Train to the End of the World – Episode 03

All aboard for wacky hijinks, eh.

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This episode ends up being kind of grim, since the side effects of having mushrooms growing on one’s head are apparently a relaxed attitude towards the world around you and a dramatic decrease in life expectancy – the fact that the residents of East [Higashi] Agano have collectively decided to, shall we say… check out early must speak to how poorly they’ve been taking the sudden isolation. The girls may have their own goals and raisons d’etre that involve navigating the outside world, but they certainly aren’t in a position to drag anyone else back to reality. Perhaps fittingly, the episode seems to focus more on drama than comedy, although it does have its share of gags.

There’s decent connective tissue here, too – getting some shelf-stable food to supplement the bitter melons that are inexplicably overgrowing the train certainly helps set up for the coming journey. We also continue to be drip-fed morsels of past interactions between target-of-the-quest Yoka and the protagonists, particularly instigator-with-side-ponytail Shizuru, to better define the stakes, such as they are.

As an aside, this episode prompted me to see what’s been going on with Shimeji Simulation, a surreal manga by Tsukumizu (who, if there’s any justice in this world, is swimming in yen having created Girls’ Last Tour) that begins when a girl decides to rejoin society after being a shut-in for long enough that her head has begun to host a few shimeji mushrooms. Apparently it recently wrapped up its near five-year run, and nobody is licensing it ::annoyed emoji::.

Summary:

All aboard for wacky hijinks, eh.

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