Pending Train

The general story and plot line of this series was decent, but even only 10 episodes seemed long and drawn out. The core problem was excessive melodrama.

Several people's backstory is told in narrative detail (regularly breaking the sense of realism). The acting was quite a bit over the top, which is probably the doing of the director rather than the actors. I did like their choice of actors; with what they were given they did a decent enough job.

Fair advance notice: the ending is an anti-climactic letdown. Sigh. You'd think by now producers would know to start with a sharp script or don't do the series at all.

Throughout this entire series I regularly wondered if anyone in 160 people had any real leadership ability or any knowledge of survival at all. The first thing they should have done was organize into subgroups based on skills and taken care of water and food requirements. Not knowing the wildlife situation, quality weaponry should have been on the agenda; perish forbid a hungry bear would have come through the camp. But it seemed there was little or no organization. Some people tried and accomplished a little through emotional encouragement... but aside from the old guy that left early on, none of them seemed to have a clue how to survive in the wild. (Seriously, they're low on food and what they focus on is a bathtub? They're kidding, right?)

The second camp fared better, but they were located in a much better spot than the first camp. They pretty much had water and food handed to them on a platter. Not much to lead there... but at least they had things in order. Even then, some of the things that went on at the second camp were pretty illogical script-wise (sorry, no spoilers).

Overall there was too much angst, too much emo, too little focus on getting their act together and surviving this thing. There are so many other gaping holes in the logic of this that I can't go into them without spoilers. It's an okay series, but the ending is one of those "Really? They're stopping it there?" type of things. Disappointing is the key word. It's like the writers just suddenly ran out of imagination, time, funding, or all three.

This series is an "okay" watch, and some people may enjoy it. But for me it was only mediocre throughout, and a poor conclusion. They could have done a lot better with this unusual and potentially interesting theme.

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.

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.

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!