“NO—!”
Impression
The first section of the episode was more light-hearted than I’d thought it’d be – Misaka’s initial shock at seeing an exact duplicate of her (bar the goggles) was casually shafted aside as MISAKA 9982 skilfully diverted her attention to a cat stuck in a tree xD Misaka seemed to easily accept the fact that the Sister in front of her was genuine and not some sort of elaborate trap – in fact, 9982 appearing only gave her answers to the endless rumours and gossip she’s been fretting about lately. I was surprised Misaka never ran into a Sister before now, as I’m assuming over 9000 experiments have been carried out (see what I did there) and if most of the Sisters had the sort of freedom expressed by 9982, it’d make sense if Misaka met one much earlier on. It took her a hilarious amount of time to realize that there was more than one clone xD She got on surprisingly well with 9982, falling easily into the role of a proper onee-sama – probably aided by the fact that her clone was a derpy idiot instead of an evil “black” Misaka, hell-bent on killing her and taking her place in society. Sharing ice-cream, helping out a stuck cat and even the Gekota badge present were very sisterly interactions indeed – but for those who already know, the kind of imminent fate waiting 9982 made it all the more painful.
“By using 20,000 Sisters in various combat scenarios, we may achieve a Level 6 Shift.”
9982 was fully aware that she was going to die a painful death – her goodbye to Misaka was a proper farewell. Despite not being aware of Accelerator’s abilities (don’t the Sisters communicate through the MISAKA Network?) she knew that making her way to the experiment location meant getting killed by Accelerator, and therefore fulfilling her duty as a MISAKA Sister. But hey, we saw Accelerator this episode! It’s been a while 😀 I’d completely forgotten how…insane he used to be before Touma knocked some sense into him (literally), and before he started hanging around Last Order. I’m almost surprised how interactive he was in an experiment that may not end up shifting him to Level 6 – Tree Diagram’s hypothesis that he’d level up from killing 20,000 Sisters seemed more like speculation than anything.
It was pretty damn brutal, wasn’t it. Accelerator ripped her entire leg out and dropped a bus on her while laughing – at least most of the other corpses back in the lab still had their body intact (I think). I’m sure the disposal team will have their hands full with that one. And that wasn’t even the clincher. For all the short screen time she had, 9982 grew on me – and so it was heart-wrenching to see her clutch the Gekota badge and stare at the only gift she received from Misaka before dying. The innocent symbolism of the Gekota badge contrasted against the dying 9982 was distressingly poignant ;_; I don’t blame Misaka at all for flying into a massive rage and attacking Accelerator – while I’m looking forward to a battle between fellow Level 5’s, can the Railgun hold her own in battle against him?
