"Go big or don't go at all" is a phrase I judge any work by, I don't see a point in writing or creating something if you're not gonna "commit to the bit" per se, some of my favorite works ever (Aquarion, Zenkaiger, Demonbane) may not have a lot in common in the surface except for the fact they all take their idea and run with it to the finish mile and then a few hundred kilometers past that. Shuumatsu Train is the complete opposite, it's like going to a luxurious holiday island and exclusively visiting the walmart
Thankfully I documented my thought on every episode so I can go bit by bit and explain why this anime sucked so much ass

EP1 - I started watching this on a whim, I had no idea it would be a surreal or pseudo-expetimental anime, frankly if it had just been a SoL with a train gimmick I would have been happy enough so you can imagine my shock when Yoka pressed the funny button and the entire world distorted. A CGDCT anime about exploring this deformed, surreal, colorful world in a train? Hell yeah bro I've been waiting for something like this for years, something to fill that hole GLT and Made in Abyss left all those years ago and that Shimeji did a few months ago after having the most 7/10 ending of all time. It looks too good to be true but I'll have hope

EP2 - And now the girls are locked in on this journey? Even better! I'm sure this is gonna pay off in the end

EP3 - And then we get our first sign of things to come: The mushroom town
The entire episode isn't sure if it wants to be a horror or a parody of horror, we get the most obvious "hey this town is weird" signs of all time and somehow we're meant to just not see a plot twist coming, I guess, I'm not sure, this episode could have been like 4 minutes long and the ending would have hit about the same. We do see one big issue with Shuumatsu Train here and that's that it has the exact same of self-aware-but-untalented sense of humor as a Channel Awesome film, characters will constantly point at their own actions and go "that's weird as hell!" but it never lands, even in the more serious-ish moments the show tries its damn hardest to look at the camera and go "get a load of this guy" but it just lands flat because you need actual talent to make those bits work, or at the very least you need balls which this show also lacks horribly

EP 4 - I think this one was just a comfy, backstory episode, I don't have much written other than "This show is definitely at its strongest when it's a surreal sorta comfy journey instead of a horror mystery". An extremely funny observation considering this show leans a lot closer to some weird mystery anime rather than a surreal sorta comfy thing

EP 5 - Another problem with the show arises: The boring, normaler moments last forever, the surreal, creative ones fade away instantly. You create a world where anything is possible, where you can be as fucked up and original as you can, and the best thing you can come up with and the thing you put the most focus on is... A horror town thing? Little people? Zombies??? This is an augur of the show's biggest issue which I'll get to later but seriously, this isn't interesting, there's 7000 other things out there that have already done what this show has so far done but way better, maybe this would have rocked 30 years ago but it's been a long time, do something else

EP 6 & 7 - These ones are just unremarkable, they do their thing good enough I guess. It's a bit of a twist on the usual zombie trope but 1 twist doesn't justify an entire whatever episode. The only things I can really say is that seeing Shizuru being very hearltess to Yoka in the past was VERY promising, it gave me hope that the fated reunion would make it all worthy (It didn't, the reunion happened out of nowhere and the anime dedicated a lot more time to showing how Yoka got groomed), and that I can see what these episodes were going for but the execution wasn't fully there. They're fine I guess

EP8 - And alas, we dive head first into the pool of liquid shit: The Neriali episode. If the last few were already killing the hope I had for this anime this one tried to dig up its grave and accidentally decapitated it with the shovel, then it said "fuck it" and started beating the shit out of its corpse
Neriali feels like Shuumatsu Train is trying to make up for all the normality of the previous half of the show, but here's the big issue and the thing that ruins anything this anime could have ever been: A terminal and complete lack of Balls. I beckon back to the phrase at the beginning of this review "Go big or don't go at all", if you don't have the confidence, the talent, the Balls to go through with a complete absurdity of an episode, creating a whole fictional anime with the dumbest plot idea possible, then why even do it? You just end up with a half baked idea that before even starting is already laughing at itself. Neriali is rushed to hell, it's rushed to get to nowhere, it constantly points at how stupid it is but never tries being actually stupid, it just throws shit at the fan without committing to any bit because everyone involved was afraid that, if they showed even the slightest bit of honesty, the audience would laugh at them or call them dumb, as a result we end up with an episode that pleases nobody. Oh yea and if that wasn't enough we get the Yoka plotwist that she's now the evil queen of ikebukuro and who gives a fuck

EP9 - "Plotshit" is a term I like to use for shows that end up focusing too much in having a story that makes sense instead of making the show actually good, do we need something with no plotholes to enjoy it? Are we really so afraid of our own shadow that if something is slightly ignored we get scared that we're lost? Personally, I'll give a shit about the plot if the plot is the point, or if it's interesting, or whatever, every work out there has a "vibe" AKA something it excels at and something that should, in an ideal world, be the focus of the work. Shuumatsu would have exceled at being a surreal, weird moe journey, instead what we get is a Plotshit anime of a guy that solely exists to be annoying and his masterplan to groom a random girl into giving him godmode powers or whatever the hell. Basically: I don't care

EP10 - Ah yes, we shall return the world to normal! Weird things are BAD and ESCAPISM, we cannot let this happen! We will save this world!. This idea has been tried before time and time again and it's not something you should do unless you have some real fucking experience writing it because you run the risk of looking like your message is "Being weird and creative is bad you should go to normal school and die at a normal job". Does Shuumatsu do this? Kinda, thankfully the ending focuses on something else so I'll give it credit whereI'm not finishing that sentence
Anyways this episode was either hilarious in a cosmic way or completely insulting. The actual gall to have an entire episode dedicated to artists struggling to make their work when you yourself are struggling to make this show ANYTHING. "Artistic expression has no limits!", spouted by a show too terrified to reach past any limites

EP11 - Rush rush rush, rush to get the Yoka reunion, rush to come up with the plan to fix the world, rush everything and get nowhere. Not much to say, this show was already well on its way to sucking

EP12 - They got this ending at the ending store

So, in short, Shuumatsu Train is FINE, if I take out my hater hat for a second I can say it's maybe a 5/10, or a 6/10, it's dissapointing but it's not terrible, it's probably fun enough if your standards aren't too big, but if I put my hat on I see this show for what it could have been and what it ended up being. I see endless potential for something truly timeless behind layers and layers of cowardice and irony, I see an extremely lack of confidence in your own talent to create something and the desperation at hiding it behind large stretches of painfully normal ideas or unique ones taken not seriously whatsoever
We could have had something special, something that recreates that feeling the other animes I mentioned here was very much possible. But alas, we didn't get that, and that's what makes me really hate this anime