A Certain Railgun in Canterlot
By maxxxxxx

Reviewed by Asilin

Oh, hay, another review. Still not something I’m particularly familiar with, but that won’t stop me! Let the fun begin. :)

So. This particular story crosses over with the anime A Certain Scientific Railgun, which, in turn, is based off another anime/manga A Certain Magical Index. Want to check it out? First episode is available on YouTube. I will say I watched the first episode once I found it, but that and my research are my only familiarity with the source.

Not interested in watching a half hour show for a brief review? Major points to remember then! In this world, Espers are those with magical powers that they gain by going to a special school. Mikoto Misaka is the star of a side-series that tells the main story from a different POV. Misaka is a highly powerful Esper who is able to control electricity in various ways with a signature move of causing metal bits to fly as if firing a railgun.

Hence the title.

As to the fic itself, the basic premise is Misaka finds herself in Canterlot, meets a pony named Fancy Pants, spends the day with him, resolves some minor trouble, and goes home. If you know and like the anime, you’d probably enjoy this, and if you enjoy slice of life stories, you’d probably enjoy as well.

Since there’s only four chapters, I’ll just go through all of them.

Chapter One begins with our protagonist, Mikoto Misaka, standing on top of a skyscraper in her hometown of Academy City. The author tells us that she would often come to “this rooftop of a skyscraper” for the view. As a bit of a grammatical point, since it is a specific rooftop, you’d really want to phrase this line as “the rooftop of this skyscraper” since this labels the place as a specific point, rather than a generic. Further, since this is some place she comes often, wouldn’t she know the name of the building? Even a detail that small (even if you have to make it up), can help connect us to your setting.

The intro continues with a brief timeline summary of where we are in relation to the anime; again, a bit of detail describing these events would’ve been delightful. In this case, you’d be able to establish her emotional reaction to such events. We’re also given a bit of a blurb of information about Academy City that reminds me of the tour guide’s description from the first episode. This bit feels a bit out of place and out of character. If we’re following Misaka’s POV, why would she care about this information? How does it relate to her?

But it seems our protagonist is on the rooftop because she’s suffering from an “uncharacteristic bout of melancholy”. And that’s really all the explanation we get before she suddenly finds herself in Equestria, in the literal blink of an eye. We’re told she sees an “open landscape of trees and valleys” but that’s about it on how varied the scene is from her normal setting. This is another point where more detail would be a great addition. To give more impact, we need to know the look of Academy City against that of rural Equestria. Then her shock becomes a bit more connected to what our own would be.

She then finds herself in the middle of a town while freaking out over becoming a pony. A white Earth Pony, to be exact. I’m still not entirely sure how she went from being at a vantage point that allowed her to see trees and valleys to being in the middle of town. Did she get teleported twice? Did she fall down, literally? I mean, she was on a skyscraper. Did she get transported into mid-air in Equestria?
She meets Fancy Pants, who thinks she’s at the very least distressed or possibly crazy. In either case, he decides to hang out with her and show her around town. He also happens to mention that there are vandals about, causing a bit of a stir.

I’d also like to mention that I did try to find out if the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle is the reason that the show gives for how her powers work. If it is, feel free to ignore this. If it isn’t, then if you really want to give some form of explanation, come up with your own name for it (the Maxx Principle of Mentality maybe?). I found it hard to wrap my head around how a principle that discusses the location and velocity of subatomic particles has anything to do with mental abilities.

I will say the best line of the story, for me, is in this chapter: “No, Misaka's power made her immune to neural interference.” That’s just a great in-character descriptor.

Chapter Two has Fancy Pants showing Misaka around town. They occasionally stop to greet some unnamed upper class ponies, leading Misaka to compare this city with the one she came from. She and Fancy Pants discuss where she came from, which only ends with Fancy Pants calling it preposterous and the point mostly being dropped. Although, he does mention that he doesn’t think she’s quite crazy since magic is, of course, real in this world, so fantastic things aren’t off the table, so to speak.

Anyway, Fancy Pants leads her to his favorite place: the Canterlot public gardens. However, they find that the statue on the fountain has been defaced, much to Fancy Pants’ horror.

