The Galaxy Railways
Feb. 2nd, 2015 04:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
type_wildI refuse to be the person who told that you X was a good anime, but one thing that struck me as odd about it was how quickly it went by: it was a good twenty-four episodes, and yet they all felt so short even though the show for all intents and purposes was ridiculous. Fine, I binge-watched it in good company, but still: if it wasn't at least good at what it was doing, we wouldn't have been able to spend two days doing that.
Compare The Galaxy Railways, which at twenty-four episodes took me - what, a year and a half of on-and-off watching to finish?
Hokay: Galaxy Railways isn't bad. It's okay. But it's built on a frustrating lack of ambition, and I very much suspect that it's main purpose is to function as a nostalgia trip for people who grew up on Leiji's works back in the day when it was presumably groundbreaking (it's not like I've seen anything else from him).
Well, actually looking this up during writing revealed that this shit is twelve years old, which is... actually a good four or five years older than I thought it was. It's the same age as Chrono Crusade! Which also aged with debatable success. And this means that it is the same age as Fullmetal Alchemist, and oh yeah I suddenly see why it was that no-one ever talked about this one.
Anyway.
That's your OP, and this series is exactly what it looks like, start to finish. It's like an animated Star Trek where the Starships have been replaced by Startrains, except it's only got half the screentime to make up plots and subplots and so those plots and subplots are disappointing. Like in Star Trek, every episode ends with a return to status quo, thus making things pretty goddamn predictable.
Brief summary: In a future where humankind colonises space by the use of trains, the Space Defense Force protects the Galaxy Railways from accidents and evil. One such train is Big One, hosting the Sirius Platoon as is led by captain Wataru Yuuki who heroically sacrifices himself in the first episode to inspire his two sons, Mamoru and Manabu. In due time, Mamoru follows in his father's footsteps, down to heroically dying in battle during the first episode. So then we've got Manabu left, who... follows in their footsteps and joins the Sirius Platoon under the leadership of his dad's old second-in-command. Cue bonding with the rest of the crew and twenty episodes about space shenanigans until they save the universe.
Then you may start piling on the clichés. Token love story? Yep. Robot pondering her existence? Check. Jaded veteran taking out his own insecurities on the greenhorn? Of course. Wistful reunions with the woman left behind as he set out to be a hero? Jeez, there were like three of them. This thing even got an onsen episode, during which two regulars started talking about their future. I went "okay, so which one dies in the next episode?"
Well, it wasn't the next episode. It was three whole episodes later.
In summary: The Galaxy Railways makes for good oldskool nostalgia, but not a whole lot else. As an aside, the dub hilariously managed to miss what the subtitles obviously did not: that the platoons were named after stars and constellations, and that it was in fact "Vega Platoon" (their emblem is kind of a hint)
Compare The Galaxy Railways, which at twenty-four episodes took me - what, a year and a half of on-and-off watching to finish?
Hokay: Galaxy Railways isn't bad. It's okay. But it's built on a frustrating lack of ambition, and I very much suspect that it's main purpose is to function as a nostalgia trip for people who grew up on Leiji's works back in the day when it was presumably groundbreaking (it's not like I've seen anything else from him).
Well, actually looking this up during writing revealed that this shit is twelve years old, which is... actually a good four or five years older than I thought it was. It's the same age as Chrono Crusade! Which also aged with debatable success. And this means that it is the same age as Fullmetal Alchemist, and oh yeah I suddenly see why it was that no-one ever talked about this one.
Anyway.
That's your OP, and this series is exactly what it looks like, start to finish. It's like an animated Star Trek where the Starships have been replaced by Startrains, except it's only got half the screentime to make up plots and subplots and so those plots and subplots are disappointing. Like in Star Trek, every episode ends with a return to status quo, thus making things pretty goddamn predictable.
Brief summary: In a future where humankind colonises space by the use of trains, the Space Defense Force protects the Galaxy Railways from accidents and evil. One such train is Big One, hosting the Sirius Platoon as is led by captain Wataru Yuuki who heroically sacrifices himself in the first episode to inspire his two sons, Mamoru and Manabu. In due time, Mamoru follows in his father's footsteps, down to heroically dying in battle during the first episode. So then we've got Manabu left, who... follows in their footsteps and joins the Sirius Platoon under the leadership of his dad's old second-in-command. Cue bonding with the rest of the crew and twenty episodes about space shenanigans until they save the universe.
Then you may start piling on the clichés. Token love story? Yep. Robot pondering her existence? Check. Jaded veteran taking out his own insecurities on the greenhorn? Of course. Wistful reunions with the woman left behind as he set out to be a hero? Jeez, there were like three of them. This thing even got an onsen episode, during which two regulars started talking about their future. I went "okay, so which one dies in the next episode?"
Well, it wasn't the next episode. It was three whole episodes later.
In summary: The Galaxy Railways makes for good oldskool nostalgia, but not a whole lot else. As an aside, the dub hilariously managed to miss what the subtitles obviously did not: that the platoons were named after stars and constellations, and that it was in fact "Vega Platoon" (their emblem is kind of a hint)
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