Characters / A Certain Magical Index Mikoto Misaka

A Certain Magical Index / Scientific Railgun / Scientific Accelerator character index
Main Characters
Touma Kamijou | Accelerator | Railgun's Main Cast (Mikoto Misaka)
Science Side
The Level 5s | The Teachers and Students of Academy City | Academy City Founders, Researchers and Law Enforcement
Academy City's Dark Side | The Sisters | Other Science Side Characters
Magic Side
England and its Allies | The Roman Catholic Church | GREMLIN | True GREMLIN | Other Magic Side Characters
Other Characters
Other Light Novel, Manga, and Anime Characters | Audio Drama, Video Game, and Movie Characters

Mikoto Misaka

The Railgun/The Ace of Tokiwadai/The Electric Princess

Voiced by: Rina Sato (Japanese) and Brittney Karbowski (English)

Mikoto, also known as "Biri-Biri"/"Bug-Zapper", is the main female Science-oriented protagonist of the Index universe and near-eponymous protagonist of her own spinoff, A Certain Scientific Railgun. Her power is Electromaster, and with it she is the third most powerful Level 5, the highest rank attainable for an Esper. Has a love/hate relationship with Touma.

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A-G

• Accidental Misnaming: Is rather annoyed that Touma keeps calling her "Biri-Biri" and kept telling him it's not her name. In the epilogue of the Sisters Arc, after she fails to give him her homemade cookies, she once again insists on him using her real name, to which he finally does indeed say it. Although the audience can't see, Kuroko mentioned that she had never seen that expression on her face before.
• A-Cup Angst: She is very, very sensitive about her cup size, which often leads to her butting heads with the well-endowed Misaki. The fact that some of her friends and schoolmates kept raising it as a topic in front of her does not help matters either. And it's hinted that Misuzu (who's well endowed herself, also to her daughter's chagrin) wants to rectify this fast (through food). Considering she's no more than fourteen yet some of the franchise' younger girls are better endowed than she is, it's no small wonder why she's so bothered about it.
• The Ace: She's known by the public as "The Ace of Tokiwadai", and she backs it up by being one of Academy City's most powerful espers, a straight-A student, and an excellent athlete.
• Action Girl: She has slightly violent tendencies, and is ranked third among the Level 5 Espers.
• Alliterative Name: Mikoto Misaka
• All-Loving Heroine: Sort of becomes one in the anime-exclusive arc in Railgun S.
• Almighty Idiot: Gensei infects the Misaka Network and forces it into her to start a transformation to Level 6. Mikoto takes on an angelic form and becomes astronomically more powerful, but she's barely aware of what's going on around her or even who she is anymore. According to Gensei, it's because in her current stage of development she cannot become a "stable" Level 6 like Accelerator, and notes that by the time she's little over halfway-there with this forced Shift her human self will all but fade away.
• Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: Gensei co-opts Exterior and the Misaka Network to forcibly induce a level 6 shift on her, which basically means becoming an angel. However, while Accelerator could hit level 6 and retain his mind and body and Kakine has a chance of doing the same, in her current state Mikoto would lose her personality when she was halfway there and would self destruct when she reached full power.
• Badass Adorable: She looks cute and innocent, which causes a lot of guys to hit on her. Unfortunately for them, she's also one of the strongest people in the city and has one of the most flexible powers in the entire story.
• Badass in a Nice Suit: During the Daihaseisai Arc, when she and Misaki team up to raid the compound where Gensei Kihara is she dons the private security force's uniform and sunglasses, as unlike Misaki who can just alter everyone's memories to make it so that she was never there, Misaka needs the change of clothes to help hide her identity.
• Batman Can Breathe in Space: In the Railgun S season finale, she and Kuroko were launched to the edge of the atmosphere without suits. While seemingly unaffected by the vacuum, they were visibly choking before they made it back to Earth.
• Belligerent Sexual Tension: Touma is the only one that can bring out her true tsundere side, though Kuroko's attempts to molest her are annoying enough to get similar results. It takes her around 15 novels to even realize and admit the reason for her behavior.
• Big Damn Heroes: Twice to Lessar in the second Railgun SS.
• Big Sister Instinct: Loves the Sisters as though they really are her siblings, and would go to hell and back to protect them. Which is exploited by Gensei Kihara.
• Blessed with Suck: Her powers allow her to take on entire military factions on her lonesome, but she also has trouble interacting with animals since they can feel the electromagnetic field she gives off and instinctively run away from her.
• Blood Knight: Though more from her inability to forgive slights than actual bloodlust, because she will forgive you after pounding your ass in.
• Blush Sticker: At times, especially as a child, if Last Order is any proof.
• Brainy Brunette: She can think faster than a supercomputer and is definitely a brunette.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: Once in New Testament Volume 2.
  "If she let him get away, things would get very bad."