At this point, Misaka asks if they make bits out of steel. Couple of things with this, although it crosses over with the beginning of Chapter Three. First thing, how would she know what a bit is? His statement literally is “When ever I come here I always throw a bit...” Given that she probably uses the yen, or just money, how would she know that a bit is a coin and he wasn’t leading into saying “a bit of change”? Further, does anybody make coins out of steel? Honestly, even if you ignore the whole “how does she know what this is” part, she really should ask “Can you make a bit out of steel?” Of course, if her setting legitimately makes coins out of steel (and not just for her specific use!), then, by all means, ignore this part.

Chapter Three has Misaka and Fancy Pants confronted by the Royal Guards over the statue; Misaka is viewed as a suspicious person for some reason. It’s not explained why, and beyond having a few other ponies react similarly, it doesn’t really play a role in the story. If it’s not a plot point, why even bring it up?

At this point we segue into Fancy Pants and Misaka going to dinner. Misaka continues to struggle with the fact that she’s a pony, shown by the fact that she can’t open a menu. Of all the instances presented where she struggles with her new found body, this is the one I had the most trouble accepting. While I wouldn’t want to, I certainly could open a menu with my teeth as a human. I can’t see why this would be any different as a pony. If she has some sort of hang up about using her mouth like this, I would highlight it; otherwise, it might be best to just let her be able to do something right in her new body.

We also get the two playing a prank on two other ponies, Jet Set and Upper Crust. I will admit I found the prank somewhat amusing in general—convincing others that you’re something you’re not can generally be fun—at the same time, it seemed to come up out of nowhere since it seemed based on this idea that Misaka is somehow a suspicious looking character. At least these two seemed to have the whole “she’s just a commoner” thing going on for them.

The chapter ends with Misaka finally encountering the vandal that keeps being mentioned.

Chapter Four is our action chapter. On the one hand, yay! We finally get to see her use her abilities. On the other, she shoots lightning. I could accept a pony that is able to control weather being able to redirect lightning or maybe even absorb it (like Avatar, perhaps?), but dodging it outright? Nothing’s that fast. I did like the overwhelming show of force though with the spider webbing thunderbolts.

However, the fight’s over way too fast, and we end up getting backstory as to why the vandal did what he did. It’s a rather standard reason (poor commoner can’t make it in the upper class so wants to even the playing field) that comes pretty much from nowhere, and the further truth behind his actions (he was promised he could get in the Royal Guards by Celestia’s nephew if he did all of this) is even more from left field. Nothing led up to this big reveal. It just sort of…happened. Further, while I know fans will know who you’re referencing, as a writer, you should name your villain. It gives them more weight. Leaving him as Celestia’s nephew instead of Blueblood makes him smaller than he should be if he’s the reason why there are issues right now.

The story comes to an end as Celestia admits that she has a spell that can send Misaka home at any time and does so. Misaka wakes up and/or shows up back on the rooftop from the beginning with Kuroko tackling her. We also get the first and only mention as to why Misaka was on the rooftop to begin with, but no real details there either. This really should have been mentioned at the beginning of the story.

As an aside, “Onee Sama” is an incorrect phrase. –Sama is an honorific, and, as such, in Japanese, is attached to the end of the title it modifies. So it would be properly typed “onee-sama”.

•Point of View:
The point of view stayed pretty consistently in the third person limited with a focus on Misaka. There were a few minor slips where we got more emotional detail than she would necessarily know (“The high society pony was now convinced that the young mare before him was either crazy or injured.”) and at the end we see a full conversation between Celestia and Fancy Pants that Misaka isn’t present for. Best thing to do to fix this is to ask if a response or conversation is something Misaka (or any POV character) would really be privy to. If yes, keep it; if no, you need to come up with another way to present the information. But overall, this was a rather minor issue that didn’t distract from the story.

•Overall Style
Overall the style was fairly sparse. There was just enough detail to give me a rough idea of where the characters were, but not enough for me to clearly see the setting. For instance, the restaurant they go to is described as “rustic but high class”. What does this mean? Is it Gaston’s hunting lodge? A large ranch style? Be specific and detailed.

