To Aru Kagaku no Railgun - Episode 13

After all of the excitement and serious business of recent episodes, I suppose we were actually rather overdue something a little more light-hearted from To Aru Kagaku no Railgun, and lo and behold that's exactly what episode thirteen of the series brings us. In a word: swimsuits.

Yes, that's right, on a hot summer day it just so happens that the Tokiwadai school's swimming club needs some volunteers to act as swimsuits models for a company that sells swimwear, and with nobody else available Kuroko and Mikoto are invited along to fill that role. Needless to say, they bring Uihara and Saten along with them, while also bumping into Kongo Mitsuko, a girl with a bit of a superiority complex, as well as Judgement's Konori, who are both also taking part in the shoot.


Really, there's little more to the plot beyond that - The girls all change into swimsuits of their choice, before spending the day with some kind of Star Trek-esque "Holodeck" that recreates certain appropriate (and a few rather unsuitable) environments so that they can be photographed while acting naturally. Oh, and they make and eat some curry as well, in a scene where Kongo's lack of cooking knowledge is revealed via an attempt to peel tomatoes.

If you haven't already guessed by now, this episode is filler in every meaning of the word - Thankfully it has a couple of amusing moments (the 2001: A Space Odyssey nod made me chuckle, as did the aforementioned tomato peeling and Mikoto's frolicking at the end of the episode), but that aside you're really not missing anything if you skip this episode aside from gawping at all of the main female characters in swimsuits.... which, I suppose, is pretty much the point of the episode in all honesty. Oh well, roll on next week and hopefully a return to more entertaining fare.