天下制覇

Come on ride the train… yeah ride it!

Impressions:

No summary this time, though it’s not like there was much to summarize. Manga writer invited to chronicle trip with a travel writer who turns out to be a shut-in train nerd. This was pretty much about 100% of what I expected from it; another Odd Couple scenario, only with about half the charm of Nodame Cantabile and all about trains. It’s a lot harder to get excited about trains than it is music and I’m not even much of a fan of slice-of-life shows anyway, so it was something of a trial for me to be excited about the concept here. There are some good moments between Kikuchi and Yokami, but it’s all stuff I’ve seen done some eight thousand times before, only this time instead of ranting about moe or Gunpla or chocolate cornets, it’s about trains.

Technical merits are average at best. Animation was pretty run of the mill, though the art was extremely basic and rather unappealing, especially the people compared to the scenery shots, and since the show was mostly people… The OP is nothing to write home about. It’s a very bare bones song with just vocals and a couple other instruments, and would help if the singers were a bit easier on the ears. The BGM is also relatively unimpressive, though it did its job adaquetely and didn’t get in the way of the show. A ton of pastoral and twanging piano and guitar tracks for the most part.

Perhaps it’ll pick up a little bit in a few episodes, or do something to differentiate itself from the rest of the pack, but while the first episode doesn’t really disappoint me, it also fails to excite me about the show. Depending on your recent exposure to the slice-of-life humor shows as of late, your mileage will probably vary. Perhaps I’m just oversaturated with them at the moment thanks to Lovely Complex and Nodame. I’ll probably give it another episode or two, but unless it really wows me, I doubt that I’ll post about it again.

It also came with a live action ‘prequel.’ I watched about 4 minutes of it, noted the total lack of humor and just hopped right into the anime. I’m fairly positive that I didn’t really miss anything.

Tetsuko no Tabi OP