Profile
| School | Tokiwadai Junior High School |
|---|---|
| School Year | Second Year |
| Gender | Female |
| Height | 161 cm |
| Weight | 45 kg |
| Birthday | May 2nd |
| Blood Type | AB |
| Three Sizes | Breast: 78 cm, Waist: 56 cm, Hip: 79 cm |
| Voice Actress | Rina Satou |
Introduction
Mikoto Misaka (御坂 美琴 Misaka Mikoto) is the female protagonist of A Certain Scientific Railgun (To Aru Kagaku no Railgun) and also one of the main heroines in A Certain Magical Index (To Aru Majutsu no Index). Introduced in the first volume of the Light Novels, her role in the story was later expanded in the third volume as well as the release of the Toaru Kagaku no Railgun anime series and manga, making her a main heroine of the science side and the main heroine of the series second only to Index.
Overview
Character History
SPOILERS below : Contains spoilers for the series
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Appearance
Mikoto has light brown hair with a hair-clip on the right side of her hair, which her hair-clip changes from a typical rectangular hairpin to flowerish pattern after volume 6 of the novel. Her eyes are the same color as her hair. She is also shown to be insecure about her body, feeling inferior when compared to girls with bigger bust sizes.
Personality
While Misaka Mikoto has the public opinion of being a 'proper lady' (ojou-sama), she is in fact short-tempered, prideful, and has an improper attitude with sight tomboyish attitude. She also has some insecurities, which only a few people know. Despite this, she is generally friendly and easygoing. As well she also has a sense of modesty, where she doesn't look down on espers below her level and treat them normally. Often times she is childish and shows a competitive side, even to the point of having tsundere tendencies - especially towards Touma, which she has a rivaly, confused affections, yet love-and-hate relationship with.
She has a keen sense of justice, demonstrated by her frequent involvement in the crime-fighting body, Judgment, and her resolve is unshakable as shown when she was willing to lose in a fight against Accelerator on the first move to prove the Sisters Project wrong and save her remaining 9968 sisters, which the Tree Diagram predicted that she would die in the 128th move.
She also has an affection for cute things, especially Gekota (a popular frog mascot), and is easily embarrassed. Due to her status, she often keep her affection as a secret. She often goes to Green Mart to read manga for free in her spare time. She's also good at playing the violin and she teaches Uiharu how to play in the Volume 12 of the Light Novel.
Background
Mikoto is the daughter of Misaka Tabikake and Misuzu. She entered Academy City at an early age, and distinguished herself as a child prodigy, initially starting out as a Level 1 and climbing her way up to a Level 5 esper through hard work. This made her a perfect candidate for the Radio Noise Project, which the intention was to clone her for military use. Mikoto willingly gave a DNA sample to the researchers of the project thinking that it would help people who didn't have the ability to control their muscles properly.
She later enrolls at Tokiwadai Middle School, and in one fateful event saved her future friend Shirai Kuroko from a robber by using her 'Railgun' ability. Kuroko eventually enrolled at Tokiwadai as well and gained great affection for Mikoto. Mikoto later became roommates with Kuroko in Room 208 - despite Kuroko being her junior - after Kuroko 'legally' removes Mikoto's previous roommate who was supposedly ill-natured towards Mikoto.
Being a Level 5 esper as well as a student with consistently high grades, Mikoto is known as Tokiwadai's Ace, and also garnered many affections from their fans.
Her involvement in the Radio Noise Project, as well as her involvement in the Level 6 Shift project changed her perception towards life greatly, as she previously had close to no affection towards clones, even to the point of commenting that if there are clones of her appearing in front of her, she would feel sick to the point of wishing them disappear in front of her eyes. Unfortunately the wish itself came true when she witnessed Accelerator killed Misaka 9982, which affected her greatly. Fortunately with the help of Touma, the cancellation of Level 6 Shift project brought peace to Misaka's struggle towards the issue, and from there on, Misaka started to show feelings towards Touma, though in a very awkward and sometimes, hostile manner.
Abililty
Mikoto's power is categorized as "Electromasters", a type of power that governs electrocity. She is initally reported to being able to output her electricity power at 100 million volts maximum, but later reported (in the novel) to be as far as 5 billion volts - A power which is powerful enough to cause a city-wide blackout in Academy City. Because of that, she is constantly generating electrical fields that can cause discomfort from sensitivity animals like cats and dogs when she is near them.
Her ability is also convinient where she can sense any objects that generate electronical waves approaching her. This ability helped her in many fights she encountered with her enemies.
Railgun
Misaka's nickname, 'Railgun', comes from her ability to fire metal objects at incredible speeds using electricity. Both the anime and manga have stated that Misaka's 'railgun' with arcade coins has a muzzle velocity of around 1030 m/s (2307.2 mph) and that she can fire her 'projectiles' a rate of 8 shots per minute. The projectile she uses are almost always arcade coins, but she claims the coins melt from friction with the atmosphere at around 50 meters, limiting the railgun's effective length there. She can replace the coins with a much larger projectile and yields more power and can travel further than an ordinary Railgun. The name somewhat contradicts the details of how an actual railgun functions, though, as she doesn't use 'conducting rails' in her ability.