  "To put it in concrete terms, it was possible that she would end up with no scenes for three whole volumes."
  "Wait! Wait just a second!! This is my scene! If you’re going to do this, do it later!! Dammit, the guy-to-girl ratio here is completely out of balance. And is that group of huge breasts specifically targeted at me!? A-at this rate, I’ll be lost in the background…!! Did they create a forest to hide a leaf!?"
• Breakout Character: She started as just another Girl of the Week, but proved so popular that she began to both appear more frequently, though still had little effect on the plot until World War III. She muscled her way into the story proper during the start of the New Testament novels and even got her own spinoff which has proven at least as popular as the main series.
• Break the Cutie: During the Sisters Arc, witnessing the continued murder of her clones in a series of 'experiments' and being unable to do anything effective to stop them leads to her performing more and more rash actions, resulting in a Heroic BSoD, wherein she eventually concludes that her own effective suicide will be the solution to end the experiments.
• Break the Haughty: A lot of Misaka's early hostility towards Touma boils down to him knocking her down a couple of pegs. She starts of the story as something of a Smug Super, but then when she challenges Touma to a fight, not only does he nullify all of her attacks, but she also almost starts crying when he's about to strike. Touma subsequently throwing the fight after only serves to piss Misaka off.
• Brought Down to Badass: During the Sisters arc, she's been going around trashing facilities for several days without eating or sleeping and is completely exhausted. After using the last of her energy to fight off Frenda, she's pitted into combat with Mugino and manages to use Frenda's explosives, a few passive effects of her electromaster powers and knowledge of the facility to bring Mugino down without enough power to use a single electric attack.
• Cannot Spit It Out: To Touma. It became incredibly obvious that she had a crush on Touma, what with the constant blushing and stammering whenever his name gets brought up, except she remains entirely unable to actually say those words to Touma himself.
• Celestial Body: The final form she reaches of her Level 6 Shift turns her head down to her collarbones pitch-black with glowing lights that resemble a starry-night sky.
• Character Development: Her primary flaw in the early series is pride; as one of the most powerful espers in the city, it's hard for her to even consider that there might be things she can't do and needs help with. As the series progresses, she evolves into a character more capable of accepting support from others and trusting people (especially Touma) to be able to solve problems on their own.
  • However she starts to backslide harshly later on in New Testament after she gets more involved with the actual ongoing world conflicts. The fact is that despite her great prowess and power, she just is nowhere in the league of outright Magic Gods (To wit, not even No. 1 esper Accelerator comes close to that level). Her sin of pride ends up switching from "not needing any help" to "being absolutely frustrated she cannot truly help Touma" despite his protestations to the latter. This leads her to the Anti-Art Attachment and going down a potentially dark path in order to finally catch up.
• Characterization Marches On: During her confrontation with Touma in the Volume 1 of Old Testament light novel, Mikoto trashtalks the Level 0 delinquents who causes trouble with her, as those delinquents, in her words, "couldn’t bend a single spoon after having various crazy things done to them like have drugs injected directly into their blood vessels or have electrodes stabbed in through their ears and into the brain" meaning they simply shows either lack of talent. This characterization is way different from Mikoto Misaka of later volumes where she is notably nicer and willing to interact, help, and even befriend people regardless of their levels.
• Chronic Hero Syndrome: Despite Kuroko constantly warning her that since she is a civilian, she should leave the heroics to Judgment or Anti-Skill, she just can't help jumping in and helping. Ironically, Mikoto can't understand why Touma does the same thing.
• Clingy Jealous Girl: Although it doesn't pop up too often, she's not too fond of how close Index is to Touma. And when he's seen hanging out with one of the Misaka sisters in episode 18 of season 2's A Certain Magical Index, she gets angry with him.
• Code Name: Every Level 5 in Academy City have one assigned to them. Hers is 'The Railgun', after her own Finishing Move, where she launches a piece of metal at a speed of over 1000 m/s via pure magnetic force alone, just like a real-life railgun.
• Cool Big Sis: Acts like this, especially in the Railgun series. Less so in the main series, since she hangs out a lot more with Touma who brings out her Tsundere side.
• Cunning Linguist: Besides Japanese, she knows other languages like English, French, and Russian. It comes in handy when communicating with the French-speaking Cendrillon.
• Cuteness Proximity: Frogs, especially a mascot named "Gekota", so much so she thinks she sees a real-life version of it in the form of Heaven Canceller, of all people.
• David Versus Goliath: During New Testament, she plays the David against Brunhild Eiktobel's Goliath. The narration makes it her opponent is so physically strong that one wrong move would end with Misaka's body parts splattered across the battlefield, yet Misaka is able to both hurt and stalemate her the entire time with clever use of her powers and the environment.
