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The following contains mild spoilers for The Train to the End of the World - so if you want to go in completely fresh, be warned.
The spring 2024 anime season has quite a few gems – Kaiju No. 8 is poised to be yet another mega success, Wind Breaker is a surprisingly heartfelt (and beautifully animated) take on brawling delinquents, and Astro Note is a low-key riff on classic '80s romantic-comedy anime. But the one that seems most destined to become a cult hit is Train to the End of the World, a sci-fi series that embraces the surreal at every turn and has become a can’t-miss story in the process.
It all begins with a blast of 7G – a new cellular network (invented by the seemingly unscrupulous Pontaro) causes the entire world to become distorted to an apocalyptic extent. Years later, in the town of Agano, we meet a bunch of anthropomorphic animals, revealed to be the place’s former residents. As it turns out, the 7G causes you to morph into a creature there when you turn 21, shifting the narrative into a race against the clock for protagonists Shizuru, Nadeshiko, Reimi, and Akira. The group have discovered that their childhood friend, Yoka, is still alive in Ikebukuro, where the 7G was first launched. So now, with the help of some conductor training from the bizarre Zenjiro and a functional train at their disposal, they’re on a quest to go find her.
A parade of oddities
While it has a solid atmosphere and enjoyable writing, what fuels Train to the End of the World is its wonderfully earnest approach to its weirdness, something never undercut by too many unnecessary stabs at self-awareness. Some of this might have to do with the characters themselves. They’ve had time to assimilate to their new, bizarre world and even the fact that they’ll one day become animals doesn’t seem to horrify them all that much.
But whether it’s a guinea pig getting emotional over lost family members or an iguana’s impatience over his students or the use of a bitter melon to ward off a mushroom-infested horde, the audience is allowed to embrace the surreal on their own. Of course, there are some outsized reactions, but much of it reeks of the truth of this new world. It makes for something surprisingly poignant. As we come to know the new, chaotic logic of everything, we come to feel for this parade of oddities.
All on-board
The genres deftly glide between adventure, slice-of-life comedy, sci-fi, and horror, the latter of which being the focus of the most recent episode 'Short, Happy, and Easy'. In it, the group arrives at Higashi-Agano, a town where every resident has mushrooms sprouting from their skulls. The mushrooms, as we come to learn, place the residents in a kind of idyllic relaxation, one that numbs their eventual death from the infestation within a few years. Their attempts to lure in the group are a prime source for creature-feature thrills (it’s not hard to recall the Japanese sci-fi/horror classic from Godzilla director Ishiro Honda, Matango, or Attack of the Mushroom People).
However, the most troubling reveal is that the town isn’t a mindless zombified swarm after all. Rather, it’s the opposite. They think it’s foolish that the girls wouldn’t want to have a few years of oblivious peace before kicking the bucket, especially with the potential nightmare of the wasteland around them. To survive and to venture forth on this train is just offering more chances at misery. Why not grasp anesthetized bliss while you have the chance? Of course, the girls turn it down, but just like the world itself allowing the audience to find their own place among its structure (or lack thereof), it also provides themes like this to chew on and consider.
It shouldn’t be a surprise that Train to the End of the World is good so far – Tsutomu Mizushima (Another, Shirobako) is series director and Michiko Yokote (Mononoke, Heaven’s Design Team) is taking the lead as head writer. And considering the basic narrative arc (girls ride around, stopping at various places on the way to Ikebukuro), it makes it a prime subject for a kind of monster-of-the-week-esque storytelling. The only major worry is that, amidst a line-up of more openly pulse-pounding and action-driven shows, something as eccentric as this might get lost in the shuffle, heading down tracks unnoticed. All we can hope is that, by the end, more fans want to hop on the train as well.
Train to the End of the World is available to watch now via streaming on Crunchyroll.
To keep up to date with what's new in anime in 2024, check out our guide to the biggest upcoming and ongoing shows.