Electromagnetism
She can attract ferrous materials and use it to her advantage, such as being able to create a make-shift shield out of scrap metal or walk on walls, attract the iron particles in the ground around her. She normally uses this method to create and gather "iron sand" which she can then control to varying degrees depending on the amount of sand involved. Her control is great enough that she is able to create solid objects and weapons made entirely out of sand for her own personal use. For example, she once created a "chain-sword" in a fight with Touma by not only manipulating the sand into a sword-like shape but by also making the sand particles of the blade vibrate at such a speed as to dramatically increase the weapon's cutting power. She can also instantly change it's shape or formation, such as when she turned her "chain-sword" into a whip-like weapon that presumably still had its chainsaw-like quality. However, its cutting abilities are limited, as shown when her "chain-sword" whip was deflected by Kiyama Harumi's concrete shield in the Railgun anime.
Hacking
Using her electric powers she can hack any electric device and bypass weak security measures such as firewalls with ease. This also enables her to perform acts such as erasing herself from security footage in real time or taking control of Academy City's roving security droids, apparently without requiring any physical contact. She often uses a special device for this as a connection route.
Electro-perception
It has been stated that Misaka can see the electric and magnetic field lines in her environment, unlike her 'sisters' who must use specialized goggles to compensate for their lack of this ability. She also can analyze the reflections of electromagnetic waves she generates and therefore 'see' things all around her as a form of sixth sense.
Flight
Mikoto can fly if she is on a large body of water such as the ocean, using her electric power to induce hydrolysis on the molecules in the air, allowing for her to fly. This ability was only showed on the SS mini-novels bundled with Toaru Majutsu no Index DVD's
Others
She is also very intelligent, ranking 8th in Tokiwadai and easily clear Touma's high-school homework without much sweat, despite being only in middle school.
Trivia
- In Volume 8, Shirai Kuroko accuses Mikoto of hiding some sort of dieting secret using her ability. Kuroko infers that she (Mikoto) uses electricity to burn away unnecessary body fat in order to keep her body slim no matter how much she eats. Mikoto denies such an ability exists.
- Although Tree Diagram predicted that in a fight between Mikoto and Accelerator, she would die in the 128th move, the SISTER's Arc in the Toaru Kagaku no Railgun manga shows that she would have been killed just by him reflecting her strongest move, the Railgun, in the 4th move. Of course, the prediction from Tree Diagram is probably based on Accelerator's tendency to play with his opponents in order for him to enjoy the battle, or attempting to persuade them to give up fighting to live (unbeknownst to the researchers).
- As noted in Toaru Kagaku no Railgun manga in the chapter 31, because of his memory loss, Touma didn't recognize Mikoto, however in the chapter 32, when Touma meets her again, he calls her "biri biri" which somehow contradicts the Toaru Majutsu no Index novels where he no longer calls her like that. Of course, it may also be due to the fact that Touma is still often at the unfortunate end of Mikoto's power even after his memory loss, thus resulting in the recreation of the 'biri biri' nickname.
- Mikoto's esper powers materialize themselves in significantly different ways for both series. In Toaru Majutsu no Index light novels, her electricity arcs seem to initially stem from her forehead before spreading out to cover her entire body. This differs from Toaru Kagaku no Railgun anime, where her arcs materialize from her fingertips, arms and body. The method she uses to fire her signature Railgun also differs in both anime series: Toaru Majutsu no Index has Mikoto flipping a coin in the air before blasting it by flinging out a powerful electrical discharge. In contrast, Toaru Kagaku no Railgun retains the coin flip, but the Railgun is now fired by gathering electricity on her arm and fingertips before shooting it by a flick of her thumb. In episode 21, there is an instance where she flicks it up, charges her electricity, and flicks it by using her thumb and middle finger.
- Mikoto was a fan of Kirugamar merchandise before becoming a Gekota fan as mention in Toaru Kagaku no Railgun Episode 19 by Kuroko who bought Kirugamar merchandise stationery set as she knew that it was donated by Mikoto herself.
- Mikoto is known in the Academy City's 7th Disctrict as "that crazy bitch from Tokiwadai" due to she often destroys the electronic artefacts of the people when she starts a fight.
- At one point, Misaka Imouto 10032 ionizes the air and creates ozone as a method to combat Accelerator. Although Mikoto has not been seen to do this before, it is assumed she can do this already but has not thought to use it.
- According to the interview on Kazuma Kamachi featured in "Toaru Majutsu no Index no Subete", the author states Mikoto is the one whom he want to choose as his friend among all Index characters.
- Mikoto's Railgun is actually incapable of causing the amount of destruction shown in the anime. Assuming that the Arcade coins, which are similar in size to a 500 yen coin, weigh 7 grams. (The weight of a 500 yen coin) When fired at a velocity of 1030 m/s, the kinetic energy of the coins, given by the formula mv2/2, (In which m is mass in Kg, and v is the velocity in m/s.) is only 3713.15 Joules. (.007x10302/2 ) Which is around the same amount of kinetic energy as a .280 Remington round fired at 861 m/s. (3,700 Joules)But this is disputable since a thrown coin does a rotational linear movement (not a simple linear movement), its kinetic energy value should be Iω2/2 + mv2/2 (as I is the moment of inertia and ω is the angular velocity). Anyway, ω's value has never been specified in both Light novels and anime therefore it is impossible to know Mikoto's railgun's true power. Somehow, it is assumed that she can control the railgun's destructive power by changing the value of ω, as she claimed not using her whole power during the ability examination in volume 8 and during her fight against Sogiita Gunha in Toaru Jihanki no Sonzai Shoumei in which she held back her railgun's power at 30% (despite the fact her railgun's linear velocity is always estimated to be 1030m/s).
Related Illustrations
