A Certain Scientific Railgun

Okay, so the largest and heaviest Japanese coin currently minted is the 500Yen, weighing in at 7g. In episode 1 it's established that Mikoto fires them at 1030m/s, now that's above Mach 3, but with such a light projectile. Based on the formula for kinetic energy KE=1/2mv^2, that's only 3713J of energy, about as much as a rifle round. Also, the 500Yen coin is made of nickle-brass WHICH ISN'T EVEN MAGNETIC!

Fine, fine, they're custom tooled iron coins, that takes us up to around 10-11g given roughly the size of a quarter, that's still only 5835J, which is less than a .338 Lapua Mag round. But it's shown to tear up streets and blast water out of a pool multiple stories, more akin to a tank round than anything.

Let's work on that, we'll take a WWII tank cannon as example, specifically the Flak88. There's like 50 versions of the Flak88, but generally speaking they fired 9.6kg projectiles at ~900m/s, that comes out to 3888000J of energy, that's 1047x the energy Mikoto supposedly puts out.

So, how fast do her custom tooled 10g iron quarters need to be moving to get close to the Flak88? 88000 m/s, Mach 256, or 0.0003% the speed of light. In case you're curious because energy conversions are easy, that would consume roughly 9,241,006 calories or 16,414 Big Macs.

So this magical girl show is completely unrealistic and unwatchable.

All that said, I can't believe I've slept on this series for so long, it's so damn funny. I love "Negation Guy", I'm sure he gets a name later, but not yet. The serious bits are good as well, good character building, relatable motivations, having a blast watching it.

EDIT: This is indeed a shitpost, but listen to science guy in the comments, some super cool knowledge on magnetism being dropped.

Currently 9am where I live and I've just spent the entire night binging the 2nd season of Toaru Kagaku no Railgun, and I think I should probably write this while I'm still feeling what I am feeling.

I have watched my fair share of anime and I can't help but say this show is simply legendary. Is it perfect? No, but its as close to perfection as it can get. Its straight up there with the best of the best I have seen.

I generally hate on J.C. Staff of how they are and keep ruining one anime series after another but even I have to say this anime was so amazing.

The animation even though from 2009(Season 1) and 2013(Season 2) definitely beats 99.9% anime made today. The digital effects made me feel as if Ufotable people were working on those beautiful light effects and backgrounds(I will have to check later who the staff is who worked on this show, but I bet I'm gonna see some big names of the industry on here).

The story is full of slice of life fun and wholesomeness as well as really dark and fucked up arcs at times all of which includes really emotional and well done characters development for Misaka and her three friends. Some of the fights are so damn gripping and well done they're a blast to watch.

No matter what genre of anime you prefer to watch kindly please watch this show. Its simply amazing.

Edit : People who are confused about the watch order of the series kindly check this . My bad, I should have included it in the first place since I am recommending this series.

I have completed season 1 and season 2 of magical index and all three seasons of railgun and in my opinion, railgun has alot more interesting story arcs compared to magical index. Level upper arc, sisters arc, daihasai festival arc are good arcs. However, I can't say same about magical index story arcs. The way I see it is that magical index is filled with lots of mini arcs which are too mundane compared to railgun arcs. Like most magical index arcs are just about typical and repitititive concepts like its either about kidnapping some nun, or rescuing someone or some sorcerer attacking people for some reason and they always talk some fantasy stuff with fantasy terms without much context. I don't know if its just me but I think the world building of fantasy side of toaru is poorer compared to esper side of toaru. Like esper power system side of toaru verse is explained in detail before hand but same cannot be said about sorcerer side. They just told sorcerers exist but didn't told much about power heirarchy and stakes of sorcerer side.