Recap: With her mind now at ease about the clone project, Mikoto looks forward to enjoying her summer vacation. After spending a lazy day off however, her peace is interrupted.

Jel’s Thoughts: This episode pretty much gave us the same information about the clones we got last week, except this episode did it much better. I guess I can see why they split it the way they did, working around Mikoto’s misdirection on the clone project, but I still feel like most of last week’s episode was unnecessary.

Showing the cloning process, particularly their newborn innocence when they’re created, was a much more effective way of getting the audience to care. We may have seen the Good Scientist/Bad Scientist routine a million times before, but I’ll take that over an info dump any day. I also liked the conversation the girls had about the rumor and what they would do if they had a clone. It helped to give a normal, NOT evil perspective on things and bring the the far fetched concept down to Earth a bit.

It was Mikoto’s day off playing with the kids that was probably the best part of the episode though, and really one of the series better character developing moments. It gave us a chance to see her big sister instincts in action without totally beating it over our heads, and that will make her motivation much more believable once things start going down.

Of course all the big holes we pointed out last week are still there, but I’m not going to rehash them all. The only one I’ll mention again is the fact that the clones are allowed to go out on their own and no one seems to care if they meet with Mikoto. I would just leave it be, but they specifically brought that up this episode and still offered no explanation. I mean you’re making thousands of clones of a super powerful esper without her knowledge, don’t you think she would cause some problems if she found out? Maybe now that Mikoto is face to face with one of them they’ll try and explain, but I would like an answer on that.

Overall this was a much better setup episode than the last, even if it was a bit redundant. We’ve already burned through 4 episodes on setup though, and I’m ready to move on. Next week’s preview looks promising as we’ll get to see Mikoto’s reaction to the clones and it looks like we’ll even be getting an Accelerator appearance, so hopefully we’ll be into the meat of the plot by then.

Zigg’s Thoughts: It’s nice to see a small slice-of-life episode interrupt the main plot here, and it’s a good reminder that Railgun has more than one string to its bow. I very much enjoyed the slower, more languid moments of this episode, and Mikoto being in a good mood also meant a blessed relief from the usual slap-slap-kiss-kiss comedy routine with Kuroko, for the most part at least. The shopping trip was a little trite but cute nonetheless, and Haruee and Uiharu’s adorable glee over their new rice cooker was extremely charming. Mikoto’s scenes with the kids are very much the best part of this episode though, being funny in a gently grin-inducing way, cute and a good reminder that our resident tsundere has her softer moments too. There’s a decent little bit of foreshadowing too as she explains why electromasters can’t simply ‘talk’ to each other directly, something which will of course shortly be proved untrue with the Sisters.

Speaking of the sisters, we do get a much better insight into the process this episode, although it’s still not exactly fantastic storytelling. As Jel mentions, the old good scientist/bad scientist pairing is older than the hills, and if younger good scientist doesn’t become an ally of our heroes by the end I’ll eat my hat. Nevertheless, there’s some decent little tidbits of story here, especially the dialogue on how the clones don’t have too many emotions because that would make the prospect of rebellion more likely. I do feel the show has someone shot itself in the foot with its pacing here though – why have Misaka only meet a clone now when we already know so much about them? I feel that it would have been far more dramatic if we’d come face-to-face with a clone much earlier on and then had to unravel their backstory. It also would have spared us Mikoto’s continually absurd reaction to the revelation that somebody authorised a top-secret cloning project using her DNA – her deflection this episode is clever and cute but still only serves to expose the absurdity of her inaction. I guess they’re simply assuming every single person watching has seen Index which is…stupid. As it is, the episode finale is less ‘wow, awesome!’ and more ‘God, finally!’.

Still, there are encouraging signs we’re finally getting into it. The post ending stinger was an absolute spine-tingler, finally hinting at the even darker agenda that makes this plot arc so interesting, and with Accelerator confirmed for an appearance in the next episode the actual plot should step up and hopefully wash away some of the irritating niggles that have been problems up until this point. I’m still onboard then, but I can’t say I’m really excited yet.