Tetsuko no Tabi

Let me open with a word of advice. I really like this anime, but that does not mean that you will. That is because my personal conditions make me uniquely primed to respond to this kind of show. As a European, I come from a region with a fairly well-developed train network - although not as good as to rival that of Japan, or the countries that surround mine, meaning that even after graduating from university, getting a job, and earning a living wage, I do not own a car, not even a motorbike or a bicycle, and I likely never will. Like a few other people in my community, I rely on public transit as my sole means of transportation, which means after decades of using it, I am completely used to everything that a massive train journey across many different regions entails.

By now, I know schedules by heart, I know alternate routes, I know scenic spots and tours, I know train series and their characteristics, I know when which lines tend to be crowded, and I own an unlimited country-wide regional rail pass. I ride trains for commutes, for visits, for conferences, for festivals, for vacations, and yes, sometimes for the fun of it. I really never thought of myself as a tetsu - a rail nerd - since I don't collect model trains, tickets, or other train paraphernalia, but after watching this show, it is nice to see that there are people out there which appreciate this kind of knowledge I built merely by growing up among trains.

So, before getting into the anime, let me tell you why after over 150 years of history, trains still firmly remain the pinnacle of transit on land: First of all, they are superior to all personal transportation because you don't actually concentrate on steering the vehicle. You are not pestered by crossings, red lights, traffic signs, driving tests, parking garages, or speed limits; by contrast you can almost do whatever you want in a train. You sit wherever you want, you can walk around, you can listen to music, read a good book, be on your phone, meet people from around the world, or come back from a wine festival totally hammered; in short - your attention to participation in traffic is not required, and you can devote it to enjoyment. Second, they are faster and you are doing something for the environment by taking them as their emissions are next to zero. And third, rail infrastructure has a certain romantic quality that roads will never beat. The ease with which a train zips by picturesque towns, giant skyscrapers, rolling hills, mountains and rivers, the awe kids feel when the train comes out of a tunnel, and the stately grandeur of stations like Budapest-Nyugati or Leipzig Hbf can all not be rivalled by spending an afternoon on even the nicest motorway in the world.

The show at hand is a unique anime that is entirely about this fact. While other rail shows present us with outrageous action and transform trains into something even cooler they sadly could realistically never be, Tetsuko no Tabi is a 1:1 account of a real journey through Japan's rail system that has actually happened. It plays out between the unstoppable force Yokomi, a travel writer and rail otaku who is heads over heels into his special interest, and the immovable object Kikuchi who translates their journey into a manga, has zero interest for trains at all, and is only in it for the station lunches she gets out of it. While this appears to be a little reductive as a portrayal of actual people who are alive at the time of writing, it still makes for a nice dynamic between the two, and their hapless, burnt-out editors. In particular, Kikuchi has a cool character design with her extremely expressive face, which might have to do with the show being written from her perspective.

While the music is nice and incorporates common train sounds very well, the OP is very long and framed by its own intro and outro, so it tends to become a little boring, and the ED is a melancholic ballad with only still images illustrating it. At the very end of each episode comes a small bit of Japanese rail knowledge that may or may not be interesting. As common for low-budget shows in the 2000s, the show suffers from very primitive CGI and simplistic 2D animation, but it makes up for it with the amazing backgrounds showcasing the best landscapes from all the stations of Japan and really capturing how it feels to do a rail trip in the summer. At least whatever is left of it does, because I could only find a 480p rip of it.

I am only giving the show an average score, because I lack the perspective of someone like Kikuchi who really doesn't care for all of this and just wants to watch a good anime as such. I don't really know anyone I can recommend this to, other than people who are already tetsu themselves. However, I do include the show as #12 on my currently very limited list of favourites, because I do think it hits a part of me in a way other shows cannot.