“The fourth-strongest Level 5 in Academy City…the Meltdowner.”
Impression
These battles just keep getting better and better! There’s hardly any resemblance to the original season’s slice of life focus, coupled with a few action scenes once in a while. The biggest surprise was that Shizuri Mugino is in fact a Level 5 – the fourth-strongest in Academy City, right behind the Railgun herself. Last episode I’d commented that she might be a strong Level 4, but I quickly realized she was even better than that once she managed to deflect Misaka’s electricity. While Misaka’s power seems to be very versatile, Mugino’s “Meltdowner” ability seems to be all about destruction – that tin can near the start of the episode was blown away entirely. And at the cost of versatility, there’s sheer power in the form of her green laser beams, which (as her name suggests) can probably melt down the entire facility. If Misaka used her Railgun, I wonder who’d win? That’s definitely something I want to see before Misaka beats the crap out of her. Anyway, Mugino’s well suited as the leader of ITEM. I can easily see why she’s unchallenged despite being the head of a rowdy mercenary group.
What seemingly makes her even more destructive (and effective at her job) is the ability of her partner Takitsubo, the girl with the big boobs who ate a few pills and looked like she’d started having a fit. She memorizes people’s AIM dispersion fields, and can track them effortlessly…I didn’t even know that was possible xD People can DO those sorts of things? Oh wait, she’s an Academy City esper, of course she can. It seems like Takitsubo can’t use her ability unless she puts stress on her body, which is horribly inconvenient – I bet it wasn’t a lot of fun for her to train up to Level 4. Mugino seemed…worryingly neutral towards seeing Takitsubo like that. She’s like Frenda in that sense – effective, but cold and impersonal at times. I’m very much looking forward to the next episode though 😀 Mugino’s figured it out, and she’s actually interested in a one-on-one with Misaka!
I really wanted Shinobu to succeed ;_; Her idea to install human emotion data into the Sisters was a good one, despite being fundamentally flawed. It’s true that some researchers might feel sympathetic – but I’m pretty sure that the current Accelerator wouldn’t really care. He was perfectly willing to take on Misaka after all. And even after they’re freed, it’d definitely be hard for them to live normal lives. Putting aside the fact that they’re literally clones, with short lives and no emotions I can imagine what kind of lewd purposes they’d be exploited for. Whether that’s preferable to death is debatable, but either way the program never installed successfully. While the hoodie girl (or boy?) stopped Shinobu, I don’t think she (or he?) knew what was really going on, and again operates on the same basis as Frenda does. By the way, was that a glimpse of Last Order we saw in that water tank?
