English Dub Review: A Certain Scientific Railgun “Diffusion”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Doppelganger attacks Misaka with her giant debris kaiju, which Misaka responds to by creating a giant made out of iron sand which she can also control at will. They’re pretty evenly matched, with Doppelganger throwing gas tanks to distract her and then pulling a Shin Godzilla and creating tiny duplicates to handle the grunt work. Kuriba then shows up in order to propose giving up her own soul so that Doppelganger can take her body, which she apparently doesn’t need now that her research has saved her mom’s life. To prove how little her life matters, she jumps off an airship, but Scavenger saves her, paying Misaka back for earlier. They, along with Misaki, also determine that Doppelganger has been using Kuriba’s research to come up with a formula for artificial muscles, likely related to the plans for soul possession. When Misaka confronts her, Doppelganger says she wants revenge against humans, specifically Kuriba, for her harsh existence. They fight once again on top of the airship with support from Scavenger, though an attack forces Misaka to blast directly at Doppelganger.

OUR TAKE

However weirdly paced or structured this arc has been, I can definitely say it has made its mark in terms of scale. Having the climax of the arc, as well as the season, be fought through giant monster sized collections of mass is certainly a method I haven’t seen in this franchise yet, even with all the crazy final battles it’s had throughout its many series and arcs. And as odd as their addition was to the story, it does feel fitting that Scavenger are a big help to Misaka in this battle, showing her ability to make connections ultimately pays off whereas Doppelganger is ultimately alone, no matter how many clones she can make of herself. Also worth noting Misaki’s involvement, however small, considering how distant and antagonistic she and Misaka were at the start of the season. They may hate each others’ guts for several reasons, but there is a mutual respect and reliability that they can count on each other in times like this, which is heartwarming in its own way.

Still though, Kuriba’s mention of using the Indian Poker Cards (I don’t think we’re ever given an explanation for why they’re called that, actually) just reminds me of how this climax doesn’t really flow with how this arc began. Nothing that came from any of the little mini-arcs involving the cards ended up contributing to this in the end (which I can confirm, having seen the finale), so the use of them kinda ends up feeling a bit pointless. We sure got a lot of neat vignettes with supporting characters out of it, but nothing that really shows much connective tissue with what’s happening now, which is a bit amusing considering the use of connective tissue in this very episode. And that doesn’t necessarily mean we ended up with a bad arc in the end either, just that everything about it feels really cobbled together when it could have felt so much more streamlined like other arcs. I can go more into how it compares to the other main Railgun arcs next episode for the finale, which I honestly was starting to think we would never quite reach with all the delays. But like it or not, the Raildex train is about to pull into the station for the foreseeable future, so next time we’ll bid a bittersweet farewell to this series for the time being.