Anime: Shuumatsu Train Doko e Iku?

After watching Abenobashi and Sonny Boy I went on to hunt some other stand out titles and after being bored by Loser Ranger I started this one.

Coincidentally, it is also about traveling to weird places, with references to other stuff, and the setting being the result of the subconscious of a character.

The main difference is that this show is not an isekai, it takes place on a messy version of Japan. Also, this series is not a mystery, the reason for the country being messed up badly is clear from the very first scene of the show, so it’s very straightforward in that regard.

Liking this show or not comes down to whether you like wacky stuff or not. I usually don’t, so I didn’t like it, but if you do, chances are that you will.

The actual plot is about a train going from Agano to Ikebukuro prefectures in Japan, in order for 4 girls to find a fifth one so one of them can ask for forgiveness. From there, they go through some of them, all which are one crazier than others.

Unless there’s some cultural motif behind them, each place only has one wacky characteristic about it, making each setting to feel limited, and disjointed from everything else.

In both Abenobashi and Sonny Boy that was excusable because they were literally different worlds. As much as its fanbase call its world building as the best in fictional history, in One Piece, every island seems to be its own thing, disjointed from global events and people from everywhere else. But at least every island is explored and explained on its own, with reasoning behind their ecosystems and even flashbacks to explore the history and lore behind each one of them.

Not here, the only thing connecting the different places is just the rails, and there’s no reasoning behind anything in the setting other than that being what was on the mind of a girl at a specific moment.

There are so many prefectures that there’s not enough time to show all of them in one season. Some take one or two episodes of screentime, so others are skipped in short scenes or not even shown in the slightest at all. The end result is a possibly vast setting feeling not only disjointed and random, but also unimaginative and limited.

Not like the writing is any better, as there are several plot conveniences throughout the series:

-One character knows the truth behind the whole thing but can’t say it because he was mind jacked, yet conveniently can tell the main characters what they need at very specific moments, as if every conflict presents itself on the short time that he can serve the plot.

-They communicate with morse code on the rails, despite the ones from a whole prefecture being literally destroyed early in the story, and thus not connecting with the rest.

-There’s a girl that knows random things about everything, good for the rest of them because they wouldn’t accomplish anything if not for her.

-Several random apparitions and encounters with characters to provide information or save the girls at crucial moments.

-An enemy crow becoming good kind of just because he was around the amnesiac main plot device.

And the episodic stories on each place are more often that not very ridiculous, to the point of making me feel insulted, both for their writing and for the silly tone in them, in what is supposed to be a crucial crisis for Japan.

I kind of appreciate that the makers went out of their way to make the least generic possible comical take on a genre or a specific story in them, so they can’t really even be called parodies, but by themselves they felt very stupid, as if mocking the audience for watching the show.

Also, some episodes had some character immersion, but most didn’t or had very short scenes to count as fleshing out the cast in a meaningful way, not that their backgrounds were any less silly to begin with.

I was expecting for the conclusion to at least come with an anti-escapism message, but it didn’t even have that. The girls just apologize and convince the other to go back with them to have fun.

And the setting doesn’t really go back to how it was before everything is back, which was the second main point of the series, so the conclusion feels only half accomplished. Not that it was going to be that good either, because the second main objective was getting a global reset, like in the poor excuse of a fake ending of Abenobashi.

Not everything about the series is plain awful though, as the characters are actually kind of a surprise. One look at them and you expect them to have typical moe personalities with childish behaviours, mentally way younger than they are supposed to be, and that’s not the case at all.

The protagonist wants to apologize to another girl, knows martial arts and is good at fighting, and seems to be quick at learning things, she can also be quite rude towards others.

There’s a gyaru, and although she’s dumb as expected, she also has some insane senses and can fight when pushed enough, and can be quite perceptive of others.

There’s a typical kind girl that wants the others to behave properly and be on good terms, yet can be very blunt and confront others, and is also revealed to have a dramatic past, if just for a few seconds.

And there’s Akira, the shorter chuuni, geeky girl that knows about a lot of random stuff and keeps saving everyone’s asses, yet is also a scaredy-cat. She is easily the best girl.

The main plot device girl of the show was called Yoka, I think. You do get some flashbacks about her, her hobbies and conflict with the protagonist, which are after all what started the series and main conflict in the first place, but on her own remains an amnesiac quiet girl throughout the whole show. She’s not even punished for some of the things she does in the series.

The others are just plot devices, no reason to talk about them, some of them have a lot of information about the setting and is never explained how or why, and there’s no development nor catharsis for anyone, forget about that.

Visually the series is very solid. The artwork has practically no quality drops, there is a lot of violence and horrifying stuff despite the child friendly presentation, the backgrounds are crazy and well done and they vary on each episode to provide diversity of things to look at, and the motions are expressive and done with a lot of care. Even when the characters are not doing anything, the directing is dynamic enough to use lots of different changes of perspectives and angles to make it more fun to look at. The only issues I find in it is some weak CGI here and there, and the character designs being unnecessarily childish, goofy and generic.

The sound is another surprise, mainly because of the voice acting, which, again, is nothing like the moe high-pitched voices that you would expect looking at the character designs. Really good voices and acting, despite also being one of the goofiest I’ve ever heard. The sound effects are impactful and immersive, both in downtime and action scenes. The music is ok I guess, I didn’t mind about either opening nor ending one bit.

As a whole, I applaud the audiovisual surprises I got with this anime in acting, sound effects, artwork, motions and directing, and slightly less in the writing for the personalities of the main girls. Other than that I find the script quite terrible, so I’d say this is a series not worth getting into in the least, unless you are a real fan of silly and wacky stuff, and don’t mind shows that feel mostly episodic and directionless. If you don’t mind that, this will probably be right up your alley, unless you hate childish stuff.