Pending Train

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!

I've watched the entire season and loved it.

It's a great show if you feel like watching something without swearing and nudity.

There are fantastic themes about life and we were on the edge of our seat for the next episode.

You grow to love the characters and some really great acting in some of the scenes.

It also had such touching moments which made me tear up.

It played out, I think, very realistically. It was interesting to see the ways each character dealt with such a situation as the show progresses...how most of us have things we deal with in life that others don't see.

Good and bad in all of us.

Finally, something other than garbage on NetFlix.

Not for people who can't appreciate a story without trashy scenes!

I really wanted to enjoy this because the plot is a good one but the slow burning repeated drama takes over the whole thing, it becomes exhausting and you will likely forward through the forced and dull unnecessary dialogue along with the character's long pauses.

The plot is easily split with 20% apocalyptic exciting storyline with a purpose, but is interrupted with 80% of depressing melodrama tears, flashbacks and unnecessary character-buildup attempts. It's like ordering a pepperoni pizza and receiving it with only one small piece of pepperoni on top. The rest is just covered with plain cheese.

Oh stop it already will you?

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.

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.