Despite how much I like anime, I’ve never been a big fan of incredible events with no viable scientific explanation. This includes things like flying through the air with no apparent form of propulsion, creating vast quantities of energy from nothing, and penetrating the armour of a vehicle using a weaker material by using shear willpower. This is one of the reasons why Martian Successor Nadesico was and still is one of my favourite anime: it used the latest theories of quantum mechanics and newest technological advancements of the 90s to explain how things like instant transport and the terraforming of Mars was possible. When there was no way to explain something (like the generation of particles to perform a gravity blast), the topic was simply avoided rather than trying to make up something fake and untrue.

With that said, one of the things that have been bothering me this season are the esper powers in To Aru Kagaku no Railgun (A Certain Scientific Railgun), and the general use of the term “esper” in anime. The word “esper” was derived from the acronym ESP, which stands for “extra-sensory perception.” As the name implies, someone with ESP has an extra (or 6th) sense that the rest of us don’t have, and are generally known as psychics. An esper, in this sense, does not refer to someone that can shoot lightning bolts out of their body since that’s not a sense but an an ability. To be fair though, words often change meaning when they’re introduced through a different culture or language, so the definition of an esper in Japan might be different from the rest of the world.

Now to get to the main point of my post: how do esper powers in To Aru Kagaku no Railgun work? The explanation that they gave in the anime was that espers have an AIM (An Involuntary Movement) Dispersion Field around them that allows them to use their powers. This is obviously a made-up term which doesn’t help us understand how esper powers work, so I’ve thought about how some of the esper abilities (mainly Mikoto and Kuroko’s) would be possible and explained them below:

Mikoto Misaka:

Before I try to explain how Mikoto’s powers might work, lets list all of the things that we know she can do. First off, she can deliver an electric shock to someone by touching them; secondly, she is able to shoot lightning bolts from her body; third, she can control iron sand as she wishes; and fourth, she can fire a coin like a railgun. As stated in the anime, Mikoto is also called Academy City’s “electromaster,” indicating that she is able to do all these things through electromagnetism.

The way I see it, Mikoto’s body would have to be made out of a different type of material so that she can supply electrons to run a current through herself. One type of material would be metals, but since Mikoto isn’t a robot (or at least I don’t think so), she probably has some kind of ceramic in her body where she somehow induces the electrons to move from the valence band to the conduction band. This way, she would be able to run a current through her body without too much resistance. To be able to shoot bolts of lightning from her body, Mikoto would have to be able to create a charge difference between her and her surroundings. I figure to do this, she would need to have two materials in her body rub against each other like when you rub a balloon against your hair. The next part of Mikoto’s powers, which I can’t explain, is how she as able to control the direction of her lightning bolts. When an object is discharging electrons, it’s not like the electrons will just follow someone’s orders and go in a certain direction. Instead, the electrons will always take the shortest path to neutralize the object. This is why lightning tends to strike tall towers, the electrons in the clouds only have to move the distance between the cloud and the tower rather than the cloud and the ground.

The inability to control the movement of electrons also pokes a hole into Mikoto’s other abilities: moving iron sand and firing a coin like a railgun. Moving iron sand the way Mikoto does in the anime would be possible if you could make a complicated magnetic field, but since there’s no way for Mikoto to control electrons, then there’s no way for her to use them to make several magnetic fields to control the movement of iron sand. Mikoto’s patented “railgun” move would technically be possible if her body was made out of different materials, but not in the way that they’ve shown in the anime. In simple terms, a railgun works by accelerating a ferromagnetic object through a tube by generating a magnetic field in front of it. If Mikoto’s body were vastly different from a normal human, it would be possible for her to extend her arm out, place a coin on her shoulder and shoot it wherever she’s pointing her arm because then she would be able to generated a magnetic field in front of the coin, pulling it along her arm. It would not be possible to flip a coin out and fire it once it falls back to her hand.

Kuroko Shirai:

Kuroko is my favourite character in the anime because of her hilarious Mikoto-rape moments, crazy ideas, and cute character design. Unlike Mikoto, her powers only allow her to perform one action, and that is teleportation. I’m sure all of you have been exposed to the idea since it’s so widely used in science fiction. The two most popular ways in how teleportation is explained to work is through data transfer and bending space. Kuroko obviously doesn’t use any type of device to teleport, so recording her body on a computer, then destroying it and rebuilding it someplace else obviously isn’t how she teleports, so that leaves bending space.

