Of the several, Yuri, Yuri-adjacent and Yuri-adjacent-adjacent series (which I differentiate internally from “Cute Girls Doing Cute Things Cutely’ series, which is why I keep using phrases as ridiculous as “Yuri-adjacent-adjacent”) we have enjoyed this season, one stands above the rest in doing that rarest of anime achievements – sticking the landing.

Train To The End of The World, streaming on Crunchyroll, absolutely stuck the landing. 100 out of 100 points to the writers who knew where they were going through the entire season and never let us down.

In a story that was ostensibly about the many ways humans can lose their humanity, this story unerringly gave us a clear path to remembering what makes us human. Kindness, intimacy, teamwork, shared purpose, and above all friendship, were the keys to making this series end exactly where it had to.

But oh my goodness, how we got there was such an incredibly journey. Everything about this series was fantastic. From the Ikebukuro owl kidnapping Yoka, that initiated the entire story, to a crack force of deranged manga artists in Tezuka-style berets, using genre tropes as weapons, this story plumbed the weird and wild of otaku fetishes and genre cliches, strung them into a Theater of the Absurd horror/scifi story so deftly, that I was constantly amazed that this was an original anime and not adapted from some award-winning sci-fi novelist’s work.

Ratings:

Art – 9
Story – 10
Characters – 10
Yuri – 0/ Intimacy – 10
Service – Yes, and no in equal measure mostly at the same time.

Overall – 10.

An absolute must-watch for experienced anime watchers. Not sure I would suggest it for someone new to the medium. Like Chainsaw Man, it requires some contextualizing within the medium for full enjoyment and understanding.

In a season of anime in which emotionally intimate relationships between young women are shown through multiple ways, some more realistic that others, Train To The End of The World stands out as a series that both remained utterly true to telling a deeply satisfying story about those kinds of relationships and simultaneously, gleefully embracing the most surreal way of doing so.