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(A) Certain Scientific Railgun (TV) (all seasons).

Umm... There isn't a definition of Mary Sue. The term is loosely used to encompass characters that show a number of traits but these traits depend largely on who's using the word.

Uh, yes there is. Look up the history. Specifically "Mary Sue" was the name of a character in a Star Trek fanfic designed to show the sort of characters authors stick in their fanfiction.

If you want to call Touma a "Boring, Invincible Hero," by all means. But a Mary Sue he is not.

And how are Touma's victories unbelievable? He has the power to negate people's special powers. This is devastating to his opponents because typically people in this world rely soley on their powers. Take away Mikoto's electricity and she's just a typical school girl. Take away Styl's magic and he's just a 14 year old with wacky horomones.

There is also one specific reason Touma can't be a Mary Sue. He is a guy, the proper term should be Gary Stu, I am sure some of you must have read the SAO thread to remember that.

But Touma has his weaknesses that make him not capable; for one his misfortune, the fact he ends up in hospital in almost every arc, he ends up hurt or in fights a lot, you can't say that is a great relationship thing.

That's part of why main characters can't really be Mary Sue (or whatever your prefered gender variant). He's the protagonist so of course he's not going to lose an important fight! If he does you can be sure he'll come back and defeat the opponent eventually.

Granted this does put the Sisters arc of Railgun in a sticky situation, since Mikoto is the main character here, but spoiler[Touma beating Accelerator] was established in Index first.

*sigh* Each individual victory is believable. They become less and less likely with each new one, though. Once again, his opponents seem to be carrying the idiot ball for him just so that he can win his fights. Either that or he is extremely lucky, which is not what the author suggests repeatedly.

Okay, yes, since this is shonen, that trope is in full effect, I agree. However, I don't see how that is a good thing, why it has to be so, or how that would diminish the sueishness of any character.

His speeches put him in the right and tend to give him high moral ground no matter their actual content, which is self-righteous more than anything else.

His persuasiveness with those speeches often goes into asspull territory, too. Izzard is a fine example (argue if you want, his state of mind was not nearly unbalanced enough to freak out so fast; if his mind WAS in such a fragile state, no one bothered to make that apparent in the anime, which makes the scene less believable than I could make it with a bit of editing; seeing as I'm not a professional writer or editor, I don't see that as a good thing).

*sigh* Each individual victory is believable. They become less and less likely with each new one, though. Once again, his opponents seem to be carrying the idiot ball for him just so that he can win his fights. Either that or he is extremely lucky, which is not what the author suggests repeatedly.

...Go read some serious literature, will you?
Okay, yes, since this is shonen, that trope is in full effect, I agree. However, I don't see how that is a good thing, why it has to be so, or how that would diminish the sueishness of any character.

Not really. If you have an enemy that cannot be defeated by the protagonist and choose to have someone else save the day, you just have to include dangerous enemies that can be dealt with by the protagonist in a spectacular fashion. Give the protagonist their time to shine, essentially.

Again I ask when has Touma ever not been in the right? If the person he was fighting was the right one, then they wouldn't have gotten Touma to set his sights on them in the first place. And if he's been tricked into it, he usually sees that he's mistaken and rectifies it like in the case of the Amakusas.

Uh... Izzard's case had nothing to do with convincing him.

Touma scared the shit out of him. His faltering does still make sense since he was so confident his Ars Magna was so absolute and unbeatable, so being proven otherwise caused him to doubt that and since the ability relies on his mental state it really did stop working. The bigger the ego, the more fragile it is.

Creative Writing 101: The protagonist is the one to resolve the conflict. They wouldn't be a good protagonist if other people solved all their problems.

So unless you want everything to be a tragedy, then yeah, the good guy has to beat the bad guy.

I assume you're talking about Team ITEM. I'm sure that won't stop people from complaining about Touma making Mikoto look bad by beating Accelerator.

And I didn't find the performance put on by Touma convincing enough to push Izzard over the brink like that.

...(spoilers for volume 22)spoiler[Well, unless that sequence was a very early glimpse of the THING that the Imagine Breaker is suppressing. If so, it may have been an almost genius idea, though still lacking in descriptive power to be proper foreshadowing. Then again, maybe it did have that descriptive power in the novel.]

...no, really, go grab some good literature. Resolving the conflict doesn't necessary mean winning. Resolution of conflict can be many, many things. There is a thing called "tragedy", for example, which doesn't necessarily end with the protagonist winning. Yet they can still be a brilliant protagonist despite this. The Children of Hurin instantly come to mind, as well as Kalevala with Kullervo and The Nibelungenlied with Siegfried. All have their victories but those do not resove any conflict or create a new one if they do, and it's only by the protagonists losing their lives that things get resolved.

I don't see any reason for them to do so, though.

If you don't find Touma acting like getting his arm cut off was no big deal convincing acting, well, I can't imagine what actor you'd give the Oscar to.

It was. They thought it was just a result of Izzard's imagination, though.

The point is that winning all the time isn't a trait of being a Mary Sue, it's a trait of being a protagonist.

Though like you were talking about before, Mikoto could resolve it in the way she initially intended: spoiler[Letting Accelerator kill her in one move, thus proving Tree Diagram's calculations wrong and putting an end to the experiment because they can't recalculate.] I doubt anyone would be happy with that ending, though.

unless there is some aspect of this that is specifically relevant to Railgun.