This season’s unclassifiable derangement is perhaps the most unclassifiable and deranged so far.
I started watching Train to the End of the World because it has the same director and the same writer as Shirobako, the best (if not gayest) of P.A. Works’ “gals at work” series. The banter feels familiar and there’s a similar level of absurdity in the construction of in-universe fictions (I still wish we got to see Border Town Depopulation Girl), but beyond that …
The premise is quite straightforward: Japan’s rollout of 7G caused the magical realism apocalypse, and now Mad Max-style convoys are required to run supplies between isolated villages. Also your mom’s a red panda now.
We proceed to follow Shizuru as she attempts to find her friend (normal heterosexual friend) Yoka, who ran away from home and was last seen in Ikebukuro, the epicenter of the Incident. She learns how to drive a train from a man who only stops being old for 5 minutes a day, then she and her other friends begin their journey.
Did you think we would get whimsy as they travel the Seibu Ikebukuro Line and observe the wacky changes that have occurred at each stop? Well, we get whimsy, but we also get a stop where the inhabitants have formed a suicide cult involving parasitic mushrooms, and another that forces you to relive your most traumatic memories. That comes right after the one that just makes you really itchy.
Is this show good? I couldn’t say. Is it well-animated? Not especially. But it is so insane, and so committed to doing absolutely whatever the fuck it feels like, that I am left somewhat in awe.
