Pending Train

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.

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.

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.

I remember sitting glued to the the screen over the years of LOST, loving every minute of its mystery and weird conspiracy and undermining western culture with exceptional knowledge of travel in time, and all of the insane and quirky and deceitful characters onboard the plane, who found themselves washed up on the island and had to survive and build relationships and trust and agree to survive and build alliences with the people already on the island and find food and water and keep up hope among each other and assist births and bury the dead and be inventive and strong and compassionate etc.

Pending Train tries and fails. No tension, just stereotypic characters acting stereotypical confronted with very little happening. And maybe they represent an average of Japanese culture, but when no one had moved to find water on day two, I began wondering if the series writers were paid to extend a 3-parter to 10 or more episodes.

This is WEAK and a wast of money and other resources, chiefly human watching this in the expectance that something will improve, but that is not the case. NOTHING happens that will come as a surprise to anyone. Most characters are depicted as outright stupid - as if having lived 20, 30, 50 years under all kinds of pressure in life had not emparted preference, idiosyncracies (apart from those needed to separate main characters from each other) and a general IDEA of how to survive. Like in a universe, where No One has spend hours binging youtube videos to gather an abundence of information about all kinds of stuff related to living and surviving and pleasure and communication and relations to others etc etc. IGNORANTS, basically.

Actually I am a little horrified that this "product" has met some kinds of production standards somewhere in the world. As if its basically a tax write-off, where nobody really cares. A deal, where some actors are introduced, payment for that service met, and production costs used to leverage an abundance of wealth.

Horrible. Just horrible.

So, why 5/10?

I am at episode 6/10, and there are 5 more episodes to go. So, 1 star pr. Episode, basically. But if wont end with 10/10, be certain of that. Ye Gods!

Wow why are some people so angry about this show!? Some hate reviews are really hostile, surely there's been worse shows than this so why!?

In any case, I liked it. I watched Lost years ago so I barely remember it, yes I can see the similarities but even though it was strange at first, somehow I prefer an upbeat random daijobu Japanese song playing whenever something bad happened rather than the usual doom music that sets us up for a heart attack or depression in most US shows. In general, there was no overall sense of doom and terror which personally I appreciated, but I understand that's not everyone's cup of tea. Maybe all the hate reviews are from die hard Lost fans? That I'd understand, but still, expect the concept to be repeated again as it has been in the past too.

This is the Japanese version, with all the usual tropes, we have the option to skip or fast forward the super slow melo scenes but we also get to see that side of the world. Which means no sex, drugs, nudity, swearing, etc and it's refreshing for some of us. Overall this was an exciting and entertaining family friendly show that also tries to make a point about being grateful for what we have.