On the other hand, while the setting itself was lacking in detail, the characters were well described, physically. I could describe each pony to you fairly well. Overall characterization was okay; I can give you a few major traits of the main characters with confidence. However, try to avoid shortcuts like “signature temper” or “unusual bout of melancholy”. Even though your readers should know what you’re talking about as this is fanfic, it is a good idea to get into the practice of describing characteristics, even if they’re well known, so that way less known characters can become just as believable in your writing.

•Flow
The flow of the story was okay for the most part. It was a smooth read and each event led into each other with relative ease, until the last chapter. It’s here that I find myself in a quandary. If one took out the references to the vandals in the previous chapters and just had chapter four focused on meeting Celestia and going home, this would be a nice little slice of life crossover. However, this was also tagged as adventure, which is why, I’m sure, the last chapter is written the way it is. However, beyond the vandal being mentioned, and his off screen actions being responded to in a few scenes prior, nothing is done with the vandal or why it’s happening. It’s almost like we’re given two different stories to read: a slice of life comedy and an action fight. There’s not a lot to connect the two, and the flow of the story suffers for it.

Granted, the first episode had about the same thing, but the point of the bank robbers at the end of that episode was to showcase Misaka’s powers which had been hinted at throughout the episode but not shown yet. In this story, you keep hinting at the vandals being a major issue, but there’s no build up and no real payoff.

The intended mood seemed to be a light action comedy. Misaka is placed into positions where she has to struggle to adapt to her abilities as well as come to terms with the new setting, and we’re given the fight at the end.

I would say this is technically the received mood as well, but, for me at least, the humor fell flat after a while (there’s only so many times seeing her correct herself between the use of hands vs. hooves or person vs. pony is going to be funny before it feels repetitive and overused), and there honestly wasn’t enough action. We had three chapters of essentially random discussion before we got a large fight that ended in a few paragraphs. And this from a gal who can blast lightning from her fingertips!

Basically, I would look at your balance of day-to-day humor to action and readjust a touch.

In terms of grammar, I have to give this fic a C-. While the grammar did not fully distract from the overall flow, there were several major errors that were made continuously.

The first was a tendency for terminal punctuation in dialogue to simply go missing. Just in the first chapter we have “I'm terrible sorry but the princess is very busy, some awful business going on here in Canterlot and our dear princess is trying to get to the bottom of it” and “Common thugs don't worry me”. Several other instances of this occur in the other chapters.

Second, there were occasions of capitalization being forgotten. Chapter Three has “She brought her eyes up to see fancy pants staring at her.” At other points, only pants is lower case.

Third, a few consistent spelling errors throughout. Lightning is what Misaka uses; lightening is when you make something brighter. Allot is to give a part of something to someone; a lot is when there’s a great number of something. And you don’t want to encounter an alot.

Fourth, there are constant misattributions in dialogue. What I mean by this is there are times when one character speaks and you immediately follow this with an action by the other character. For example: “Academy City? Japan? I'm afraid I've never heard of such places.” Misaka's heart sank as he spoke.” Here, Fancy Pants is speaking, but you immediately follow it with something Misaka is doing. That typically would indicate that the spoken line is from Misaka. In order to fix this, remember to start a new paragraph every time there’s a new speaker. So from our example, it should be:

“Academy City? Japan? I'm afraid I've never heard of such places.”

Misaka's heart sank as he spoke.

Paying attention to this would help clear up any potential dialogue confusion and prevent lines like this: “Will that do?” The glow from his horn dimming, Misaka grinned. where we have Fancy Pants talking, then performing an action that is then combined with an action Misaka is doing. By the way, to fix this line, I’d recommend:

“Will that do?” The glow from his horn dimmed.

Misaka grinned.

