Shiny New Anime Prep – “Train to the End of the World”

Title: Train to the End of the World

Episodes: 12

Streaming: Crunchyroll

At the rate that new technologies are developed and released upon the public, it’s natural to feel nervous when yet another miracle invention (which may or may not have been fully vetted by, well, anyone) appears for public consumption. Enter 7G, a communications technology that Japan tech gurus and government leaders alike hope will return the country to the technological forefront. Teenager Yoka finds herself in the wrong place at the wrong time and is plucked off the street to press the start button for 7G during a ribbon-cutting ceremony. However, immediately after her finger pushes play, reality warps to the point that most places and people become unrecognizable and civilization collapses.

Now two years later the very few settlements that remain are scattered along the Seibu Ikebukuro line, where each stop is now hours or even days travel from its neighbors. Shizuru has spent the last couple of years since the 7G incident living her life in the town of Agano where, due to the effects of 7G, residents transform into animals after they turn 21 years old. Shizuru and Yoka had a falling-out just before the incident, and Shizuru grasps onto any snippet of information she can find about Yoka’s possible whereabouts so that they can hopefully repair their rift. When she by chance sees a newspaper clipping with a photo of Yoka in the now-mutated Ikebukuro, she makes it her mission to pilot an old abandoned train car to make the weeks-long trip into the city. However, she won’t have to make the trip alone – she’s joined by friends Nadeshiko, Reimi, and Akira, who experience this wild new world along with her.

If you know me, you know I love an anime-original series. Even when they’re imperfect (and most of them are) they often feel freer, as if being unshackled to some kind of source material allows them more room to stretch. Likewise, I also have an appreciation for the directorial work of Tsutomu Mizushima. Whatever the story or subject matter, he just seems to have a knack for making whatever it is more entertaining than it might be in the hands of others.

Train to the End of the World has the benefit of both of these pedigrees, and the proof is in the pudding. For all its issues (and there are a few) it’s an incredibly fun, creative series with a story that, in spite of its sci-fi trappings, is down-to-earth in its exploration of a fractured relationship between two teenage girls.

The format of the series serves it well. The Seibu Ikebukuro line has 31 stations, so an episode devoted to each station wouldn’t really be possible (unless the series were more than 1-cour, but for an anime-original I feel like that’s becoming pretty uncommon). The series does a good job of balancing the more limited central plot locations and the “blink-and-you’ll-miss-it” stops that are reduced down to one quirky aspect (for example, a station where the townsfolk have all turned into angry goats). We get to see the full spectrum of strangeness that’s resulted from the botched 7G rollout without spending too much time in places where there’s not a great potential for a story.

Having said that, there are certain points in the series where I felt like the pacing was just off. There’s an episode later in the series where the girls encounter a town transformed to mimic a popular anime that’s referenced throughout the series. In this town, the bad guys have won and the magical girl heroes have all been killed. In the span of the episode, the protagonists locate and join a resistance group, a resurrection of the heroes goes awry, the protagonists take the place of the magical girls, and defeat all of the enemies. The dialog, action, and overall pacing, while allowing for the story to be told, doesn’t leave any time to take a breath. The final episode has this issue as well to a lesser extent. It features a final train chase and battle in warped space that I wish didn’t feel quite so rushed. I suspect this isn’t as much a craftsmanship issue as it is an issue with how anime in general is produced and scheduled; with, say, 15 total episodes or a longer finale, some of the other story beats may have had room to stretch. However, the reality is that a “season” is 12 or 13 weeks and an anime-original story (versus something based on popular source material) usually doesn’t have the amount of clout needed to campaign for more storytelling time, so I tend to give this and other similar series a pass.

For all its various issues the strengths of the series outshine its weaknesses, in my opinion. I’m a sucker for interesting visual and thematic representation of mundane, relatable human experiences. Who hasn’t had a stupid fight with one of their friends? Who hasn’t been haunted by selfish actions or thoughts? Who hasn’t had their perception of the world altered after a humbling experience? Who hasn’t had their brain rotted by new, untested technology? Okay, maybe not that last one (although I’m sure many folks have a weird uncle who might think otherwise). There are several flashbacks throughout the series to the argument that Shizuru and Yoka had, which ultimately solidified Yoka’s plans to travel to Tokyo. The argument is so mundane as to seem inconsequential under normal circumstances. However, the emotions tied to it are confusing and conflicted, leading Yoka’s heart to 7G-ify Japan into a twisted, weird version of itself. The distance between the emotions of the two girls stretches the Seibu Ikebukuro line into a multi-week end-to-end journey. It’s simple (some may say too on-the-nose), but effective.

I liked this series a lot. It manages to combine a sense of adventure and discovery with its own personal brand of absurd weirdness, and I can appreciate that. I think its general skepticism at the motivations of tech CEOs and they way some of them attempt to manipulate the perception of the world around them to their own selfish ends is also very resonant at the moment. But most of all, I just enjoy the character story at the center of it all. Looking back at my teenage life, the conflicts and emotions seem like such small potatoes now. However, at the time I was experiencing them, they were my entire world. Even though my experiences didn’t go so far as to alter the physical world, it’s worth being reminded how real they were to me back then.

Notable Content: Some violence. There’s some mild fanservice-adjacent material (one girl has a mushroom growing from her rear-end and there’s some brief comedy related to that). One character is under mind control and manipulation for a good portion of the story.

You Might Also Like: Girls’ Last Tour, Humanity Has Declined