Synopsis : Railgun is based in Academy City, a student town which specialises in students with esper powers. It follows Misaka Mikoto aka Railgun, one of the most powerful espers in the city. Her group of friends hang out and occasionally beat up bad guys.
Rev : This anime is the definition of mid. Like its right there in the middle. Its never offending or revolting (in the way Code Geass or Tokyo Revengers are) but its also only rarely exciting. Everything is smooth enough to not make you want to turn it off, so you can still watch its entirety without much friction and yet gain nothing out of it. "Boring" is a word that comes to mind.
Its extremely juvenile. Most of the scenarios involve a bunch of middle school kids mucking around. The themes and motifs are surface level and again, childish.
It has okay Characters I guess. The MC is likeable and made everything else easier to gulp down. The side characters are fine, maybe a little annoying in parts which I'll go into detail in spoilers. One thing I noticed is the characters never actually change during the course of the anime. Except perhaps Saten there is nil development. The villians on the other hand are downright horrendous. One dimensional laughable caricatures without any nuance.
The anime is like structured as 70% slice of life with small arcs of 30% action thrown in between. There's barely any "plot" so to say. It all ties together at the end but again its very surface level. Feels like I'm watching a filler.
On the plus side it has a great OP and overall good soundtrack. The animation is competent, though it may sometimes be subpar in action scenes. The art style is fine to look at and as I said its overall engaging enough to not want to turn it off.
Final verdict: I think this anime works best if you are new to anime or a literal child (or both). This is definitely meant for a younger audience who are easily entertained by flashy action scenes and common anime tropes. But overall it doesn't manage to do anything that other anime haven't done 10 times better. Avoid if you are older than 22.
Ok so Saten, despite being the only character with an arc,is bland af. I found kokkoro to be annoying even though her VA did a good job of giving her a unique style. Her infatuation with Misaka is played for comedic effect but I never found it funny. Uiharu is cute and likeable. But her role in the final arc singlehandedly brought it down. That entire conflict with Kokkorro was unnecessary. Kongo mitsuo was cool despite having a short appearence
