Pending Train

I think the first thing to know when watching anything that comes from Japan is that it's not South Korea or a K-DRAMA, the Japanese entertaiment people do their works and projects with Japanese people in mind, they don't care one bit about making ot outside of Japan so they want to just be liked in Japan, and that's a big difference on how they do things and how things are written or directed at the end, because we all have very different cultures and way to portray feelings or do art. Japanese entertaiment and writting on movies or tv shows is HEAVILY based on the facial expressions more than anything, specially the eyes (that's why on anime, the eyes are THAT big), so it's not surprising when we watch Japanese movies or shows that have a good plot (be it a 'LOST' copy or not, we know it is, but LOST itself probably came from somewhere too I assume), most of the times the writting or directing takes points off from our point of view due to the fact that Hollywood and Europe write or direct things very differently.

I think the show could be great, the actors are amazing dramatic actors, I did watched some of the works of some of them and I know they're not bad at acting, the plot of the story was also good, sci-fi, time travel thingy, the way 'LOST' was great, however I think the lack of choosing a good song (It's a J-DRAMA after all, and Da-ICE are actually really famous and respected in Japan, they have great music, 'Tattoo' isn't just a good fix for this specific show) for the theme music and the cultural difference on how things are written in her and in Asia, played a big part...So overall, I think this show could've been great if it was written and directed like Hollywood does it for us, but it's made for Japan and I think more or less, Japanese people enjoyed it.

So my take on this whole thing? Watch it if you want, it's entertaining and at times fun and sad, like usual, I ended up shipping the two male actors more than the female and male actors, it's always nice to see actors I follow, again, it's no masterpiece, it's a J-DRAMA, but if you like these genre of tv shows, give it a try, it's not THAT bad in a drama from Asia level.

Barely a science fiction except for the plot and a few rare strange things here and there.

Basic common sense things missing, actors are always fresh, wearing new clothes, survive just fine not feeling hungry for extended period of time. Some character development is the only thing that is not so bad. Strange unnatural emotions such as not being grateful for someone saving your life! Overall not very entertaining, if you have nothing else to do and you are extremely bored you can watch it in 1.5x speed. Don't let "japanese" mislead you, they can be bad too :) Highly doubt there will be a second season any time soon, if at all.

What we have here is basically the Asian version of the TV show "lost", but with an explanation for everything within 1 season of 10 episodes. Japan is hit by an earthquake event that somehow triggers a moving train to be thrown into another world. In this world, the passengers of car 5 must find a way to get on with each other and survive in a strange territory.

I was initially intrigued by all of this, until I realised I would be spending each episode listening to the same piece of music over and over that tries to rouse some emotion out of you.

Characters achieve something towards survival, play music, show show mo emotional faces.

Characters realise a new strength, play music and show emotional faces in show motion.

Characters sneeze, play music and show slow mo faces.

It's terrible and makes up the overwhelming playtime of the show, especially when throwing in a love triangle and people delving into flashbacks of their previous lives. It's even funny when something bad is happening, yet upbeat sounding music starts playing

If it were shortened to just the bare minimum melodrama, it would be alright.... ish. The last 2 episodes do a lot more for me but I can't really spoil much. Was the stock footage at the end necessary though, it's more cheap cheese thrown on top.

The general story and plot line of this series was decent, but even only 10 episodes seemed long and drawn out. The core problem was excessive melodrama.

Several people's backstory is told in narrative detail (regularly breaking the sense of realism). The acting was quite a bit over the top, which is probably the doing of the director rather than the actors. I did like their choice of actors; with what they were given they did a decent enough job.

Fair advance notice: the ending is an anti-climactic letdown. Sigh. You'd think by now producers would know to start with a sharp script or don't do the series at all.

Throughout this entire series I regularly wondered if anyone in 160 people had any real leadership ability or any knowledge of survival at all. The first thing they should have done was organize into subgroups based on skills and taken care of water and food requirements. Not knowing the wildlife situation, quality weaponry should have been on the agenda; perish forbid a hungry bear would have come through the camp. But it seemed there was little or no organization. Some people tried and accomplished a little through emotional encouragement... but aside from the old guy that left early on, none of them seemed to have a clue how to survive in the wild. (Seriously, they're low on food and what they focus on is a bathtub? They're kidding, right?)

The second camp fared better, but they were located in a much better spot than the first camp. They pretty much had water and food handed to them on a platter. Not much to lead there... but at least they had things in order. Even then, some of the things that went on at the second camp were pretty illogical script-wise (sorry, no spoilers).

Overall there was too much angst, too much emo, too little focus on getting their act together and surviving this thing. There are so many other gaping holes in the logic of this that I can't go into them without spoilers. It's an okay series, but the ending is one of those "Really? They're stopping it there?" type of things. Disappointing is the key word. It's like the writers just suddenly ran out of imagination, time, funding, or all three.

This series is an "okay" watch, and some people may enjoy it. But for me it was only mediocre throughout, and a poor conclusion. They could have done a lot better with this unusual and potentially interesting theme.

The premise is good but I watched the whole first episode and can't bring myself to watch any more of it.

All the 'actors' are pretty boys and girls no normal looking people at all. They all seem to be terrible actors over acting every emotion and scene. The direction seems to go for melodramatic shots everywhere with an awful melodramatic soundtrack. In one surreal scene there is one of the characters over acting a crying ad sadness scene with an upbeat pop tune playing quite loudly as the soundtrack. It's just weird. There's a scene near the end where it shows each character's serious face multiple times - it reminded of the nodding scene in Family Guy.