• Death Seeker: Was planning on doing this, both in hopes that were she to lose to Accelerator on the first move, the calculations made for the experiment will be invalidated, as well as to atone for the suffering she put the Sisters through. Touma points out the flaws to her plan (even to the point of refusing to defend himself when Mikoto tried to zap him out of her way), that she won't be saved, and her death will not give the Sisters happiness, meaning in the end, no one will be saved.
• Despair Event Horizon: During the Sisters arc, she constantly sacrifices sleep and fights constantly to the point of nearly passing out to stop the project. After seemingly wiping out every facility, more pop up and function in a way that actually benefits them if more shut down and then her last hope of using the Tree Diagram fails when she learns that it was destroyed. Upon learning this, she realizes she just can't stop the experiment and intends to go and commit suicide in a manner that will hopefully invalidate the premises the experiment was built on and end it.
• Double Standard: Abuse, Female on Male: Frequently throws lightning at Touma whenever he does something to piss her off, and has tried hitting him with attacks that would very well have killed him if he didn't nullify them in time. Justified from her perspective because she thinks that he's just holding back and would just nullify them anyways. In the few times where he doesn't nullify them, she's shocked and realizes just how serious the situation has become.
  Touma: If I had taken a direct hit just now, I would have died!
  Mikoto: It wouldn't work on you anyway!
• Electric Torture: Played for Laughs as a Running Gag — this is how she usually rebuffs Kuroko's attempts to make out with her.
• Elegant Classical Musician: Once during a school cultural festival, Mikoto appears, elegantly and skillfully plays a violin solo, all while wearing a flowing white dress.
• Embarrassing Nickname: Touma used to call her "Biri-Biri" ("Bug-Zapper"), a name she doesn't like.
• Erotic Dream: Has one of Touma at the beginning of Season 2 Episode 17.
• Even the Girls Want Her: Much to her chagrin. During the school festival episode, multiple students try to give her gifts.
• Failure Is the Only Option: All her attempts to stop Level 6 Shift are squashed by Academy City's administration before Touma lent a hand.
• Feed It with Fire: Not only is she immune to all but possibly the most powerful electrical attacks thanks to her ability, she can piggyback off existing sources of electricity or static charge to perform even stronger and/or otherwise-impractical attacks.
• Flight: When she's over a body of water, she performs hydrolysis on the water particles so she can propel herself and fly.
• Full-Contact Magic: When firing off objects larger than her typical coins with her Railgun, Misaka punches them forwards.
• Goofy Print Underwear: Kuroko finds out, much to her delight, that Mikoto's panties share the same "thumbs-up bunny" logo that the T-shirt she was given as a present has... then she just had to sing that aloud. This is perhaps the reason Mikoto wears Modesty Shorts.

H-R

• Hair Flip: On occasions. With an electric arc between her head and her hand.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: Is rather quick to anger over the smallest of slights, and has a vengeful streak three-miles-wide towards those who personally wrong her (namely Touma earlier in the franchise, chronologically); that said, she WILL forgive (and even befriend) you after she has exacted vengeance by pounding you into the ground.
• Hard Work Hardly Works: Subverted, as her quick ascent up Academy City's rankings is often held up as an example of how anyone can succeed with hard work, However, with the revelation that the scientists behind the Sisters experiment obtained her DNA map when she was at a lower level, and the much later revelation of the existence of the parameter list, this becomes a Double Subversion, since these mean that Mikoto had actually been pegged for greatness very early on in her development and was helped along the way much more than the average student.
• He Is Not My Boyfriend: She gets put into this situation by Index, her friends, in front of Touma and their parents too (cue massive blushing). She keeps denying it, but no one believes her.
• Heroic BSoD: She falls into one when she sees Accelerator killing one of the Sisters, and being unable to do anything to stop it.
• Hero with Bad Publicity:
  • A plot point during the Shopping Mall Demonstration SS. Using a method of spreading rumors of a possible nuclear attack by her, every rioter in the area targeted her with rifles, axes, and every other weapon they could. This also counts as Mugging the Monster because if she wasn't The Fettered, she could have simply electrocuted them all and been done with it.
  • She is also known in the 7th District as 'that crazy bitch from Tokiwadai' for screwing with people's phones with her power.
• Heteronormative Crusader: Her insistence that a couple in a couple's photo should only consist of a male and a female can make her come off as this. Her behavior is possibly justified by her experiencing sexual harassment from Kuroko Shirai.
• Hey, You!: She has yet to call Touma by his name, even after she actually learned it, addressing him as "you" and referring to him as "that idiot". Save the PSP game intro.
• High-Pressure Emotion: In more comedic scenes, she is prone to sudden puffs of steam to accompany her Luminescent Blushing to emphasize how vulnerable and embarrassed she is about feeling romantic-love towards Touma.
• Hollywood Hacking: Her ability to control electricity and electromagnetism allows her to hack low-level security with ease and even break into high-level computers like Tree Diagram with enough time.
• Honor Before Reason: She has a big problem with asking others for help.
