1

Spoiler tags, please!!!

If you're having formatting problems, either it means you're using a weird browser, or it means one of the critical java script files didn't load, or it means you're using a filter of some kind that is partially or wholly disabling javascript.

2

RenpyTom posted this without spoiler tags:

When Mikoto used her power while riding on top of Kiyama's car, why didn't it toast the electronic ignition? And Uiharu's computer, and everyone's cell phones, and...

It strikes me that someone, somewhere must be investing a lot of money in the whole Academy City project. Perhaps whoever's doing that feels obligated to make people whole after esper-related damage... and as part of that, they've decided it would be more cost-effective to supply people with robust electronics. It makes you wonder how they plan to profit from the powers. ... or maybe I'm just rationalizing.

(Also, for some reason my comment seems to be having its paragraphs eaten.)

3 Sorry about that, I had incorrectly assumed that the comments were below the fold. (They're not.)

Is the bbcode supposed to let me break things into paragraphs with blank lines, or is an explicit p tag required?

4

You should be able to hit Enter and get a paragraph break that way. Comment entry is supposed to be WYSIWYG.

You can operate at the level of HTML. The far right control on the comment entry header, looks like this "<>", opens a window where you can see and directly manipulate the HTML that the WYSIWYG code creates. But you shouldn't have to do that.

5 I'll check that out.

And my mind was going renpytom, renpytom, where do I know that name from?

I could have just clicked on the link, but that would be cheating, or something....

6 It is a stretch but:
Could the coin, car and Mikoto all be traveling in the same altered space and moving at the same relative speed? Coin flipping would be no problem then. Also, if altered reality/space is like the Tardis then the car and Mikoto could move some distance dissipating momentum without being seen to move from the outside

7

Actually, in the whole sequence, her hair and clothes don't seem to be moving the way they should in that kind of headwind. It's like she's created a bubble around her where the air is still.

But she shouldn't have that ability. The air isn't magnetic!

8

I just had another flash. When the first episode came out, one complaint (I think I heard it from Ubu) was that he didn't believe that Mikotto's railgun shot could make a car go flying that way. After all, it was only 1200 meters per second (or something like that).

Now, in the last episode, Telestina claims that her weapon is designed to be the same as Mikoto's railgun, but much stronger. Yet Mikoto is able to win against it. How?

I think the answer is that Mikoto has been holding back when doing the rating test at the school. She's capable of firing her shots a lot faster than she does at the swimming pool, so the official records about her power are way low. She used a lot more power than that against that car, and she probably came close to maxing out against Telestina, but it was enough to win.

9 That explanation works for me, but now I've got another "Whaaaaaaaat?" moment to deal with...  In the running battle on the freeway, Telestina drops back to avoid the railgun shot, and then cackles (groan) that she knows that Mikoto's range is only 50 meters.  Say what? If she's firing a physical object (the coin) it's not going to stop at that point -- in fact, the last railgun shot prior to the beam-o-war appears to span several city blocks!   Given the accuracy of her fire (as given in the first episode) she's not about to miss just because Telestina is now at 55m instead of 50.  Or is it not a matter of "miss," but "hit with enough force to penetrate?"

I think I postulated during the last discussion on this, that to obtain that accuracy with such a non-aerodynamic object as a spinning coin, she has to extend the field to guide it - and, I now believe, she is also "pushing" the coin for the entire length of the field.  I don't remember who postulated that she was also converting the coin to plasma, but that seems likely, given the light show.

Her range is 50m because that's as far as she can effectively push the plasma hard enough to penetrate something.  Up to that point, it's really the fact that she's ramming it through her target (think guided rocket, not ballistic bullet). Beyond 50m, it's just a lot of very hot plasma, traveling on momentum alone.  As such, it would still be a hazard, to unprotected flesh, but as I've noted before, the shot is much slower than a bullet, and subsonic.

Which implies that Touma is immune to the railgun shot after all; her guidance & thrust field would crash the moment it touched him, leaving the coin as nothing but hot gas few meters in front of Mikoto at best.

10 And now I'm having even more refrigerator moments. It's going to have to wait until tonight and is too long for comments here. 

11

Actually, it was me that proposed the idea that Mikoto vaporizes a coin to produce a stream of plasma as a conductor for her electrical energy. The claimed 50-meter range limit would be a combination of how much plasma she could produce from a coin, and how well she could control it.

I don't find such a limit to be implausible, if that's what she's really doing.

12 Of course, using plasma that way isn't the only attack mode she's got, and she genuinely has the ability to fire metallic objects as projectiles, as she proved on the freeway with that thing Kuroko fed her as ammunition.

13

On a different matter, I just watched the last episode again and noticed something in this frame:

This is just after Kuroko put a spike in the right manipulator of Telestina's powered suit, in order to make her drop the capsule. Kuroko is grinning because she succeeded. What I noticed is that she's got one spike remaining in her left hand.

I think she was keeping it as her last reserve. As long as Mikoto was up and fighting, Kuroko was content to let Onee-sama win the war. But if Mikoto had gone down, I think Kuroko was ready to kill Telestina with that last spike. That's in character.

It is not in character for her to run herself completely out of ammunition in a serious battle like this, and clearly she has not. I wouldn't be surprised if she has a few spikes left strapped to her thighs.

But it's completely in character for her to support Mikoto instead of winning it herself, even if she is capable of winning it herself.

Which brings up the second point: I think the writers are trying to imply that Telestina has gone totally wacko (duh), but also (and not duh) that she's become monomaniacally obsessed with Mikoto and with defeating Mikoto. That's why she's studied Mikoto's documented powers and levels and why her mech (and her powered suit) is designed to defeat Mikoto and why she seems to be hunting Mikoto all through this episode.

And the fact that Mikoto has been holding back in her school evaluations, and thus that her documented power levels are low, is why Mikoto is able to win. Telestina didn't overdesign enough. Mikoto is much stronger than Telestina realized.

So now we have at least a partial explanation for the beam-o-war: Telstina wanted to defeat Mikoto when Mikoto was using her top level attack, and to do so using an artificial version of that same attack. Mikoto was fighting, and it was a situation where only her top level attack could win, so that's what she used. And since Mikoto was up and fighting, Kuroko didn't interfere. She wanted to let Mikoto win it, and had faith that she would.

Which in turn means Kuroko is aware that Mikoto has been holding back in her school evaluations. She's seen Mikoto in action many times, so it's not too surprising she would be cognizant.