Despite this, her personality comes off as brash, short-tempered, and often has a rough relationship with her younger friend Kuroko Shirai, though they do tend to get along at times.

Though she appears as a major character in Magical Index, she plays a much larger role in the spin-off Scientific Railgun.

Mikoto was created as a means to show the social hierarchy in the world, as well as how powerful the main character is.

Specifically, Mikoto was designed so that despite the fact that she was a character with strong and versatile attack power abilities, she was still inferior to Toma Kamijo.

However, it does eventually cross-over with the story of Magical Index, which it retells from her perspective, thus giving new background to several of the events of that series.

[9] Many products and other merchandise have been made depicting her, such as a computer,[10] nendoroids,[11] plush dolls,[12] action figures,[13] and soccer jerseys.

[14] A kick-able vending machine and special coins have also been made, both of which are based on actions the character performs in the series.

[21] In their review of the first two light novel volumes, Matthew Warner from The Fandom Post criticized Mikoto, saying she had potential but was underdeveloped.

Chris Beveridge from The Fandom Post said that he enjoyed watching Toma and Mikoto's relationship unfold, and that he "wanted them to get closer together".

"[20] Her nickname "Biribiri" (ビリビリ, the Japanese onomatopoeia of electric shocks) was used as inspiration to create the name of the Chinese streaming website Bilibili.

[31] Hsiao Bi-khim, the Vice President of the Republic of China (Taiwan), was nicknamed "Houshan Railgun" (後山電磁炮)[32] because of her namesake same with Mikoto (Chinese: 蕭美琴, Japanese: (御坂 美琴)).