LogFAQs > #967623706

and as far as the third season of Railgun goes, the sports festival arc is pretty good overall, starts a bit weak but gets better and has one of the most hyped/important scenes in the entire franchise. (also a funny contrast to Index's sports festival, which is one of the worst and most pointless arcs in the series) Indian Poker arc is kind of all over the place and one of the weaker arcs, but has some good moments. Biggest problem is that the main plot of the Indian Poker arc doesn't actually have much to do with Indian Poker itself.

at the very least I'm glad that they animated the Indian Poker arc instead of doing another filler arc or only covering the sports festival because it means that they might be able to animate the Astral Buddy spinoff in the future. (lol that's not going to happen).

Though there's kind of an issue with the Railgun starting with the sports festival, in that it's far enough in that they thought that it would never get animated. So that while the Level Up and Sisters arcs stand alone reasonably well or with minimal knowledge of the main series (like Touma, or the members of ITEM), the later parts of the series have a lot more cameos and references that only the more hardcore fans would get (including to more up to date stuff that's past what the main series anime covered) and it's expected to have a firmer idea of the timeline and when and everything takes place relative to the main series since it jumps forward a bit more in time with minimal hints for context of when they actually take place. Even in the manga, one of the bonus character design sketch pages mentions concepts related to Thelema and the Aeon of Horus, expecting you to already have some degree of the "real life" "theory" and how it relates to the story in Index/Railgun.

edit: also, the Accelerator spinoff kinda sucks. It doesn't really add anything, and doesn't really get Accelerator's character so it just leans into the surface edgy chuuni stuff with him. also the Scavengers were a little better in Railgun than in the series they were actually introduced where they were just random pointless doofuses to immediately get beaten down.