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“ | I only want to fight heroes who fight "to protect everyone." I was always drawn to those heroes. It wasn't that I wanted to be like them. I just wanted to know why they did that. If humans are true to their desires and impulses, they end up what people call "evil", right? So why do they defy their instincts like that? As a justification for wielding violence? To get praise and approval from others? Or because their education brainwashed them into thinking self-sacrifice is a noble thing? Playing the one needing protection is fine. But it really draws out their true nature when I'm their enemy. It's hilarious they think the bad guy would care. Stop forcing your values onto me. [...] If a little pain is all it takes to break their convictions, and if I can defeat them, then they're only fake heroes. Justice needs power to back it up. | „ |
~ Raifu explaining her motives. |
Raifu Wanigawa is a major antagonist in the A Certain Scientific Railgun manga, serving as one of the secondary antagonists of the Jailbreaker Arc.
She is one of Kimi Shundan's accomplices in her jailbreak who initially appeared as a competitor in the Jailbreak Trial. She hides her darker nature behind a bumbling and innocent façade.
Appearance[]
Raifu is a young girl around the age of 14 who has light teal-colored short hair and red eyes. She normally wears a pink sweater with long sleeves and a purple miniskirt.
Personality[]
At first glance, Raifu Wanigawa appears as a rather cowardly, timid, and helpless individual who mostly relies on the help of others. In truth, however, Raifu is far more sinister, cruel and merciless than she seems to be as she harbor a deep sense of "malice", best displayed when she left Shoubu Yamashiro a bloody mess in an alleyway after he discovered her true nature with his ability. She is also quite sadistic and is willing to either threaten or hurt her own subordinates. Moreover, Raifu is rather arrogant, thinking she is able to take on Mikoto Misaka, the 3rd Level 5 esper, in a one-on-one fight. However, she's very intelligent and deceptive, able to fool others with her youthful appearance and always weighs the odds of winning in a battle.
Raifu is extremely misanthropic, believing that mankind would be evil if they were true to their desires and impulses and is unable to understand "heroes who fight to protect everyone". As such, she is obsessed with heroes who protect others, as she can’t understand what would cause a human to act like that. To test them she usually plays the victim needing protection, though she also fights them directly. She professes a love of fighting those who call themselves heroes and defeating them to prove they're just "fakers" who don't have the strength to uphold justice.
In the past, Raifu was shown to be a bubbly and kind girl, but the effects of the Dark May Project and the modification on her brain by cutting off or adding to parts of it slowly warped her personality.
Biography[]
Raifu Wanigawa is a Child Error in Academy City who lived in an orphanage. There, she met Kimi Shundan,Saryou Tsurigane, Suzuran Aohoshi and Honoka Shirakinu. During her youth, Raifu was often bullied due to being a child error but Honoka would usually stand up for her. After Aohoshi left the orphanage, Raifu and the rest of her friends decided to take care of the younger child errors in the orphanage. Eventually, she and her friends became test subjects for the Dark May Project's 'power-boosting' facility.
Due to the various modification on her brain, Raifu became reduced to a near conscious vegetative state, where she would mindlessly stare out into nothing for hours a day and do no other activity and becoming near unresponsive to anyone and simply babble whatever was in her mind randomly, rendering her nearly helpless to do anything herself.
Powers and Abilities[]
Powers[]
Gravity Sling: Raifu's Level 4 esper ability which allows her to manipulate gravity that's based on a small radius around her. With this, Raifu is able to orbit objects in motion around her and send them back in a manner similar to Accelerator. Her most common use of this power is to cause attacks like bullets, missiles, electricity, and Mikoto Misaka's Railgun to miss her by shifting their trajectory, or even capture them with gravity to throw them back at the opponent. She can also use her power to stick to vertical surfaces, prevent others from getting away from her and can even use gravity to create a gravitational lens, bending light to slightly shift her image from her actual position. However, Mikoto speculates she wouldn't be able to send back a heavy projectile sent directly straight at her from a short distance.
Abilities[]
Keen Intellect: Raifu is shown to be quite intelligent and cunning, able to use her helpless appearance to fool others. She is constantly calculating the odds of victory in a fight and will create elaborate plans to trick and defeat superior opponents. During the fight with Mikoto Misaka, she mentally judges the probability of potential success between potential courses of action constantly in order to take the option with the best chance of success. She uses every edge she can to defeat Mikoto, from taking a hostage, trying to kill her with car traps, setting fire to buildings and alerting Academy City security drones to force Six-Wings helicopters to come in and attack herself and Mikoto.
Expert Combatant: While normally relying on her cowardly façade to manipulate others, Raifu is rather capable in hand-to-hand combat, effortlessly defeating Shoubu Yamashiro, a guy who could defeat security robots with a wooden sword, by herself. She is also considerably strong, being able to physically overpower a girl who is both taller than her and armed with a gun.
Fingernail Claws: Raifu wears long and sharp translucent claws on her fingernails that she hides her sleeves for close combat.
Exceptional Durability: Raifu is shown to be highly resilient, as she was able to continue fighting Mikoto after being electrocuted multiple times by her. It's only after Mikoto kicks her in the head and shoots her with another blast of electricity that she is finally defeated.