Spring 2024 Anime: Train to the End of the World

Synopsis

In a seemingly ordinary rural town, something strange is happening to the residents. But Shizuru Chikura is more concerned for her missing friend. Determined to find her, Shizuru and three other girls board an abandoned train and travel to the outside world, unsure if they’ll make it back alive. As they venture toward the unknown, the question looms: What awaits them at the final stop?

(Source: Crunchyroll)

Comments

Alif Naufal H. (The Indonesian Anime Times)

Train to the End of the World‘s premiere episode genuinely surprised me, in a good way. While shows where cute girls are made to venture and survive in a post-apocalyptic world isn’t exactly new (one can look at the comparisons of this show with Girls’ Last Tour, for example), I think this show has the potential to be a completely unique experience with its sheer creativity and unhingedness alone; Who honestly thought that the activation of a ‘7G’ network will bring forth a wacky, somewhat psychedelic, and absolutely off the rails apocalypse?

This creativity is paired with an excellent world-building and introduction to our main characters in this first episode. After the ‘7G Incident’ happened, Japan is…all over the place. In the case of Agano, the people there are morphed into animals (though they still retain their ability to think like humans) once they reach the age of twenty-one and three months, except the train conductor Zenjirou who becomes an old man for some reason. The only silver lining is that food security isn’t really a problem; because Agano can harvest a huge amount of rice six times a year alongside bitter melons ever since the incident. The ‘distortion’ to the land and its people are seemingly different to each area in Japan, making anywhere outside of Agano truly ‘the unknown’.

I quite liked the sense of urgency behind the story; Two years ago before the incident took place, Yoka Nakatomi, a girl from Agano, went missing. This drives her friend, Shizuru, to try and find her. After seeing a photo of Yoka in Ikebukuro in a newspaper, she decided to embark on a journey outside of Agano on a train with her friends. It feels like Shizuru’s desperation to find Yoka stems from the inevitability of her becoming an animal like everyone else in Agano, and how the adults in Agano are becoming more and more animal-like. There’s also the concern of Yoka’s grandmother; she turns into a guinea pig after the incident two years ago, and with the species’ five-year lifespan, she only has three years to live. While Shizuru can’t escape her fate like the others, at least the clue about Yoka’s whereabouts gives her a reason to finally do something and embark on this journey towards the unknown.

Not only the story, the visuals of this show is also equally promising. The character designs are really cute and expressive, and this episode showcases some really nice character movements. The details of the titular train itself are rendered in 3D with great attention to detail, and the environment artworks are spectacular. In a show with a post-apocalyptic world as its setting, I think the way they draw the environments is really important, as it conveys to the viewers the state of the world the characters are in. The animation team really delivered on that front, as you can see for yourself in the screenshots I included at the end of the article.

One last thing: behind all of the craziness of this show’s post-apocalyptic setting, it seems like there’s some social commentary that Train to the End of the World is trying to tell too; The changes residents of Agano went through, becoming an animal and the inevitability of them losing all reason as they age feels like a commentary about Japan’s aging population, and at the same time, its disappearing countryside. This makes me wonder if future episodes will do more of this as the girls reach other areas of Japan–commenting on Japan’s history and real social issues via the show’s fictional and imaginative imagery.

But well, I don’t really mind if the show doesn’t go there. At this point, with a premiere as chaotic as that, Train to the End of the World‘s story can literally go anywhere. I’m really excited to see where this show’s unhinged train ride will take me, even if it goes off the rails in the end.

 Facts and Figures

Screenshots and Trailer

The Indonesian Anime Times