• Humanizing Tears: Breaks down crying while she cradles a hideously injured Touma in her lap after brutally electrocuting him, realizing his point about the futility of trying to fight Accelerator to the death, noting how it will ultimately solve nothing.
• Hypocritical Humor
  • She makes fun of Touma for losing a 2000 yen bill to that evil vending machine, but in her first year she lost a 10000 yen bill to it, which is why she feels so justified in kicking and shocking it. 2000 yen bills are quite rare, however, so having to spend it in the first place was bad enough luck on its own.
  • She gets mad at Touma for always calling her Biribiri instead of her name, but she never uses his name either. He's always 'you' or 'that guy' or 'idiot'.
• I Am Not Left-Handed: First, she can release a lot more electricity than she normally does, it's just that she typically holds back to avoid killing people. Second, she can use metal objects other than coins for her railgun attack, and the larger the object, the farther it can travel (since her range is due to the object vaporizing from air friction). Best shown during her fight with the Doppelganger in the Dream Ranker Arc, where instead of being slack-jawed in shock and horror at the sight of the machine creating a skyscraper-sized Golem out of city debris, Misaka simply smirks and matches it by creating a similarly-sized Golem out of iron sand to fight it in a Behemoth Battle.
• Identity Amnesia: She forgets who she is in her angel form.
• Idiot Hair: Had this as a child, a trait that Last Order shares with her. It's still drawn distinctly on her in the present, but it's finally fallen down.
• Immune to Mind Control: Thanks to her high bioelectricity content, she is immune to mind control and mind reading. But given the fact that her brain operates on the same wavelength as her clones, the Misaka Network, their minds can be hacked to get to Mikoto herself, which is the mechanism for Gensei's attempt to get her to ascend to Level 6.
• Infinity +1 Sword: Obtains the Anti-Art Attachment in New Testament Volume 13 and immediately leaps up the power ranking tiers...but is noted to be at a potential cost to her own health. Later on, she pairs with Shokuhou Misaki in order to mitigate the risk.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Short-tempered, vengeful and petty over the most childish-reasons, Mikoto is nevertheless kind-hearted and considerate to a fault, and unfailingly loyal to those who earn her respect/friendship.
• Kindhearted Cat Lover: Mikoto has a huge soft-spot towards adorable baby animals, kittens in particular. To her disappointment, the ambient electricity generated by her sheer power causes discomfort in the poor little things, driving them away whenever she tries to play with them. This is a trait that the Sisters inherit from her.
• Last-Name Basis: Virtually everyone refers to her as Misaka. This is inverted in the fandom, where (due to the vast number of characters who can be called "Misaka") she's almost exclusively referred to as Mikoto.
• Leg Focus: The camera loves to focus on her legs as much as Kuroko.
• Lightning Can Do Anything: Shooting lightning, magnetizing to walls, creating swords from iron sand, firing railguns, hacking electronics, creating a biological radar, stopping mind control, reading minds to a limited extent...it truly says something about her versatility that the two Level 5s ranked higher than her possess the powers of literal creation and vector control (as in, one of the basic laws of physics) respectively.
• Limp and Livid: Accompanied by furious shaking whenever she is about to go ballistic on Kuroko for her latest act of immature stupidity.
• Little Miss Badass: Don't let her cute appearance fool you; this young lady is regarded as the third-most-dangerous person in Academy City for a very good reason.
• Locked Out of the Loop: Is constantly left out of Touma's adventures. Even late into the New Testament series, where she actually does start to get involved more into the Magic Side, she doesn't know about Imagine Breaker and thinks Touma can just negate things in general.
• Love at First Punch: Mikoto became interested in Touma after he first blocked her electricity while she was zapping some delinquents.
• Magnetism Manipulation: Misaka Mikoto can do this as a side effect of her control over electricity. By modifying the flow of electricity in the air or on objects she can replicate the effect of an electromagnet, allowing for her to create a chainsaw out of iron filings or cling to metal surfaces. Even her signature Railgun is based on generating a powerful electromagnetic field. When she goes all out, she can manipulate enough iron sand and dust particles to create massive Combat Tentacles or form a skyscraper-sized iron sand puppet.
• The McCoy: Between Touma's Kirk and Accelerator's Spock
• Megaton Punch: The most common method to stop a clingy Kuroko.
• Mistaken for Gay: When Kuroko met Mikoto's parents, acting her usual perverted self towards Misuzu (who thinks it's towards Mikoto), with the latter lampshading that her daughter may be lesbian.
  Misuzu: Mikoto, I didn't know you swung that way.
  Mikoto: No I don't!
  • Happens again in New Testament 22R when she and Misaki end up in a compromising position by accident just as Kuroko walks in. Kuroko doesn't take it well.
• Modesty Shorts: The trope picture. Much to Kuroko's dismay.
• Ms. Fanservice: Side by side with Kuroko, she is most often portrayed in shower scenes and situations that show/emphasize her trim-and-firm, athletic figure.
