5 episodes into Certain Scientific Railgun, and the writing is so all over the place, and episode 5 is the pinnacle of that (slight spoilers ahead)

The episode starts off with two of the main characters having an argument about how one of them acts recklessly and tries to handle things on her own. The episode focuses on this character realizing her recklessness and learning from it.

Sounds like a simple bit of character development, right? Well, the episode then transitions to a flashback of around 2-3 years, and it shows the same character trying to stop a bank robbery, and she ends up almost killing two of her close friends as a result of being reckless.

The flashback ends with the character promising that she won't act reckless ever again, to avoid that same event happening twice. I get what the episode intended to do, but the use a flashback implies that she didn't learn a damn thing between then and present day.

And to top it all off, the flashback is instigated by the character ADMITTING that she forgot that promise she made!

I'm still gonna keep going to see if the show gets better, as it does have its good moments, and there's clearly some merit to it seeing as it has 4-5 seasons, but MAN did this one episode leave a bad impression.

Last tweet in this thread.

In an ironic twist, the very next episode after the one I ranted about does a MUCH better job at character development. No convoluted flashbacks or reasoning behind it.

Like I said before, the writing is all over the place.