Where Does the Doomsday Train Go?

Welcome to ANIWIRE! Today we’re discussing the premiere of Train to the End of the World, a new series by the director and scriptwriter of 2014’s Shirobako. Before that, though, here’s some recent news in the anime and manga world.

News

• Toei released a video commemorating the 25th anniversary of magical girl classic Ojamajo Doremi. This show’s never been released in full in the United States, but it’s absolutely worth watching if you can track down subtitles.
• There’s a new Kickstarter organized by indie manga publisher par excellence Glacier Bay Books! This is worth throwing money at if only to reserve a copy of this year’s best manga release, ...And the Strange and Funky Happenings One Day by Natsujikei Miyazaki.
• The words donburi, isekai and tokusatsu (among others) have been added to the Oxford English Dictionary.
• Crunchyroll uploaded all 194 episodes of the classic anime comedy Urusei Yatsura. I recommend checking out Caribou-kun’s video guide to the series if you want an entry point.
• Seven Seas licensed Tsuchika Nishimura’s The Concierge at Hokkyoku Department Store, the source for last year’s reportedly excellent film of the same name.
• Discotek Media released their BluRay for Berserk 1997, a very good (if stiff) TV adaptation of a legendary comic. It’s out of stock right now, but there should be more coming to the usual storefronts.

Bookmarks

• Lots of high quality April Fool’s Jokes floating around. This one (a tie-in with the fighting game Granblue Fantasy Versus Rising) is my favorite.
• For the Anime Nostalgia podcast, Dawn H. and Rachel chatted for nearly 4 hours to commemorate the 40th anniversary of Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind.
• For Sakuga Blog, Kevin Cirugeda wrote about this winter’s excellent romance series A Sign of Affection.
• David Cabera wrote about the newest Shiren the Wanderer, and why classic roguelikes rule.
• For Inverse, Robin Bea wrote about the games industry’s embarrassing tendency to release parody dating sims or visual novels on April Fool’s Day. Respect the medium, folks!
• On that note, the game development circle Prof Lily made a game about this very subject, titled 31st March, Midnight.

What I Wrote

Several cool projects are brewing behind the scenes! In the meantime, check out this new episode of Unpacking the Shelf. My friend Alex and I discuss the newest Flash comic by Spurrier, Deodato Jr. and company. It’s unexpectedly spooky–but is that enough?!

AMV of the Week

Here’s “To Have Without Holding” by Seasaltmemories.

This piece kinda spoils the new anime series Train to the End of the World, but not really. I wouldn't worry about it.

The anime series Train to the End of the World was first announced on October 14th 2022, the 150th anniversary of Railway Day. All we knew for months was that it was about four girls, a dog and their train. The previews did not explain why these girls had a train or where it was going. Only the first promotional image, which featured the characters looking into a kaleidoscopic sky, hinted at a greater truth just out of reach. 

Train to the End of the World is not based on a manga series. It’s an original story directed by Tsutomu Mizushima with scripts by Michiko Yokote. You can make vague guesses as to what will happen in the show based on the synopsis and promotional art. But aside from the contents of the first episode, which aired today, the show remains a mystery box.

The mystery box remains a favorite promotional tool of original anime productions. This year’s cult hit Bang Brave Bang Bravern hid its titular mecha from the audience until the first episode aired. 2011’s Puella Magi Madoka Magica kept its horror elements a secret until its premiere, and waited until its third episode to reveal just how mean a series it would be. Lycoris Recoil, Wonder Egg Priority and even manga adaptations like School Live! all played the same game.

Other folks have made an art of promotional obfuscation. Kunihiko Ikuhara and his crew tease each new series with cryptic clues. Mawaru Penguindrum’s trailers alternated between fairy-tale beds and Wataru Osakabe’s ominous iconography. Yuri Bear Storm’s website featured repeating tiles of motifs like flowers, birds and bear paws. Sarazanmai was preceded by a tie-in manga, Reo and Mabu, about the daily life of two key characters. It wasn’t until the first episode aired that Reo and Mabu were revealed as the villains.

Original anime is rarely that original in concept no matter how much build-up there is in advance. It’s rare that you get an original series like Bang Brave Bang Bravern, which keeps finding ways to defy expectations even after its first big twist. It’s even rarer that you find an original series (again, like Bravern) that sticks the landing. The industry is littered with corpses of shows made by talented people with the best intentions that crumble when exposed to air.

Thaliarchus, an academic and longtime blogger, calls this kind of thing “the quarterly communal cycle from hope to disappointment.” Year after year anime fans tune into currently airing shows in the hope that one of them rewards their investment. Year after year their chosen series blow up in their faces. This winter’s prime example was Metallic Rouge, a show with great parts that never came together. That’s still a better result than many other original series, which end catastrophically (Wonder Egg Priority) or are simply boring (High Card.) 

The best way to handle this is to wait until a show has finished airing before seeking it out. Which is to say: don’t watch Train to the End of the World right now. Check back in twelve weeks to see if people have good things to say. It’s very possible at that point that nobody will remember it. After all, even well-made anime can be disposable. Who remembers Kuromukuro, a competent action series that was forgotten the moment it was uploaded to Netflix?

Until Train to the End of the World disappoints, though, I’ll be checking in every week. You may ask: why do this to yourself? Well, original anime are one of my favorite parts of the medium. I came of age in the summer of 2011 with the premiere of Mawaru Penguindrum. Week after week, fans struggled to parse the show’s secrets and understand just what it was doing. A lot of the time they were wrong. Once in a while (by clocking the show’s repeated references to the 1995 Aum Shinrikyo sarin gas attacks) they were right. I was right there with them with my own smart and stupid ideas.

You can’t speculate in this way with anime adaptations. I’m enjoying the currently airing Delicious in Dungeon anime, but I would recommend the manga over the anime in a heartbeat. I can’t say the same thing about the anime adaptation of Frieren: Journey’s End, a straightforward improvement over the source material. Any time the show attempts a cliffhanger, though, you can just go to the manga to find out what happens next.

It’s no surprise that the majority of anime produced these days are adaptations. Audiences will always go for the familiar rather than the unexpected. Still, I can’t help but remember the excitement generated by Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch From Mercury not so long ago. That show sought to recreate the just-one-more-episode appeal of Code Geass and its ilk back in the 2000s–and succeeded with flying colors.

You don’t need to be incredible to keep the audience tuning in every week. You don’t even need an original idea. All you need is for the audience to ask: what will happen next? Where does the doomsday train go? The day may come when anime is no longer capable of this, and instead becomes a pure delivery mechanism for Shonen Jump adaptations. At that point I think I’d lose interest in the medium entirely. But anime surprises me at least once every year. This year it’s happened twice, and my most anticipated show of the year hasn’t even aired yet. Here we go again!