• Mundane Utility:
  • She can use her electrical powers to cook.
  • Uses what she learned from the Power Curriculum, the same training that allows her to make micro-second calculations in order to utilize her ability, to count cards in poker.
  • In one Railgun omake chapter, it's shown that when Mikoto and Kuroko are feeling lazy, they just stay in bed, with Mikoto activating appliances from a distance and Kuroko teleporting things.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: She's called the Railgun and is a Level 5. What did you expect?
• New Transfer Student: In New Testament 5, she's planning on taking the entrance exam for Touma's school.
• No Guy Wants to Be Chased: Well, Mikoto is a girl, but the chaser is female. In any case, Kuroko's clingy, perverted and creepy behavior clearly gets on Mikoto's nerves while she's friendly and generous to everyone else not named Touma. And unlike Touma, poor Kuroko isn't getting the tsundere treatment but rather the Vitriolic Best Buds treatment.
• No-Sell
  • An electric field around her prevents the Queen of Tokiwadai from tampering with her mind. Presumably, this also means that she's immune to other brainwashing and telepathic abilities. In chapter 61 (Railgun T, Episode 10), Gensei Kihara finds a loophole. She's immune to a level 5's mind control, but the MISAKA network is not. So he uses Exterior to take control of them, fuses them to Mikoto, and then controls her indirectly through them.
  • When she attacks the second to last lab in the Sisters arc, she runs into a prepared battlefield absolutely filled with various traps set by Frenda. However, no matter what Frenda throws at her she just defuses it or uses magnetism to avoid the attacks, leaving Frenda increasingly uncomfortable with the power her opponent must have.
  • Tasers and other electrical weapons are also useless against her, since her power output matches or surpasses entire power plants.
• Oblivious to Love: She's actually oblivious to her own love. It takes her until Volume 16 to realize that she likes Touma.
• Occult Blue Eyes: Combined with Glowing Eyes of Doom. Her initial state during her forced Level Shift 6 has lightning-blue eyes (literally, because lightning is generating out of them) and she's effectively taking the first step to becoming an actual angel.
• Offhand Backhand: In her fight with Touma during the School Festival (when she's in her angel form), she doesn't even look at him. She just casually sends ludicrously large bolts of electricity at him while trying to think of a way to destroy the Windowless Building. It doesn't work, because it's Touma, but she still treats him as a persistent fly rather than a serious threat.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • Gets a pretty intense one when she grabs Touma by his right hand, thinking that doing so would prevent him from blocking her attacks anymore, only to realize she can't use her ability at all now and it looks like she just gave him a free shot for a hook to the face.
  • When fighting Accelerator for the first time and realizing he didn't even move to reflect her Railgun attack, her previous rage just flat-out deflates into a look of broken shock.
  • In Chapter 108, her face twists into shock when she realizes the dragon the criminal esper Kimi just manifested looks like one of the eight in Touma's arm that stopped her Level 6 Shift. She immediately manifests a giant iron sand doll to attack it, but with one attack it completely neutralizes her efforts and tries to smash her.
• Ojou: Everybody in Tokiwadai treats her as one. While she has the wealth and the status, she prefers to act like a tomboy with childish tastes and is annoyed that everyone expects her to be a Proper Lady.
• One-Woman Army: She can take on entire Black-Ops battalions armed with automatic weapons with ease. Quite a few low-level mooks will surrender instantly when they realize who they're fighting. Heck, the description of a Level 5's power level literally amounts to being able to take on an entire military force on even ground.
• One-Winged Angel:
  • Beginning the Level 6 Shift comes with an appearance shift into a demonic form. She undergoes two separate transformations afterwards that make her look and become less human looking as time goes on.
  • To a certain extent: her usage of the Anti-Art Attachment has increased her powers to insane levels, to being potentially able to fight against Magic Gods, but because of its magical nature, it slowly weakens her, and will eventually kill her, if she is not careful.
• Onee-sama: Kuroko and a legion of admirers address her with great respect and adoration. The former is certainly interested in her romantically.
• Only Sane Man: She's the only one of the Level 5s that is considered publicly presentable and has become something of a mascot as a result despite her own quirks that keep her from being showcased too much. Accelerator and Kakine are antisocial murderers, Mugino appears normal but only until she gets angry (not to mention the fact that she's totally willing to murder others for her job), Misaki is paranoiac who can't trust anyone she can't mind control and abuses her powers, Gunha is a Cloudcuckoolander who's convinced he's a superhero, and the sixth Level 5 apparently never appears in public. Mikoto, by contrast, is just a tsundere tomboy with childish tastes. This is also only because the higher ups used mass media/rumors to create her ideal image and covered up Mikoto's various incidents.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Kuroko gets extremely worried whenever Mikoto doesn't zap or reject her.
