OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Saten carries an unconscious Kongou back while Wannai and Awatsuki face Baba to avenge their fallen friend. Using his observation, he determines what he thinks are their Esper abilities and starts planning accordingly. He splits them up by having Awatsuki go running after a mosquito robot while Wannai uses her water manipulation abilities to fend off Baba’s dog robots. Based on what he sees, he assumes that she won’t be able to handle her water as well away from the pond and lures her away, but doesn’t count on her keeping some with her in a nearby storm drain. She defeats him and takes the mosquito bot from him, but lets him get away.

Meanwhile, Misaka runs into Saten dropping the injured Kongou off at the hospital and decides to get some revenge, taking the tracker Baba left on her to track him down and put the fear of god into him.

OUR TAKE

It’s kinda funny that part of this episode takes place inside a hospital, because it seems that the spread of the oh so topical Covid19 coronavirus is going to be impacting this show’s release schedule in the coming weeks. Episode 7 (and it’s monstrous title) got delayed a week because of this, but will probably still be released in the dub on time. With Episode 8, however, it looks like THAT’S also being put off a bit with a recap episode put ahead of it. No clue if these will be the only delays or how Funimation will deal with these delays if they start to stack up, but we’ll see.

As for this episode in particular, I’d say it was actually a pretty pleasant surprise to see Wannai and Awatsuki get to have the spotlight for once. These two haven’t been the most stand out characters of this spin-off, being mainly known for their connection to Kongou who has the more noticeable personality, but this episode does a lot to give them plenty of moments to shine while most of the main cast are either amnesiacs or still finding their ways out of this weird point in the arc. It’s kind of like those points in Dragon Ball Z when Goku would be put out of commission for a bit so the other characters got to have cool moments to themselves. So, along with Kongou’s highlights last week, it seems the B-Team of the Railgun series aren’t anything to laugh at. Hopefully this is a sign of cool and fun things to come for them in the rest of this arc.

It also looks like the tone is about to ramp up in seriousness as MEMBER’s team escalate their tactics to corner Misaka, which will in turn be met by further retaliation by Misaka. Seeing Kongou, someone who tried to keep out of things for her own safety, be so badly hurt for her sake is definitely enough to kick Railgun into Rampage mode, which we’ll no doubt be seeing in the coming weeks. We’re inching ever closer to a true showdown between her and Misaki, the two main Level 5s in focus here. And while Misaka held her own pretty well against Mugino, the fourth ranked, it doesn’t mean Misaki will be a slouch just because she’s one rank lower. Perhaps we’ll see how that is if the staff doesn’t wear themselves out working while sick.

Score 8/10