© apogeego/「終末トレインどこへいく?」製作委員会

The first three episodes were great, but this fourth episode is when Train to the End of the World takes off its kid gloves and puts on those weird brass knuckles. I couldn't be more excited. I haven't had a chance to write about a good and bad cartoon since Sonny Boy. I crawled across the vast desert for years when the Shuumatsu Train roared by and dumped a freight car full of ice on my head. It is quenching my thirst, but it is doing so in its own way.

That acidic quality is incredibly important because it gives the film a depth, edge, and silliness. Out of all the anime out there, I tend to compare it to Heybot!. Now, I may be referring to a children's show, but Heybot! embraces silliness and grotesquerie in a way that Shuumatsu Train also echoes. When the male goats rammed into the girls' train carriage, it was both funny and scary. The same thing happened to the town full of crazy ginseng plants. These are Looney Tunes moments weighed down with just enough gravity to make audiences nervous—not so much that the series becomes a dark self-parody, but just enough to make the dangers of 7G become clear.

It's no surprise that Shuumatsu Train is so good at balancing comedy and horror. It is one of Tsutomu Mizushima's many MOs. Between his work on Another, Blood-C, and The Lost Village, it's clear to me that he has a love of B-movies that inspire both laughter and screams. I can't think of a better example than the mushroom they pulled out of Akira's ass when it strangely crawled away, screamed like a panther, and exploded. It's a scene that feels right at home in Evil Dead II. It's a display of anarchic randomness that proves just how much depth these girls have.

On a more concrete level, the show also shaped the writing and character drama this week. While last week's mushroom brainwashing seemed a little too abstract, Akira's secrecy and anxiety stem from a neurological disorder that I can relate to. At least, I know I would be the type of person who wouldn't want to tell my friends that I have an asshole. She quickly became my favorite character between her personality and encyclopedic knowledge of occult topics. Her chemistry with Reimi is also getting better and better. Their banter back and forth shows how much they care for each other and I loved the flashback to Akira telling Reimi to eat paper. It's a classic childhood friend story. It's nice to see Reimi also getting serious about the possibility of her best friend's soul being wiped out. I asked for more depth in the character and the story was moving.

By the way, I respect the story for subverting a potential plot twist to create an even more unpleasant one. My prediction about the tail was wrong, but I can't be too disappointed in the face of Akira being accidentally lobotomized. Like all aspects of the show, this development contains humor and horror. As she turns Pochi's face into a piece of mochi, the other girls despair of finding a doctor who can help them in the increasingly hellish landscape they are condemned to go through. It is the scariest and most profound feeling to think that the world of Shuumatsu is a surreal refraction of our own. The giant floating organs and the rain of golf balls are the cute parts. The real horror is the erosion of basic social support structures due to capitalism's greed and myopic arrogance. That's why this show is so silly. Because otherwise, it would be extremely depressing.

Ultimately, I was impressed with how the writing continued to be layered. Let's take the last scene as an example. It works on a surface level because it's funny to watch a toy-sized JSDF fight a pair of high school girls as if they were kaiju. It also serves as an allusion to Gulliver's Travels, which sees Shuumatsu Train as a collection of fairy tales in conversation with the literary canon. Furthermore, it advances the subplot about the mysteries behind the 7G Incident. In an earlier flashback, Yoka expressed her childlike wish to meet a race of miniature humans, and now, years later, Shizuru has found one. Considering the other things Yoka mentioned, it seems like the whims of her particular imagination reshaped the world when she pressed that button. It's great that these building blocks are included in the story without overshadowing the rest of the story structure. It's the kind of subtlety I'd expect from a veteran writer like Michiko Yokote.

I've certainly had my fair share of arguments about Shuumatsu Train's insanity, and I don't think there's anything wrong with sticking to that quality. Anime wants its audience to have fun. I'm happy! But there are plans in the pipeline here and topics worth exploring. An episode like this turns this series into something crazy for me. These tracks have been laid out for me and I will have the opportunity to analyze them as a whole each week.

Rating:

Train to the End of the World is now streaming on Crunchyroll.

Steve is on Twitter while it lasted. He's currently looking at how even the end of the world can't stop Japan from having a nicer rail system than the United States. You can also see him chatting about trash and treasure on This Week in Anime.