyed Kuroko getting dragged into this. Saten had her usual excitement over the start of a new adventure, especially for the money. Heck, even Mitsuko and company got involved. I liked how the leader of Scavenger planned to use her new friendship with Mikoto to covertly allow Mikoto to achieve her objective, then have her people steal the prisoner while Mikoto is distracted.

The real shocker was the inclusion of Mitori and Dolly. I don’t know how powerful Dolly is (seemingly more powerful than the Sisters), but she did come in and rescue Mitori. Sadly, Dolly and Mikoto didn’t meet. I doubt they ever will due to the Index side of the story and Mikoto’s involvement there. Kind of a bummer, but it is what it is.

The twists came fast and furious by the end of the volume. The unlikely Uiharu won the event. The director’s aide turned out to be a plant to free the prisoner, Kimi. The ninja girl Tsurigane turned on her clan leader to help Kimi. And a supposedly shy, timid girl turned out to be a vicious something to free Kimi. Yikes! Didn’t expect any of that, which made it good.

Omake

There’s not much in the way of extra content in this volume. There’s a page showing Kimi’s character design.

Final Thoughts and Conclusion

Let me wrap up my review of A Certain Scientific Railgun Vol. 14 with some final thoughts.

• The bad thing about the Railgun manga is that events from Index affect Railgun. That means you need to know Index events to get the whole story. So to know what happened to Frenda (who befriended Saten), one has to have read the Index story. I wish the manga had a note informing us where to get more information about the Frenda story.
• I don’t remember ninja being a part of this franchise until now. Interestingly enough, ninja usually have supernatural abilities. But in this world, they are looking for advanced technology and the abilities of espers, which is interesting.
• Interesting that Kimi’s power seems to be related to summoning a dragon of some sort. That reminded me of Touma somehow summoning tons of dragons. So maybe they have similar powers.

In the end, A Certain Scientific Railgun Vol. 14 was a fun volume that had an interesting twist to take it to the next level. I’m looking forward to seeing where things go from here.