• Our Angels Are Different: In chapter 61 of the Railgun manga and episode 10 of Railgun T, she begins to Awaken to her angel form when fused with the MISAKA network. In the next chapter and episode, while she is only two percent of the way to level 6, she calls down the strongest lightning strike ever recorded, and is specifically mentioned to be dozens of times more powerful than normal. She also learned how to teleport by Ride the Lightning.
• Out of Focus: In the Index series, where, despite often being billed as a main character, she hasn't been very plot relevant since the Sisters Arc, albeit still making some of the biggest recurring appearances as a supporting character.
  • Subverted to an extent, come the New Testament series.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: Her idea of "disguising" herself consists of wearing short shorts, a T-shirt, a baseball cap and a ponytail. Anyone who knows her can easily recognize her in it, even though she gets mistaken for a boy by security, much to her chargin.
• Powered Armor: She briefly uses the original Anti-Art Attachment to save Touma's life from Yuiitsu Kihara after being thrown into the storage building containing the unit, bypassing its firewalls and ID scanners via her Electromaster ability, and she eventually builds her own version for personal use, acquiring a hanger at Tokiwadai Middle School and starting a club to maintain it. It has most of the armaments of the original, but she initially has trouble replicating its Black Box likely due to its magical origins courtesy of Aleister. While using it puts incredible physical and mental strain on her, Misaka can negate this with Misaki's help and draw out even more of the unit's power.
• Rage Breaking Point: Played for Laughs when Misaki mocks her about the Bust Upper Indian Poker card business and Mikoto, already ticked off by earlier mocking, angrily grabs Misaki's boobs in public and fondles them while shouting about how big breasts don't mean anything, only to immediately have a Heroic BSoD upon realizing how stacked Misaki really is (and how big boobs actually feel) and tuning the now-flustered Level 5 out.
• Recognition Failure: Despite being the face of Academy City, the average citizen does not recognize her on sight, and many street thugs assume she is just a helpless girl and try to mug or sexually harass her.
• Required Secondary Powers: She's explicitly noted to be immune to electrical attacks when a girl tries using a taser on her. If she doesn't fry herself, what good is a taser going to do?
• The Rival: In the Index series her rival is Index for Touma's affections. In the Railgun series her rival is Shokuhou Misaki, the Queen of Tokiwadai, the other level five at Tokiwadai, though it mellows into a Friendly Rivalry eventually.
• Running Gag: Her love of things considered childish, including Gekota (a Hello Kitty like character), Goofy Print Underwear, childish pajamas and a frilly swimsuit, all of which she denies when asked about.

S-Y

• Secret-Keeper: She accidentally finds out about Touma's memory loss in Volume 14, and promises him to keep it a secret.
• Self-Made Man: Mikoto climbed all the way from Level 1 to Level 5 through hard work, but this is also subverted when it was revealed that Academy City's higher-ups can predict an esper's development.
• Shock and Awe: The nature of her abilities. She's called "Railgun" for a reason, that reason namely being that she can manipulate electro-magnetism to propel a metal object over 1000 m/s, just like a real-life railgun. Well, that and a whole host of other abilities she has displayed across the series:
  • Convection, Schmonvection: Averted against the AIM Burst - upon it deploying a barrier that nullifies electric shock, Misaka uses the massive amounts of heat generated by her lightning to melt the thing.
  • Cursed with Awesome: Has a constant electrical field around her and cats won't go near her because of it.
  • Extra-ore-dinary: Can use her lightning abilities to control magnetism and therefore control metal. Not only can she use iron sand to make a Whip Chainsaw, she can even create a giant iron sand Golem that towers over skyscrapers.
  • Finishing Move: Her railgun was called as such a few times.
  • Hollywood Hacking: She can use her powers to directly interface with electronics and hack them, though she admits her way is more of a brute-force approach compared to Playful Hacker Uiharu.
  • Kill Sat: She can more or less drop cloud-to-ground lightning on targets with enough force to cause city-wide blackouts. Her maximum output when using her electricity this way is 1 billion volts. For reference, the strongest lightning bolt ever recorded in real life only had a voltage of 25.5 million, meaning that it's about 2.6% of what Mikoto is capable of. And then there's the bolt she drops in Railgun T, Episode 11 on the Windowless Building, which is effectively so huge it resembles a Pillar of Light.
  • Money to Throw Away: Downplayed. Mikoto's usual ammunition for her Railgun are arcade tokens which she can launch at three times the speed of sound using her electricity.
  • Pillar of Light: In her angel form, despite only being 2% of the way to Level 6, she's able to call down a lightning strike so big it visually resembles one of these able to completely encompass the Windowless Building.
  • Power Incontinence: Whenever she gets angry she usually short-circuits an entire block.
  • Ride the Lightning: She create lightning tendrils that she can "ride" on for quick movement, to the point it looks like she performed a Flash Step or Teleportation via electricity. She can teleport herself through her electric attacks when she's in her angel form, though exactly how this works is not examined in depth.
