Hmm. Some of this seem vaguely familiar…
What They Say:
With the revelation that Febri is synthetic, Misaka is determined to find whoever built her, and have them fix her. The investigation is stalled on all fronts, even with the help of her friends running down leads, until help comes from a surprise source.
The Review:
Febri’s trip to hospital has thrown up a surprise revelation: she’s an artificial human, created for reasons unknown. Given her Sisters, this is an idea that doesn’t sit well with Misaka. The telltale signs are a number of compounds in her body that don’t naturally occur in humans – which includes a poison that seems to be acting as a limiter on her lifespan, and for which her lollipops are the antidote. And she’s only got a limited supply of them left. With Febri’s ‘creators’ being the only people able to supply more of them, it’s time for Misaka to do some digging…
So last week, the concerns were about slow pacing & a story that didn’t seem in any hurry to give up its secrets. This week doesn’t do anything about the pacing – it’s still feeling unnaturally slow, given what’s going on – but there’s far more in the way of information given out, mostly by the doctor who’s been treating Febri after her collaps – and who gives the impression of being a suspiciously well-informed walking infodump. The revelations play out to create a problem that also seems suspiciously familiar, to Misaka as much as the audience – with Febri being a walking experiment and a certain familiar face being involved with the group that created her, comparisons with Misaka’s sisters are hard to avoid. Especially when one of the sisters turns up to lend a hand. Even the episode’s cliffhanger surprise is the appearance of yet another familiar face.
I’m not sure that I like the resulting sense of deja-vu. The arc seems to be playing heavily on events and people that have gone before, to the point where I was beginning to wonder if it was just an exercise in playing of nostalgia for Railgun‘s greatest hits. I really hope not.
Putting that aside, though, there are a few points here that are good to see: Misaka finally putting away the “I must deal with this myself” attitude and beginning to rely on her friends, and the way they all swing into action behind her; and the return of Misaka-imouto and her dry wit & ability to tease her big sister. One of the weaknesses of the Sisters arc was the way most of the supporting case were effectively sidelined for the arc, and at least that seems to have been corrected this time around. And I haven’t yet seen nearly enough of the Sisters and their attitude to get tired of them.
In Summary:
Rays of light in a cloud of “Hmmmm…”, though, as this arc still really hasn’t done anything to make it stand out from the crowd. It doesn’t have much time let to do that, either.
Content Grade: B+
Streamed By: FUNimation
Review Equipment: 27” Apple iMac, 2.9GHz Core i5, 32GB RAM, Mac OS X 10.8.4
