Train de nuit dans la Voie Lactée

This by far is the best anime I have ever seen. With its slow moving and oft disturbing plot this is not a movie for everyone, especial the adolescent/short attention span types who have only seen slasher/action examples of anime.

This movie is so slow yet it sucks you in and you can't stop watching. I have never heard or seen anything like it and I don't think I ever will again. No movie I have ever seen has affected me half as much. Its amazing visuals, sounds and eerie plot make this fascinating movie hard to describe and do justice to it.

This movie definitely deserves a 10 out of 10.

P.S. If you are the crying type have tissues handy.

This is a review of the English-dubbed version, and I'm sorry, but the voices aren't a great fit to the characters. However, the film as a whole is intriguing and beautiful. It also gets a little unsettling at times, but in a good way.

One shortcoming common to all versions, however, is the lack of facial individuality of the characters. They don't show much in the way of expressions and when they do, they are a bit samey.

But this is still something I'd recommend on the whole. A leisurely trip through a very strange galaxy.

The best thing about this movie is the dreamlike quality of it. Lots of fiction texts--novels, comicbooks, movies, whatever--take place in the world of dreams, but this is the first movie I've seen that really felt like it. Things happen one after the other in a drifting, diffuse pilgrimage on a train that goes to the end of the universe: migrating herons that fall to the earth and turn into candy, apples that reproduce themselves, an Italian village populated by cats. Being that they're passing through the night sky, some of the stations are named after constellations, and some are just...places. It's like reading The Old Man and the Sea--you feel like you're there for days and wake up to find that it was only a few hours. To me, that's a measure of a really good story.

One of the funnier bits was when the human characters appeared and didn't bat an eye at sitting next to anthropomorphic, pastel-coloured cats.

If you enjoy picking apart movie texts, you can always have a fun argument with your friends about the religious motifs that pop up in an oddball way throughout the story. Were the filmmakers taking stabs at Christianity, or just appropriating its symbols for the story's own kind of mysticism (a la Neon Genesis Evangelion, maybe)?

Night on the Galactic Railroad isn't your traditional family film. It deals with some incredibly deep themes, as well as having a slow meditative pace. We follow a young cat (changed from human in the original book) called Giovanni. Giovanni has no time for himself. His father is away, his mother is sick, and when he isn't at school he has to work. One evening the family's delivery of milk never comes, so Giovanni goes to get it. He rests on top of a hill before being confronted by a train. He gets on and finds his friend Campenella. From there the duo encounter a number of passengers each with a strange story to tell. This film is certainly all about the metaphysical. Each story strengthens the themes of religion and sacrifice. It gets highly emotional at times. The imagery is often surreal but always memorable. The animation is calm in both colours and movement. This film is presented in chapters, which I think may be a better way to digest it. It's something no country but Japan would try, and the ending is so powerful it really does make the journey worth it. Mature and thoughtful, if sometimes a little slow.

In my opinion, "Night on the Galactic Railroad" is an outstanding piece of animation.

Many reviewers will note, and accurately so, that this movie is both heavy and slow as melted gold. It's true: in our current world of sound bites and media clips, fast action and short attention, this movie stands alone. This is especially so when the movie is compared to other anime, a category under which fall some of the fastest and slickest movies in the world. If nothing else, "Night on the Galactic Railroad" gets points for sheer originality and ingenuity.

Gisaburo Sugii (the director) has taken Kenji Miyazawa's children's story and created for it a living atmosphere. While highly detailed backgrounds are nothing new for anime, "Night on the Galactic Railroad" combines its finely crafted images with a brilliant use of frame shots, pacing, and audio montage to create a surreal and ethereal viewing experience.

While often advertised as a children's movie, "Night on the Galactic Railroad" most certainly does not tell a very light story. With both religious and nihilistic imagery, Sugii presents us with a powerful treatise on death and life. However, even if you do not appreciate the story itself, the beauty in the dream-like artwork and animation cannot be denied.

If this is the kind of movie that you'd just as soon sleep through, then you're missing out on some amazing cinema. Admittedly, most people these days would probably rather numb their brains in front of the "Tomb Raider" movie, than sit through the likes of "Don't Look Now" or "Blow Up." But, who knows....

If you want to be pulled into a beautifully crafted and mesmerizing world, then watch "Night on the Galactic Railroad."