  • Selective Magnetism: An integral part of her railgun.
  • Wall Crawl: By magnetizing herself, she can stick to walls and ceilings. Mugino nicknames her "Spider-Woman" for it.
  • Wave-Motion Gun: Her railgun deals tremendous damage in a straight line, and it gets bigger and more destructive the larger the object she fires is.
  • Weather Manipulation: When she goes all out, she can not only call down lightning bolts straight from the sky but also form massive thunderclouds regardless of weather forecasts.
• Shooting Superman: In an early filler episode of the anime, the opponent of the week attempts to use a taser on her.
• Shown Their Work: Unlike most of the Technobabble in the series, Mikoto's railgun is actually surprisingly plausible. The effects shown fall into Artistic License a bit, but an MIT physics graduate found that the numbers we're given add up realistically. Even the lack of recoil is realistic; since Mikoto forms the rails for the gun out of nothing but electrically charged air, the recoil just produces a Dramatic Wind.
• Shut Up, Hannibal!: Delivered to Therestina via Railgun.
• Signature Hair Decs: Her head progressively collects cute hair clips over the course of the series. In the series, she has other hairstyles and accessories like ponytails and headbands
• Stalker without a Crush: Before she starts to like him (probably), she always chases Touma around whenever she sees him because she wants to fight him. Or rather, she wants to beat him since he always nullifies her power and then gives her the slip. The one time he looks like he might fight back, she cowers away from his raised fist and he just gives up. Pissed at being looked down on as a Level 5 who has never had to really try to beat anyone in a fight, she starts chasing him around even more than usual.
• Strong Family Resemblance: To her mother.
• Shorttank: And one who is quite embarrassed to show any sort of girlish behavior at that.
• Super Mode: In chapter 61 of the Railgun manga and episode 10 of the Railgun T anime, Misaki's Exterior is used to force Mikoto to join with the MISAKA network in another attempt at a Level 6 Shift.
• Swiss-Army Superpower: Mikoto is an Electromaster, a type of Esper that can manipulate electricity. While it sounds straightforward, it has shown to be one of the most versatile esper powers in the series.
  • She can of course zap people directly, either by shooting electricity herself or by causing lightning bolts to drop from the sky.
  • She can manipulate the weather, causing thunderclouds big enough to engulf an entire city to appear regardless of the actual forecast.
  • Control of electricity by extension means the ability to create and manipulate magnetic fields, which is almost a Swiss Army Superpower unto itself, with applications such as the manipulation of metal objects, the ability to cling to and walk on surfaces which incorporate metals, cause EMPs, generate and counter microwaves, etc.
  • One of two of her most used power applications other than her lightning is her signature move and namesake, the Railgun. Creating what is essentially a virtual railgun in the air, she can impart enough force on whatever she chooses to fire that even small objects, such as the arcade tokens that constitute her normal ammunition, are capable of damage more resembling a rocket launcher.
  • Her other major use of her magnetic manipulation is the creation of constructs formed from iron sand pulled from the ground. She has made chainsaw iron sword-whips, spears, mini-tornadoes, shields, drills, needles and even a giant iron sand puppet.
  • Her ability causes her body to be naturally immune to electric attacks.
  • Mental effects of all kinds are useless against her, as her AIM field passively corrects deviations caused by mental manipulation.
  • Being able to control electricity also makes her a supremely capable and quick hacker, even of Academy City's military grade equipment, which has far better security than the rest of the world.
  • She never does it herself until forced to during an experiment to see if she could become a level 6, but states that through the use of bioelectricity you can form a network of a large number of minds, which is the center of at least two incidents she's involved in.
  • She can redirect attacks that are electron-based, even if they are not explicitly electrical, such as Meltdowner.
  • She can jam enemy signals and disrupt targetting computers, though her method is something of a brute force solution that jams all local frequencies.
  • If her muscles are paralyzed, she can manually control them by mimicking the normal functions of the nervous system. The tradeoff is that her powers by necessity must always be "on" and she's effectively a walking stun gun that a person can't touch without getting shocked.
  • She can use the flash of lightning to temporarily blind people, and even combine it with the roar of thunder to replicate the effects of a stun grenade.
  • She can replicate Junko Hokaze's ability, which is based on manipulating the electrical signals in the body's cells to draw out further strength and surpass human physical limits. However, she doesn't like this application because it reminds her too much of Accelerator's power. Junko also states that Mikoto is likely to be able to manipulate lasers, as light is a type of electromagnetic radiation.
  • She can ionize small objects like metal cans and turn them into plasma. It's also suggested she might be able to do the reverse and return plasma to its original state.
  • Finally, she passively generates electromagnetic waves at all times, which function as a sort of personal radar. It's impossible to launch an attack from her blind spot because she doesn't have a blind spot.
