Train to the End of the World – Episode 04

Episode Synopsis:

The girls pull through several increasingly unsettling stations as the real scope of their journey starts to sink in. As they dodge bizarre and frightening phenomena, the mushroom on Akira finally becomes too obvious to hide. While Reimi is able to remove it, Akira’s personality seems to have been excised as well, so the other three begin searching their upcoming stops for a doctor. When they find a promising location, Reimi and Shizuru scout ahead, but encounter a small but serious threat.

Review:

Episodes two through four have done a great job establishing our characters and the absolutely banana-pants world they’ve thrust themselves into. After the building tension of the mushroom station, this episode opts for a more rapid-fire approach, as the train passes several stations that range from unsettling to outright vicious. Whether it’s rampaging goat-people, a hail of (possibly formerly human?) golfballs, or a land of disembodied organs, the world is completely topsy-turvy at this point. All the girls have great reactions to this, but Reimi’s outbursts at every new bit of weirdness are especially fantastic.

As they continue, Akira’s condition worsens as the mushroom starts to sap her drive and spirit. Her fear keeps her from telling the others, even as it becomes clear that something is up. I’m sure all of us have tried to ignore an obvious problem until it spilled over into something way outside of our control, and the fact that she’s an anxious teenager hiding behind a prickly smartypants facade makes it easy to buy that she’d hide a metaphorical zombie bite in this situation.

Reimi’s response is to immediately rip off the mushroom, which staggers away, screams, and freaking EXPLODES in a mildly terrifying scene that seems designed to shock you in case you’ve gotten a bit too comfortable all of this strangeness. This leads to further problems, as Akira regresses to a childish mess, and the girls are worried that she may have lost more than the fungus.

Desperate to find a doctor, the girls reach out to Zenjirō through the rails, who says that he knows one in a town ahead before wasting his five minutes of lucidity on petty grudges. Awesome bit; love it. Also, his awful map comes back, and if you’re willing to pause on it, you’ll see that it’s more accurate than his scribbling might lead you to believe!

Eventually, the crew manages to reach the town where the doctor supposedly lives, but discover that it’s practically a miniature, and teeming with soldiers to deal with them the way Japan has always dealt with Kaiju.

Nice Evangelion homage there, my dudes!

Between the absurdity and existential angst, we get moments of the girls as young children which flesh out their personalities and relationships. We see that Akira’s fear of mortality is nothing new, and her tendency to bully Reimi and prey on her naivete goes back to their childhoods. This makes Reimi’s push to save Akira even more meaningful, even if her “charge in headfirst” attitude causes a new incident as soon as they arrive in the diminutive town.

We also get a few moments where the girls need to navigate the particulars of their long train journey. Shizuru gives her friends a crash course in driving the train, and we see them setting up for a track switch. It’s nice to see the specific quirks of rail travel play out, and whoever lovingly recreated the interior of the Seibu 2000 passenger train gets plenty of time to show off their addiction to detail.

Summary:

So far, the 7G freakiness and the girls’ gumption has kept the show going strong. I share Su’s concerns that those two pillars may not be enough to sustain the show over the long term, but so far those worries are being kept at bay. I’m excited to see what nonsense they get up to, and if the show’s teasing of deeper themes grows into something substantial.

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