Mikoto tries to take down Kiyama.That's a rather curious way of advancing towards a suspect. Shouldn't you guys wait until she's lying down on the ground?Summary:On the highway in Kiyama's sports car, Kiyama tells Kazari that she just needed 10,000 people's brains to do a calculation and will release everyone after she's done. Kiyama then hands Kazari an iPod knockoff and a data chip that contains the software to shut down the Level Upper and wake up all the victims. Suddenly Kiyama slams on the brakes as the road is blocked by the Anti-Skills led by Aiho Yomikawa (aka the hot teacher from Touma's school who can't hold a gun properly). Yomikawa orders Kiyama to surrender, but Kiyama instead starts tossing the Anti-Skills around using all the abilities she had stolen through the Level Upper.Lightning doesn't work!Mikoto down for the count...Mikoto arrives at the scene and finds the Anti-Skills wiped out and Kazari unconscious in Kiyama's car. Kiyama appears from behind the smoke and starts fighting with Mikoto. The fight moves from on top of the bridge to below the bridge when Kiyama blows up a big chunk bridge. Kiyama takes a timeout to repeat what she said to Kazari to Mikoto, but Mikoto isn't ready to forgive Kiyama or give up on the fight. Kiyama calls a cloud of pop cans to use as Graviton bombs to blow up Mikoto. Mikoto fries most of the cans, but Kiyama teleports a can behind Mikoto and it appears that Mikoto is caught by the explosion. Kiyama thinks she has defeated Mikoto and begins to walk away, but suddenly she is bear-hugged by Mikoto. It turns out Mikoto used her electromagnetic powers to make a shield at the last moment, and Mikoto shocks Kiyama before Kiyama can free herself. As Kiyama is shocked unconscious, Mikoto suddenly starts seeing a part of Kiyama's memories:The most electrifying experience you'll ever have.Kiyama looks so different with short hair and without the eye bags. Sometime ago, Kiyama was tasked by the head scientist at her institute to act as a homeroom teacher for a group of young orphans as part of a research project. Kiyama didn't like kids at first, but she eventually grew attached to them. The big day came and the kids took part in an experiment involving AIM fields. During the experiment something apparently went wrong and all of kids ended up in a coma. One of the scientists wanted to call the hospital, but the head scientist tells everyone to collect the data and keep everything secret. The head scientist also told Kiyama to forget about the kids.The real boss appears.Back in the present time, Mikoto lets go of Kiyama and Kiyama gets back to her feet. Kiyama continues to explain that she found out that the experiment was designed to go wrong from the very start. Kiyama wanted to use Tree Diagram to find out what went wrong with the experiment, but her request was denied every time. The institute was in cahoots with city administration and so there's no point alerting the Anti-Skills. Kiyama declares that she will do anything to save those kids even if it means going against the entire city. Suddenly, Kiyama gets a bad headache and falls to the ground unconscious, and a giant, alien-looking baby emerges from the back her head and lets out an unearthly scream.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Pretty decent episode to start off the main action sequence of this story arc. After peeking at the manga, this was pretty much what I expected. The action and special effect are of the high level that we've come to expect from Index/Railgun. We've already seen most of the moves that Mikoto used in this episode, but Kiyama had a nice strategy by teleporting the pop can bombs. This episode was just a preview of the actual main event between Mikoto and the alien baby made from imaginary numbers (or whatever fancy explanation they give it), so the next episode should be even more exciting in theory. Let's see if J.C. Staff can pull it off.Other than the action (which actually wasn't all that long), this episode also spent a considerable amount of time on telling Kiyama's back story. I thought the flashback was a tad long, but at least the flashback was somewhat interesting. So it turns out Kiyama was another case of "noble cause gone wrong" which seems to be pretty typical in the Index/Railgun universe. In Kiyama's case, her actions was prompted by a conflict between ethics/morals and the cutting edge of science, and in Academy City science tends to win out. Kiyama really didn't have many options available given that Academy City can do whatever it wants, so I'm somewhat sympathetic to her cause. I also think Kiyama's methods are pretty cool too even if they are bit self-serving and reckless.Last note: the Anti-Skills proved themselves to be pretty darn useless once again. From what we've seen in Index and Railgun, the Anti-Skills aren't really equipped to deal with ability users, so do they have to fall back on Judgment to deal with ability users or what? I guess Anti-Skill refers to their own lack of skill lol.
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