TAAN: So this is the first post I’m doing as a substitute, huh? Feels kinda weird. Well, no matter, it’s time to start. I’ll be combining both episodes into one review, because the break is in the middle of a battle, so it’s easier to view it as one episode, or all at once.

Ep 13: Accelerate the Battle

Remember how Touma was able to catch up with Mikoto in the previous episode? Well it turns out she was on her way to the next battlefield between the Accelerator and one of the Sisters when Touma caught up. One of the Sisters (#10032) enters the field and confirms her coordinates and start time for the battle. After doing so, she starts thinking of Touma and his strange questioning before. She doesn’t get why she recalled that memory, though.

Well, that was too serious, so instead we now switch to what’s going on with Index & friends as they randomly decide to explain espers while bathing. Apparently, an esper is someone who had a distorted view of reality due to heavy stress at a young age. If that distorted view is cultivated, then somehow, when that person comes in contact with the real world, the real world will bend into that person’s distorted reality. And in academy city, they replicate all that with drugs and hypnosis. WTF. They also talk about something like someone whose abilities don’t follow the rules being able to become god like and/or understand god’s answers about the world.

Now that random bit of explanation is over, We go back to Touma, who’s just waking up from being hit by Mikoto’s giant shockwave attack. He looks around after recovering his senses, but water falls in his eyes. He looks up and finds that he’s lying in Mikoto’s lap and the water was actually her tears. She essentially asks him what he was doing letting himself get hit by her attacks. Touma just wearily smiles and says that he doesn’t know, but he’s figured out a way to stop the experiment. All that needs to happen for the Accelerator, the supposed strongest esper in Academy City, to be beaten by someone a lot weaker, in the best case, the weakest esper, himself.

Mikoto tells him that it’s near impossible because the Accelerator sees fights as just a “one way road” for him to slaughter his opponents, and explains his vector control power. Of course, this leaves only two real options for attacking: either use attacks that don’t use vectors (mental attacks, environmental attacks, etc), or, for Touma, use his right fist alone so that Accelerator’s vector manipulation won’t work. Even after Mikoto explains why it’s near impossible for him to win, Touma just stands up and asks for the next battle location and leaves.

At the same time, at the battlefield itself, MISAKA #10032 has the chance to meat Accelerator several minutes before the battle begins. they have a chat about random little things in which Accelerator reveals that he wants to become so powerful that no one would even think of fighting him, and that MISAKA is a horrible conversationalist. Anyways, the battle is soon underway and Touma is still running to get there. Mikoto also decides that she can’t just stand by and leaves for the battlefield, even though it would make Touma’s victory less substantial.

By the time Touma gets to the location, the battle is well under way. MISAKA 10032 is just continuously attacking Accelerator even though it has no effect at all. MISAKA tells him that the night has no wind, which clues him in to her tactic: converting all the oxygen to Ozone, making the air unbreathable, an attack using the environment without using vectors. Accelerator isn’t shocked in the least once he realises this and is instead excited. To prevent her attack from succeeding, he goes right up to her for close range combat and easily beats her to the ground. While he’s kicking her in the ribs, though, he notices Touma behind him and stops.

Touma tells him to get away from MISAKA, but Accelerator is just slightly amused at his interference and demands. He makes a warning attack, but when Touma doesn’t flinch, he decides that fighting him might be fun. Touma starts walking forwards and MISAKA starts questioning his reasons for fighting for her. She tells him that she can be endlessly cloned, and is therefore not important enough to fight for, but Touma just tells her to shut up because he’s here to save her anyways. Accelerator gets slightly annoyed that he’s ignored and the two of them start to fight.

Immediately Accelerator gets the upper hand on Touma by attacking from afar, but Touma somehow dodges all the stuff that comes at him. After a while, once Touma is down, Accelerator comes in for his killing move, screwing with the vectors of Touma’s body. As he reaches for his head, though, Touma slaps his hand away with his right hand, nullifying the vector manipulation effect. Accelerator just stands there stunned for a sec before exploding with rage. He then Kicks at Touma who dodges it, but the kick also knocks down some shipping containers full or flour. Accelerator then gets the brilliant idea to create a dust explosion.

Ep 14: Accelerate the Future

Touma barely manages to survive the explosion, but Accelerator walks out of it unscathed due to his vector manipulation. He did almost run out of oxygen to breathe, though, and congratulated Touma on being able to push him closer to death than anyone else. After some more condescending talk, he launches himself at Touma, possibly the worst move he could have done. But of course, he doesn’t know about Imagine Breaker, so oh well. Touma uses this chance to massively pummel him. Accelerator escapes, but is still amazed that he is somehow losing. Touma catches up and explains that someone who relies on his special powers to do all the damage won’t have much skill in unarmed combat. After a bit more beatings, Accelerator starts mouth spazing and fires some kind of compressed air attack. He starts charging a second one, but this time he holds it and mocks Touma who’s been knocked down. At the same time, Mikoto arrives at the scene with ammo for her railgun in hand. She starts talking to Touma as if she was going to try a suicide attack.

Touma tries to stop her, but she doesn’t listen. Instead, she stops when she sees what’s become of the air Accelerator was compressing. Apparently he was able to gather enough air in a small enough space to cause the molecules to undergo fusion and turn into plasma. Faced with this immense power, Mikoto realises that her attack would do nothing in stopping Accelerator. Instead, she gets the idea to use wind to mess up his charge. There’s no wind that night, but there are windmills everywhere… She uses MISAKA’s ability to share information with all her clones at once to get them to reverse the current in the windmills to cause them to turn artificially, creating wind.

Accelerator loses control of his plasma ball fairly quickly and abandons the idea. He realises its the work of the MISAKAs and turns to attack them, but Touma gets back on his feet before then and tells him to stop. Not having learned his lesson, he runs straight for Touma, trying to screw with his vectors again, but Touma blocks and counters with a punch to the face, knocking him out. Shortly after, Touma falls to the ground exhausted.

When he wakes up again, he’s lying on a hospital bed again. Sitting next to him is one of the Sisters, who is holding his hand to her breast. At first he’s surprised that he’d do such a thing especially considering the condition of his neck, but the MISAKA explains that he merely reached for her hand and she moved his hand on her own. By doing so, she was able to diagnose his brain and heart’s status, and that’s all. It turns out that he’s been pumped so full of anesthetics that he can’t even feel if his hand is touching anything.

Well after all that is cleared up, MISAKA reveals that even though the experiment has a high probability of being halted, she can’t return yet because she needs to take drugs to counter the accelerated growth drugs she took as part of the cloning process. Before she leaves, Touma asks her if the adjustments will work, to which she replies that they will meet again and makes her exit.

The next day, the doctor tells Touma that he just needs rest. He leaves and Touma falls a sleap, but wakes up soon after. It’s Mikoto who’s now standing by his bed, and she gives him some expensive cookies. Touma jokingly complains that they’re not home-made, which seriously annoys her. Touma really isn’t in any shape to be getting attacked, so he pleads for her to stop and changes the subject. He tells her of her sisters’ treatments. When she goes to leave, Touma offers her some words of encouragement to cheer her up about the experiment.

Later that day, Touma gets another visitor, this time it’s Index. She bites his head because of how worried he made her, but she soon forgives him. After that, everything seems to go back to being peaceful for now.

TAAN Ratings:

Ep 13: 9/10

EP 14: 9/10

Anticipation: 8/10