THIS REVIEW CONTAINS MASSIVE SPOILERS, DON'T READ IT IF YOU HAVEN'T WATCHED IT YET!
Toaru Kagaku no Railgun Season 2 is amazing!
The story of Railgun S is based around artificial humans/clones and it starts off with Misaka Mikoto seeing dreams about her childhood. When she was a child, she was told that if she gave away her DNA for research, the boy's illness (Muscular Dystrophy) would eventually be cured, which it didn't. However, it instead lead to the beginning of the Sisters Cloning Project, which ended up being used for combat experiments to help create the first Level 6 Esper. I was quite intrigued by the Sisters Cloning concept and thought it was interesting!
At first, Misaka Mikoto refused to believe it since she thought such a thing would be impossible. Eventually, she runs into her own clone in Episode 4 and gradually finds out about the Sisters Cloning Project. About 5-6 episodes in; After Misaka Mikoto witnesses her own clone being eliminated, she was traumatized and full of anger. That's where she meets The Accelerator, the one she cannot defeat and one who wants to become a Level 6 esper through the experiment out of pure greed and power. The end of Episode 5 gave me the absolute shivers. I really liked that episode specifically!
Once she found the right time to escape, she needed to come up with a plan without dragging her friends into it. Her first plan was to destroy all the servers that held research data and although she pulled it off, that resulted in no progress due to external backups. Eventually, she ended up blaming herself for giving away her DNA and intended to sacrifice herself to stop the experiments, but Kamijou Touma found out about the clones and the research papers, which prompted him to find Mikoto as soon as possible to stop her from attempting to sacrifice herself by approaching Accelerator again. He then went off to defeat the Accelerator by himself, which prevented the death of many of the Mikoto clones.
That wraps up about half of the season, and I love the overall plot and storytelling much more than the first season's story. Kamijou Touma was so badass when he fought against Accelerator!
To keep the final half of the story short, Mikoto and her friends run into Febrie, who is later discovered as an artificial human referred to as a Chemicaloid and she doesn't have a lot of time. Misaka decided to finally ask help from Shirai Kuroko, Kazari Uiharu and Ruiko Saten to figure out the culprit and later take on the STUDY corporation that created Febrie and her sister Janie. The ending was both impactful and wholesome and I appreciate Misaka Mikoto's character development where she learns to rely on her friends instead of doing everything by herself.
The scenes that impacted me the most were Kamijou Touma vs Accelerator fight scene, the low and traumatizing moments of Misaka Mikoto and Febrie's adorable moments!
The soundtracks are mostly very good! I think the opening and ending themes felt a bit weak compared to the first season though, but that's just my opinion.
Pacing is so much better handled! It kept me more engaged and invested in the story and it just flowed a lot smoother in comparison to the first season. I don't think I felt any boredom when watching.
Conclusion: Toaru Kagaku no Railgun S is in some ways similar to Season 1, but with way better storytelling and pacing! I really enjoyed it and I personally think Season 2 deserves a 9/10 rating!
