LogFAQs > #967622069

Railgun is definitely better than Index on average... Index is a bit all over the place in terms of highs and lows, with some arcs outright being mediocre/bad but others having crazier stuff or go more into meta/deconstruction territory like the whole world rejector thing (though that ends up being a bit polarizing because of that).

The Railgun anime suffers a bit from the staff not really seeming to get it... The first season was pretty bleh as a whole because like half or more of it was filler, and the second season did a pretty good job with the Sisters arc (which is one of the best parts of the entire franchise) but then the Silent Party filler arc was eh. Some of the cameos/references in season 3 were pretty odd... cutting a couple of Himegami's cameos but leaving in Kumokawa's even though I don't think she ever showed up in the anime (and then adding a brief Himegami cameo later anyway), cutting cameos/references to one character who hasn't shown up in the anime but leaving in one for another character who hasn't shown up in the anime (probably because the staff didn't realize that it referred to a specific character).

The main female Raildex characters I like are Mikoto, Saten, Kuroko, Junko, Frenda, Worst, Fran, and *NT spoiler character*. Kuroko definitely does have the problem where a lot of her appearances in some of the spinoffs tend to focus on her being a perv in a rather one note way and since the first Railgun anime had a lot of filler in it it probably leaned into it more than it should. (for the record, the main female characters I dislike are what's her name, Yuiitsu, and Salome... and really the problem with the former is that the author doesn't really know how to actually write her in the main series, she's fine in Railgun. ah. I probably shouldn't use that joke with people who wouldn't understand it >_>).

and Mikoto does have a lot of trouble jobbing in the main series. Like at one point she just jumps straight to railguning someone in the face, because she assumed that it wasn't going to work at all. Though that's more because the power levels on the magic side in Index are completely bonkers, than her being weak or a bad fighter.

Also I find it pretty hilarious that because Mikoto is "has a streaming site named after her" tier popular that she arguably becomes the "main" girl of the series while Index isn't relevant in the series named after her anymore since even the role of explaining magic powers and lore got taken away from her and was briefly reduced to having to eat condiment packets to survive at one point. She's almost as irrelevant as Himegami, who doesn't really show up in any major way again because her arc was considered infamously bad among the community and just shows up to get jokes about how ignored she is. The only thing she did to help in the last 20-30 volumes was literally just to translate some text on a computer screen (well, I'm a bit behind). The difference in reaction Touma has to Index and Mikoto in the Virtual On tie in is hilarious. The author doesn't even try to have love triangle shipping drama with Index and Mikoto, instead he propped up what's her name to have a super lopsided triangle with Mikoto and what's her name instead. (Which is also the bulk of the problem I have with what's her name in the main, since again she was perfectly fine in Railgun.) ....well, Index is the sort of series I'm not expecting any sort of romantic resolution in at the end anyway, but it's still pretty funny.