Finally, let’s discuss comma splices. A comma splice occurs whenever you join two independent clauses together using only a comma. It is a form of run-on sentence. While they do have their uses, it is best avoided for the most part. An example of this from the story: She came to a stop and lightening arced around her scorching the ground, onlookers hid in their homes and shops and the heat of the electricity distorted light going through the air. The part before the comma is one complete sentence, and the part after the comma is another complete sentence (technically, there’s a third, but you just need a comma before the “and” and that would be correct.) Instead of a comma, then, you should have a semi-colon, colon, or a “,conjunction” structure. (And yes. I had to link that.)

Alternatively you can also split the sentences with periods. I would recommend that in the case of the example sentence.

On the one hand, you have a solid knowledge of both source materials. I would play this up more by allowing both source material to really shine through, particularly in showcasing Misaka’s abilities. The best recommendation I have for that is to readdress your plot and bring out the adventure side more. Have her actually track the vandal. Maybe get chased by the guards as the suspected vandal, requiring her fight back. Actually do something besides tour the town.

For your comma splices, I’d recommend going back through and making sure each sentence is down to its most basic section (Subject-Verb-Direct Object/Indirect Object/Prepositional Phrase). Then once you have the most basic sentence structures isolated, you can go back and combine things properly.

Needs Work, but Enjoyable
I’m giving this rating mostly for the grammatical errors, although I would look at your story as to whether you want it to be an adventure story or slice of life. However, even with all that, I did rather enjoy this story, and fans of either show can easily find something in this that they can appreciate.

Man, you are so Rin's wife! Putting out reviews left and right!

Lol nice work.

I have hope that the Crossover folder is in good hooves. Er- I mean hands, since you're not exactly a brony

2981275

I had some free time and a cranky baby. It lends itself to reading :D

2981255
I love this standard of review. Now I'm stoked about the day I receive my own! Such detail. Wow.

2981378
Aww, thanks

2981255
The thing is that Railgun (source material) is really a Slice of Life anime; Index (that which Railgun is a spinoff of) is much more daily monster/action with world-spanning plots and adventure.

Railgun is more about day to day life, Academy city, and the characterization.

Another point of distinction is that Espers don't really use magic. It is science-based. They go into quantum theory. Espers also do not gain their powers in Academy City; hopefuls come to the city to be tested for latent powers, and those who have them are educated on their use and control.

In Index, there are actual magic-users. Non-espers who came up with various forms of powers to keep them on competitive terms with Espers. Many magic groups are religious organizations.

Anyway. Most of my interest was in supplementing the feedback on SoL vs Adventure. If it is based off of Railgun, I feel that focusing on the SoL elements more would be more true to it and to MLP. Both do contain adventure episodes, but that is not the main goal.

2981906
Okay, that does clarify things a bit. However my real issue with the SoL vs. Adventure was that the fic itself is tagged Comedy, Crossover, Adventure, and AU. That tells me the goal of the author was adventure, which, as I noted, wasn't particularly present in the fic. If, instead, the goal is to basically write a focus as if from the show, to write a SoL, then that should be noted instead.

Basically, as a SoL, the story already works well, but I would remove the foreshadowing/ build up of the vandal and just let it happen. If adventure is the final product the story wants to provide, then it needs a bit of tweaking. The protagonist of an adventure plot generally goes out and does something--look for the Holy Grail, go after the bad guy, track down a missing person--and has to deal with complicating actions that occur because of this goal. That's what I was looking for, based on what the author tagged. And the premise for it is there, but it needs further development to work well.

And...I had seen that about magic vs. science in the setting background, but obviously failed to write that up proper. Mea culpa.

2981255 thanks bunches for the review and the advice, this was my second ever fic so i'm glad it came out as good as it did. I know it can use quite a bit of improvement and your advice will certainly come in handy with the currently ongoing sequel to this story, "Daring, Dash and a Certain Railgun". Thank you for reading and thanks for such a comprehensive review

2981378 i bet the review for yours will be really good, i definitely enjoyed it

2982573
Oh, you finished it?
Edit: wait, wrong fic

2982163
I failed to expressly say it: I think you are correct that it is mistagged, just that the solution is to use the correct tag rather than rewrite it to match the current tag.

2984898
Ah, got ya. Agreed then, if that's the author's intent :)