Personally I wouldnt say its a Spin off, its the same story (spans over the same time) as the "main" story only from the other chars point of view. Including retelling the bits where the main chars from both stories are together. If it was just a normal spin off they would skip that and just say oh this is misaka story during such and such event. So really it comes together as the same story from different points of view, and works rather well for that. And as most people have said its a bit better then index. Index seems to have trouble really finding its plot and direction, where this really comes across as a focused story from start to finish.

This story is great in every way except one. Its a spin-off. That means that its ultimately held back by the already written and established main story. We ultimately know whats will and will not happen in the future. If you somehow managed to stumble upon this without reading/watching/hearing spoilers from the Index storyline, enjoy!

While Touma's plot armor is as ridiculous as ever, science is still really just technobabble and the main plot still has to stick to Index, Railgun expands upon it, and excels whenever it's allowed to be original. Kamachi's wordy style of storytelling is better suited for manga and novels, as we're more likely to forgive lengthy speeches during a fight (or perhaps it's just because the anime is a terrible adaptation attempt). One Railgun chapter of Kongou Mitsuko, for example, has already made her more memorable than most of the cast in Index, which just keeps getting sillier every second without ever fleshing out the characters.

If you're like me and dismayed by how the anime turned out, chances are you'll still find something to like when reading this manga.

... Last updated on June 27th, 2011, 11:43am

@canucks This story /is/ shounen, but not because of the content or the fact that it came from a light novel or anything like that. It's classified as shounen because it runs in Dengeki Daioh, which is a shounen magazine. I wish people would learn that demographics is not equal to genre. In other words, content does not determine seinen/shounen/shoujo/josei/etc.

I like the setting of Index/Railgun, but the Index x Touma storyline was ...not all that interesting. Being able to drop Index and read this instead is great, and I wish more authors would try something like this.

How on earth is this seinen? Just because this came from a light novel series should'nt qualify this for something it obviously is not. The characters are charming, plot is convoluted ( in the bad way ) but acceptable considering this is a "side-story" ... This is typical but still enjoyable.

Better than the main story of the manga, because see Mikoto and her friends as main chara is awesome.
I love the design andi hope to see Miss Railgun more, and probably here is more MikotoxTouma than the IndexXTouma of the main story.