If you imagine that the universe is 2-dimensional like a piece of paper rather than 3-dimensional, then if you fold that piece of paper, it’s possible for something on one end of the paper to move to the other end without crossing the middle. This analogy is commonly used to explain how you can teleport someone or something from one place to another. The problem with this method is that it would require insanely huge amounts of energy to bend the universe, so how does Kuroko do it?

The only way that I could think of that would allow Kuroko to teleport from one place to another is if 4-dimensional beings existed. If they do exist, it could be possible that one of them has taken a liking to Kuroko and is bending space for her. Lets imagine for a moment that 2-dimensional beings in the shape of squares lived on a piece of paper in your hand. You would be able to see inside a square since you’re looking at it above, but the squares on the piece of paper would not be able to see inside each other since they can’t move into the 3rd dimension (above) the piece of paper. It would then be possible for you to see a set of instructions within a square explaining where it wants to go and all you would have to do is fold the piece of paper to line up the square with its destination so it can just move over. Kuroko might be like that square, where a 4-dimensional being is able to read her thoughts by watching the electrical signals in her brain. This could explain why Kuroko can only move things she’s in contact with because she would have to push it to the other side once space is bent.

So to sum things up, Mikoto would have to be some kind of monster do be able to do the things in the anime, and even then she wouldn’t be able to perform some of her moves. Four dimensional beings would also have to exist for Kuroko to be able to teleport the way she does without an energy source. Basically, the esper powers in To Aru Kagaku no Railgun do not work except under very extreme assumptions, and even then some of them still don’t work. I guess it’s a good thing that the target audience is too caught up fantasizing about biribiri to care if she could technically exist or not.

If you have other ideas on how esper powers might work, feel free to share. Any nerds reading this can also point out any mistakes I’ve made since this is mostly stuff I remember from school.

Screenshot 1:

Anime: Kara no Kyoukai

Episode: 6

Why I Took It: Hey, its got pretty lights, and pretty lights are well… pretty.

Screenshot 2:

Anime: Kobato

Episode: 5

Why I Took It: It’s Ken and Guile! Fans of Street Fighter will know who I’m referring to.

Screenshot 3:

Anime: Seitokai no Ichizon

Episode: 6

Why I Took It: Ahoge! In case you’re wondering, that’s what that antennae-like piece of hair on top of anime characters is called. It’s so cute ^.^

Screenshot 4:

Anime: A Certain Scientific Railgun

Episode: 7

Why I Took It: Mikoto just looked so funny, I just had to take a screenshot of her.

Some of these are from a couple weeks ago, but sinc this is my first batch I might as well include what I’ve taken so far:

Screenshot 1:

Anime: Hayate no Gotoku 2
Episode: 23
Why I Took It: This is exactly what I do when I have a ton of work to do, except Hinagiku actually looks kinda cute doing it.

Screenshot 2:

Anime: Umineko no Naku Koro Ni
Episode: 11
Why I Took It: This is from a long time ago, but when I first saw this scene I instantly thought Tako Luka! No one can tell me that Maria doesn’t look like a head with octopus tentacles sticking out right now. The creepiness factor just skyrocketed because of the resemblance.

Screenshot 3:

Anime: A Certain Scientific Railgun
Episode: 6
Why I Took It: I think the screenshot speaks for itself. Kuroko is AWESOME!

Screenshot 4:

Anime: Kobato
Episode: 3
Why I Took It: Holy crap, it’s Chii (Chobits), and there’s two of her!

Screenshot 5:

Anime: Seitokai no Ichizon
Episode: 4
Why I Took It: This was just too adorable, even if the cover of that book she’s holding had to be censored.

Screenshot 6:

Anime: Umineko no Naku Koro Ni
Episode: 19
Why I Took It: A girl jumps onto a car and smashes the roof and just walks away, I just lol’ed at that.

Screenshot 7:

Anime: Seitokai no Ichizon
Episode: 5
Why I Took It: Aka-chan is now my favourite Seitokai character; and I just love the slanted Mio hat.