• Tears of Joy: In the Railgun version of the Sisters arc, Mikoto cries when Touma is willing to help her to save her clones. She cries again when she sees Touma getting up after receiving major injuries from Accelerator.
• There Is No Kill Like Overkill: She has powerful electromagnetic abilities that allow her to hotwire and remotely control cars. But when a robber tries to run her over, she simply fires her railgun at the car to send it careening over her head.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: The tomboy to Kuroko's girly girl given her rough manners and aggression.
• Tomboy with a Girly Streak: She wears shorts under her skirt, and when allowed seems to prefer to do away with the skirt altogether. She's a bit violent and seems to enjoy a friendly fight. She's also a complete sucker for cute childish Gekota items, and she likes large stuffed animals.
• Took a Level in Badass: While her forced Level 6 Shift was stopped, it's implied she still kept a general power increase as a side-effect, as the above-mentioned building-sized iron sand Golem and the massive city-spanning thundercloud was only ever seen being used after said events.
• Trauma Button: Briefly shown in her confrontation with Raifu. At first Mikoto hesitates to attack her after seeing her power in action, as it reminded her of Accelerator's vector control, and has to forcibly stop her shaking hand and remind herself there's no other esper with his ability.
• Trigger-Happy: In the first episode of Railgun S she zaps a bunch of guys that had been chasing Saten (all at once) who were confronting Kuroko and Uiharu. She reminds Kuroko and Uiharu the shop they want to go to will close soon and then she says "By the way, who were those guys?"
  Kuroko Couldn't you have asked that before you shocked them, Onee-sama?
• Tsundere: Towards Touma. Their relationship starts out as just a one sided rivalry, with Misaka constantly challenging him to fights and getting increasingly frustrated by her inability to get past his Imagine Breaker. After he saves her and her sisters, her affection for him becomes a lot more prominent, but she herself remains unaware of her true feelings for a long time. She stops challenging him to fights after awhile, but still zaps him with lightning whenever she's mad at him (which happens a lot), fortunately his Imagine Breaker still works.
• Unknown Rival: Touma met her one day trying to protect her from some thugs, but just pissed her off more than they did, causing her to attack all of them. He blocked her attack effortlessly, after which she kept challenging him to duels. After he loses his memory and keeps it a secret from everyone, they meet again and now she's really an unknown rival because he has no idea who this middle school girl is or why she's both hostile and resigned towards him.
• Unstoppable Rage: While destroying the facilities involved in Level 6 Shift Project (especially in the case of one she attacked after she found out Tree Diagram had been shot down, ruining her plan of hacking it to save her sisters).
• Vengeful Vending Machine: A certain vending machine that once swallowed her 10,000 Yen (about $100) note. She often gets revenge on it by kicking or using her powers on it to induce it into giving free drinks.
• Weirdness Censor: She already met several sorcerers and saw spells performed on a few occasions, but each time she either attributes it to esper powers or some other scientific explanation due to Academy City's abundance of espers. The one time someone tried explaining that's not how it works, they gave up before they even got to the point because Misaka asked a question while still trying to frame it from a scientific viewpoint.
• When She Smiles: In Railgun S when the storyline starts to merge with Index's Sisters arc, after six episodes of running herself extremely ragged, not sleeping or eating, all to try to stop the Level 6 Shift project.
• Wide-Eyed Idealist: At first, she had an idealistic view of the Academy City. However, after the events of the Sister's Arc and experiencing firsthand Academy City's dark side, she became more cynical but avoided showing it in front of her friends.
• With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: Implied. Gensei Kihara states that once she's 53% of the way to Level 6, she will lose her human personality.
• Wolverine Publicity: Mikoto appears in many promotions for the Index anime and her appearance in the openings suggests she is part of a trio with Touma and Index and will be involved in the plot. However, she only appears once in a while, rarely hangs out with Touma, and is only a supporting character at best following the Sisters' Arc.
• Worthy Opponent: She considers Gunha this, for being the first person besides Touma to No-Sell her electrical attacks.
• You Are Not Alone: When she properly reunites with Touma in New Testament Volume 2, she says this to him. The author even states that she's now "entering the fight", meaning she's going to involve herself with Touma's adventures with the Magic Side. Indeed, she becomes a valuable ally in the resulting conflicts.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Late into New Testament, she becomes the target of this by Aleister himself after she accesses the Anti-Art Attachment, as doing so puts her in a position to threaten his core goals. He acts on this when she accesses the original unit again in an attempt to decipher its Black Box by hitting her with a Curse, though not only is Touma on hand to dispel it, she actually initially refuses treatment so that the heroes can gain the necessary knowledge to access World Rejector's ideal world to rescue Kakeru Kamisoto. The perpetrator doesn't get the opportunity to try a repeat as the following arc sees Touma and Aleister finally confronting each other directly, with ironically a recovered Misaka with Misaki's help having a hand in stopping him.