Monday, September 24, 2012

A Certain Scientific Review. (Part 2)


A Certain Scientific Railgun

~Part two~

Sound
                The sound is handled fairly well throughout the show. The voice actors for roles that are in the main series are the same for this spin off, so you don’t have to get use to new voices. As far as the overall quality of the voice actors go it's pretty solid but I found Uiharu’s voice grating at times. The music is pretty typical. The show seems to handle it with a thematic approach, giving each character or situation a theme track.  The show mostly features upbeat tracks, and really encompasses this in its opening and ending songs. It was also good at changing moods during scenes, which didn’t always match up I felt. The best part of the sound mixing I felt was the sound effects for abilities; showcased best with the railgun or, Kuroko’s teleport. It really gives it an epic action, comic book feel to the show.


Art and Animation
                One of my favorite things about this show was its stunning use of backgrounds and just how good academy city looks. The environments they go to are all unique and the fight scenes play well off of them (generally by destroying them). They also followed the manga designs for all the characters, which is nice for a sense of continuity. The fight scenes could have been animated better, they tend to cop out when they have to show something complex like the railgun actually destroying something. Also the characters tend to move awkwardly when fighting. However on the plus side they handle Kuroko’s teleportation beautifully, one of her hallmarks is to teleport pegs into people’s guns so they can’t shoot her. Whenever it happens there is a sound indicating and it shows the pegs one by one get shot into the guns.

Overall
                You can’t argue that this show doesn't have flaws. Be its comic relief fan service or its bizarre story arc pacing. Even when you take that into account however, this is one spin off that’s every bit as good as the original. In my opinion it is superior to the original because I found Index in the original series to be very annoying. If I were to rate this show out of a ten I would give it a 7.5. It has a ton of potential to be around a 9 with its unique story (Academy City concept really is genius) but, they handled a view things poorly.  I would still recommend this show to anyone who likes shows with a strong female lead or a unique sci-fi, action plot.



Who Cares?
                First of all I’m obliged to say that anyone who has read the manga or seen Index has to watch this, it doesn’t surprise or disappoint if you have. There are a few other good tie-ins however. Like I mentioned earlier I found this show to have a great comic book fan appeal. It nails the sound effects and the vigilantly sense of justice that most heroes tend to exhibit. It also has namely all girl main characters much like the show Charmed, so if girls with powers kicking ass is your thing, the Railgun has it. It’s hard to pick an anime similar to it. If I had to describe it in terms of anime would say it’s a fusion of Soul Eater and Canaan.  Which isn’t entirely accurate but I guess if it were the genome of anime like Pandora is on music, then it has the same show qualities. Which is what I’m aiming for in this section a sort of Genome of anime or, TV tropes comparison.
               

               
               
               

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