A Certain Scientific Accelerator

Episode 10

I have generally found A Certain Scientific Accelerator to be a well-constructed series in terms of how it is paced and edited, especially compared to the mess that was A Certain Magical Index III. However, this episode's gimmick doesn't sit well with me, introducing a character in a flashback right before revealing that the character in question is at the heart of the series' biggest plot twist. Even by shonen action standards for flashbacks, that's pretty egregious.

The gimmick in question is the big reveal about whose soul is actually in Hirumi's body. For a while now, the series has been indicating that the evil spirit Taowu has been occupying the former corpse, but this week we learn that it's not just Taowu occupying the body; that soul at some point in the past merged with that of Esther's despicable ancestor, Isaac Rosenthal. Since his goal was to create a perfect golem, Hishigata's project must have been a dream come true for him. Using the 10,031 deaths of the Sisters to make an end run around elevating to the highest level of the Kabbalah seems like wonky metaphysics to me, but whatever. The franchise has shown many times that it will freely use creative interpretations of established mysticism as part of its magical schemes, and this is no different. Besides, it serves the practical purpose of providing a boss villain for the story arc, who even Accelerator might have some trouble dealing with, at least until Esther works up the will to use that enspelled dagger again. (It's focused on much too specifically for it to not still have an important role to play.)

The whole scenario, and the action leading up to it, also raises a couple of questions about practical issues. The length of time that Accelerator's actively using his powers is an issue. I thought it was established previously that the device allowing him to using his powers only works for a few minutes at a time, but between the last episode and this one, he seems to have been using his powers for much longer than that. Also, Hirumi's torso still wearing a bra even after transiting through her body was an eyebrow-raiser. Why bother with it if Taowu/Isaac has discarded any remaining aspect of Hirumi? It just reinforces my impression that someone in the creative team has a lingerie fetish.

One thing that the flashbacks do accomplish is to establish more firmly that Esther has good reasons for wanting to give up on necromancy once this whole affair is done. That's probably for the best, since nothing good can come from necromancy in settings where true resurrection isn't possible. That also provides at least some character drama for a story that now looks like it's going to boil down to “Accelerator gets to bash a big tentacled monster.”

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A Certain Scientific Accelerator is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.