Was planning to write another First Impressions but I barely found anything I feel strongly about covering so I guess I’ll experiment some more with this show.
Oddly enough, this episode opens with a flashback depicting the day where Yoka transfers to the school in Agano…and that’s about it, really. Train to the End of the World doesn’t follow up on this for the rest of Episode 2. We can infer from this scene that Yoka was a very lonely girl and Shizuru and the others are really the only ones she has for friends. It’s all the more important then that the gang finds her in Ikebukuro. I suppose this scene does its job but it’s nevertheless strange to show it and not expand on it within the same episode.
I was ready to see some really weird stuff this episode but to be honest, there isn’t a lot of that here. A good chunk of this episode is actually the gang bantering with each other inside the train. That may actually be a bold move for the show to make as it’s pretty much banking on the characters and the dialogue to carry the episode for the viewer. I do find it a little monotonous but there is some good dialogue here. In particular, there’s this good bit of drama of where Shizuru admits that she was planning to travel alone and after talking it over with Nadeshiko, she realizes that she’d have made her friends and make the same mistake as Yoka did when she left.
One moment that breaks up the monotony is this brief encounter with a strange old man who travels around in a duck themed boat to survey the area. I’m not really sure if this scene serves any other purpose as this character isn’t very helpful to the gang. The man warns the girls that the trek to Ikebukuro is a harrowing one but I think that much was a given since Episode 1. He also provides them with a map that ends up being completely useless. Maybe the man’s uselessness is a joke in and of itself and I admit that it would be funny if he shows up again and still doesn’t help the girls all that much.
It was kind of dumb of the first episode to skim over Zenjiro’s situation but to Train to the End of the World‘s credit, as does elaborate on this in Episode 2. The hat only restores him for five minutes a day. Presumably due to surgery done on him or a post-hypnotic suggestion, Zenjiro gets a severe headache when he leaves Agano so he’s forced to stay in the town. I find it hard to believe that Zenjiro managed to teach Shizuru on how to run a train for five minutes a day but whatever. At least the show doesn’t make her perfect at it.
This episode also establishes a communication system between Zenjiro and the girls. At 5:00 PM every day, Zenjiro will don his hat and contact the girls via morse code. I kind of question the practicality of this. Like, can both parties really do this as the girls travel further away from Agano? You especially have to wonder if this will still work given what happens to the railroad at the end of the episode. Still, this is an interesting lifeline for the girls to have, especially since they can only get so much help from Zenjiro due to his five minute time limit.
Throughout the episode, it becomes apparent that the girls don’t actually have a lot of money, clothes, or food. You’d think Shizuru would have packed a bunch in that giant backpack of hers but this doesn’t appear to be the case. Suffice to say, the girls are doomed if they can’t procure any supplies at their next stop. The girls do contemplate going back home to better prepare for the trip, especially while they’re only a few hours away, and they eventually agree to do just that. The show probably could get a funny scene out of this but other than that, it’d be no fun if the girls get to play things safe.
It’s a good thing then that the plot has an ace up its sleeve. Before the gang can go back home, a tsunami suddenly appears, forcing them to advance forward in order to escape it. We’re gonna get a bunch of death flags with these characters, aren’t we? After the tsunami dissipates, much of the train tracks leading back to Agano get destroyed so the girls have no choice but to continue their journey. This scene is where this episode’s lack of surrealism pays off. By refraining from going too weird, it allows the tsunami to stand out and enable you to relate with the girls’ shock and fear during this very moment. Had this entire episode been an acid trip, I don’t think this scene would’ve hit nearly as hard.
At the end of the episode, the girls stop at Higashi-Agano Station and they run into the locals in the area. What confounds them however is that all the locals have mushrooms growing on top of their heads, presumably setting us up for Episode 3. I imagine that will be where the show gets super weird again. No way the mushroom is the only side effect these people got from 7G. There must something else going on here.
Watch Train to the End of the World on Crunchyroll
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