OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

As Esther and Huotou finish their preparations, Mikihiko prepares his own plan to make “Hirumi” a Level 6, with the hope that they’ll be able to live happy lives afterwards. But they still have to deal with Accelerator (who has a weird purple shadow under him, possibly to indicate this is in the morning?), who’s damaged Hundun, one of the Coffins holding Misaka 10046. The other two, Qiongqi and Taotie, combine their efforts and put civilians in harm’s way of their battle in order to distract him, though that only delays the inevitable. While Mikihiko is able to retrieve Misaka’s memories, Accelerator is only seconds behind to come save her.

But it’s also seconds too late, as gaining the memories was all Mikihiko needed to boost each of the Coffins’ powers, which will provide ample diversion as he completes the process on “Hirumi”. He takes down Qiongqi and Toatie with ease, while Hundun stays behind in the base. Esther and Huotou arrive around this time and Esther explains Hirumi secretly being Taowu, though Mikihiko doesn’t buy it. So she uses her enchanted blade to kill Taowu, but Mikihito jumps in front to take the strike and let the process be completed.

OUR TAKE

We begin our home stretch to the end of the season with probably the most interesting use of fight scenes the spin-off has had yet. Accelerator’s power of Vector control has been implemented in creative ways in the main series, so it would only make sense that he’d get to play around with it in his own show. Being one of the strongest characters in the franchise, it’s a no-brainer that a show about him would need some really strong opponents to make things worth paying attention to. Although, aside from getting the center stage in this week’s fight, could you honestly say this arc is really about HIM over the whole Esther/Hishigata matter? It certainly seemed like it would be once a Misaka got involved (even if it wasn’t the Misaka I expected), but 10046’s only function seems to be acting as a girl shaped flash drive who now has no purpose other than to run around aimlessly.

I mean don’t get me wrong, I was able to get into the big fights more than I expected after last week, but now that I remember that they were simply distractions and chances for fireworks, I can’t help but feel like we missed some opportunities here to develop our title character a bit. And yeah, I’m aware of the irony that the main series is titled after a character who drifted into the background after the first arc, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to not expect that to become a trend throughout the spin-offs too. Rail-gun definitely puts Mikoto front and center for its more important arcs, so you know it’s doable, and Accelerator had one of the more interesting developments in that mess of a third season.

I already suggested having a dark mirror of himself to mentor awhile back, but even without that, you could also do something with him attempting to reconcile with one of the Misakas who have decided to not forgive him. Heck, maybe involve Last Order and grow her a bit as a character! I just don’t see the point in sidelining your title character from getting the focus when he’s practically made for this sort of thing. We’ve got three episodes left to wrap up this arc, so it’s a little late now to build up anything believable, but I’d appreciate the effort if they bothered to hint at even a little!

Score 6/10