The Spring 2024 Anime Preview Guide

Train to the End of the World

In a town in a not-so-ordinary countryside, there is a big and strange occurrence happening to its residents. But a young girl named Shizuru Chikura has a strong desire to see her lost friend again. Shizuru and three other girls board an abandoned train, and they set out to the outside world, where survival is not certain. They'll discover what awaits them at the last stop of the "Doomsday Train."

Train to the End of the World is an original anime from Girls und Panzer and Shirobako director Tsutomu Mizushima. The anime series is streaming on Crunchyroll on Mondays.

I love it when we get one of those completely unexpected premieres that shows up and just casually decides to blow you away with its charm and creativity. It was right around the time that the show depicted the psychedelic apocalypse brought about by the activation of a mythical “7G” Data Network – which takes place maybe two minutes into the episode, by the way – that I settled into my comfy chair and smiled to myself, thinking, 'Ah, yes. This is going to be one of the good ones.' Thankfully, the rest of the episode didn't disappoint me.

What I enjoyed the most about the premiere of Train to the End of the World is the strength of its weird and mysterious world-building (or would that be end-of-the-world building?) and how it paired so well with the introduction of our quartet of leading ladies. “Four-or-So Gal Pals Who Go Off On a Life-Changing Adventure” is the kind of stock premise that needs a little bit of zazz to get off of the ground these days, at least for me. I'd say that having those girls navigate the treacherous pathways and hidden roads of a fallen world gone mad with humans-turned-animals and who-knows-what-else is as much zazz as a fella could hope for.

If I have any reservations about the show so far, it would be its overreliance on speedy pattern and expository dialogue, which is one of those red flags that doesn't matter much if a story ends up being compelling and well-written, but could be the downfall of a weaker show. The dialogue isn't bad, mind you, and the zippy pace keeps things moving, but I would have loved this episode even more if the characters quieted down more often so we could soak in the atmosphere and feel the story. There's one great bit where our heroine Shizuku presents a little guinea pig grandmother with evidence that her human daughter may still be alive, and the wordless beat of the guinea-grammy being moved to tears is genuinely powerful stuff. More of that, please.

As it stands, though, I'm still excited as heck to see where Train to the End of the World goes from here. Even if it does end up collapsing under the weight of its script, I'll take clunky overambition over dull, safe retreads of the same old, same old any day.

Back during the trailer marathon this season, we joked about the idea that this anime could end up being a “School Live”—i.e., a show that looks super cute until the twist hits and you realize the horror hidden beneath. By the end of this episode, this could still be true—not because of an unreliable narrator or clever directorial trickery but rather because this show could be about anything.

By the very nature of the setting, reality has been so warped it's impossible to tell what genre the story is. Heck, each episode could slot into a different one. We could have a horror anime one week and a rom-com the next. The laws of physics aren't even a constant going by the opening scene—meaning we could even get episodes that are solidly surreal or ones that completely change the art style. The possibilities are truly endless.

However, while this is the show's greatest strength, it's also its greatest weakness. 22 minutes in, and I have no idea where the story is going—what themes it wants to explore. All we're given is a basic plot framework and four characters who can be summed up in a single word each (“determined,” “peacemaker,” “serious,” and “free-spirited,” in case you were wondering). I'm sure things will continue to develop as the series goes along but whether it'll be worth it or not in the end, I have no idea.

Maybe it was reading too many Boxcar Children books, but I've always had a fascination with mysterious trains. The train in this series isn't mysterious per se, but the world it's set to travel through absolutely is – it's a Japan warped by the thoughtless pursuit of ever-better technology, a drive not to be the last country to adopt a new 7G network that irrevocably (apparently) changes the land and its people. In Agano, everyone over the age of twenty-one and three months became, and continues to become, an animal, with the exception of Zenjiro, who became an old man. Everything about Japan appears to have been warped somehow, like a version of the nightmare parade in Paprika. It has a similar feel to it, too, a terrible inevitability that no one understands but everyone is trying their best to acclimate to, even when kids know how they'll change when they hit that all-important age.

This sense of impending inevitability is what really makes the episode. Two years ago, when the world changed, a local girl named Yoka vanished, and her friend Shizuku is desperate to find her. It feels like this may be in part because of the deadline for her own humanity; we can see Shizuku worrying about how the changed adults are turning ever more animal-like and wondering if Yoka's grandmother, who became a guinea pig, will die within the next three years because of that species' five-year lifespan. She knows that leaving Agano probably won't change her fate, but she still boards an abandoned train and heads out when she sees a newspaper showing Yoka in Ikebukuro. It's like she was finally handed an excuse after two years of instability, and now she can justify quitting school and going out to do something.

I'm not sure where this is heading. It risks becoming too enamored of its cast and devolving into a post-apocalyptic CGCT show, but School-Live! showed us that the two genres can coexist really well together. I like the juxtaposition of the relatively realistic animals (including a gross panda), cute anime girls with different body types, and the surreal landscapes, and the question of what poor Yoka has been through is one I really want an answer to. Yoka was forced to kick of the 7G incident by a man named Pontaro who also is responsible for Zenjiro's confused state, and she's clearly still stuck with him two years later, and that's very worrying. Whether Shizuku is on a rescue mission or a journey to learn some very uncomfortable truths, I'm curious to see where this train is heading.

I think anyone who saw the trailers, or even just the title of this show, knew there'd be some kind of swerve. I don't think anyone expected this. I certainly didn't anticipate the first 30 seconds of this premiere to feature a girl being kidnapped by a drone to take part in a flim-flam man's launch of the “7G Network” and inadvertently warping the fabric of the universe. Frankly, I'm glad. “Cute girls hanging out in the apocalypse” is an idea that's gotten rather played out, so going for a purposefully ridiculous, comedic, and totally unhinged take is a welcome bit of novelty. By starting off that hard and committing to its off-the-wall premise without any obfuscation, this premiere ends up way more intriguing than if it had held things close to the chest.

That said, this premiere does strain under its own premise a bit, especially after you get over the shock of it all. While there's humor to be mined from a whole village of yokels just adapting to life as bears, capybaras, and dinosaurs, the joke wears thin long before it ends, and as a result this premiere doesn't reach the heights it really could have. By the end of it I had a decent idea of our main quartet's personalities and rapport, but no strong sense of connection to any of them, and that probably wouldn't have been the case if the scene of old-timer animals gossiping had been a minute or two shorter. Similarly, the inciting incident that gets our girls aboard the train and on a cross-country trip to Ikebukuro is so abbreviated that a character literally says he can't come along with them “because reasons” and nothing else. I get the joke, but man is that an awkward delivery for the most pivotal section of this whole episode.

Similarly, the visuals of this premiere are promising, but also showing some visibly straining seams. The character designs are cute and expressive, and there's some moments of great physical comedy. The controls of the titular train are lovingly rendered in great detail. Yet alongside those is some occasionally stiff and awkward animation for the animal characters that feels really clunky compared to the humans. The good news is that those animals and their difficult-to-animate bodies won't be around for most of this road-trip story, and the environmental work is great. So hopefully, as our intrepid heroines roam the post-apocalyptic world of weird and surreal train stops, the stronger elements will shine.

There's so much original and unpredictable energy here that I can't get too hung up on some minor execution flubs, anyway. While not as uproariously funny as past Tsutomu Mizushima projects, I did laugh a good bit, and similarly clicked with the uncertainty and angst wrapped around all that humor. This premiere has a winning idea up its sleeve, and so long as they can deliver on that promise, I think this will be a good time. If not, well, I'll get to make some terrible puns about it “going off the rails” then. Win-win.