Rail Wars! (the title is excited) is another in a long, long line of shows that try distinct themselves by doing the exact same thing all the others do: serving up a double-d helping of ecchi eye candy to hint at romantic overtones even if the core material doesn’t really have romance in its genre DNA. To be fair, some of the shows like that are at least okay, like the better end of the classical battle school harem bracket, but especially when the show has ecchi but not romance, it does need something to provide the meat of the material rather than just the lovely and usually bouncy gravy that is the fanservice.
Rail Wars! has, um, trains. I guess.
So the basic idea of Rail Wars is that takes place in an alternate history where the only change seems to be that the rail system in Japan remained nationalized under JNR, rather than being more a matter of private enterprise. Because of this, JNR jobs are seen as being very stable and desirable, and they have an outreach program for students to start with on-the-job learning to be fast-tracked into those posts.
In this world, Naoto Takayama is a train nerd who really wants to become a driver in the future. He gets into the prep program, but at least for their junior time everyone is shoved into the Public Saftey Department rather than whatever their preference was, as an excuse to put him where more exciting things might happen. During the initial month of preliminary training, Naoto meets the rest of team main characters. There’s Shou Iwaizumi, but since he’s a fellow guy he’s just there to be a punchline and occasionally extra muscle, and we don’t particularly need to concern ourselves with him. The girls of the group are Aoi Sakurai and Haruka Koumi. Aoi is the angry spitfire who you know is going to evolve into a tsundere (but who starts as just a fairly nasty person to be around) and Haruka is the delicate womanly flower. Together, the four of them get through training and end up assigned to the same squad, under the leadership of one of their instructors, Nana Iida.
This group, K4, is a team of juniors for the public safety department of the national rail company. They’re not quite cops, which the show reminds you of a few times, but they pretty much act like it for most of the show. Aoi is particularly gung-ho about going after criminals and shooting them dead, to the point where I’m not even sure why she’s trying out for JNR security (who are explicitly likened to mall cops) rather than the actual police… not that her bloodthirst would come off much better there, since she’s in the wrong dimension and missed her calling as an Enforcer in the Psycho-Pass universe.
Of course, since this is a show their existence isn’t going to be allowed to be as calm as “mall cops on trains”, as is set up when they have to deal with a terrorist bomber having planted explosives in their station, leading to a lengthy search and a tense “defuse the bomb” scenario that forces Aoi into close physical contact and possibly unlocks a little affection, not that she’s willing to be any less hostile after her moment of near-death-experience weakness.
Shortly after that incident we introduce Naoto’s long-time friend and fellow train nerd, Mari Sasshou. She’s also working in the JNR junior program, but somehow she avoided that whole “everyone gets Public Safety” debacle to instead be something of a hostess, usually popping up in later episodes as a waitress or clerk wherever the main team happens to be. In this one, though, Mari has a problem when another friend of hers (and fellow train-sound-audiophile) goes missing somewhere in the transit network. The friend’s phone is turned in to lost and found, and one of the sound recordings on it reveals that she was likely jumped by goons. Mari, with her amazing hearing, gains clues to deduce what rail station it happened at, and the team goes there to rescue said friend from being tied up and left in a warehouse by random drug dealers.
While Rail Wars, as befits not really doing the romance thing, largely keeps with its main cast, we do introduce one more recurring extra girl in the early bits: Noa Kashima, a famous idol who the K4 gang have to be security detail for when she’s doing a gig for JNR. During this, someone of course does decide to go after Noa, and Naoto’s handling of the situation (jumping in to protect her on stage, which is quickly spun to be all part of the show) earns him some affection from said starlet.
The next incident occurs when Aoi spots a wanted and dangerous criminal (technically an ally of the first bomber) and insists on trailing him through the transit network and hunting him down. Naoto goes with because I guess that’s better than leaving redhead Judge Dredd to her own devices. Somewhere along the line it seems like Naoto actually triggered Aoi’s affection flag but he can be forgiven for not noticing because the outcome of his love life is not of interest to the show and she’s still sharp-tongued and androphobic even if she does put herself in a compromising position for some reason or another.
At the end they lose the guy (though it’s said cops picked him up later) when he throws a bomb that nearly takes out our leads and does take out a section of train track, forcing them to shoot the wire that will trigger a landslide signal before an unsuspecting train full of people barrels through. To do this and steady Aoi’s aim they apparently need to stand right on the tracks in danger with her glued to his back in an awkward-looking ass-grab carry that is little remarked on after the fact.
In the wake of this debacle we get an episode where everyone is ordered to stay home for reasons of causing too many debacles so would you please take a day off, and of course they all decide to go out, meet up, and cause a debacle.
Specifically, Naoto meets up with Haruka, who is even more obvious than usual in having the hots for him. Through a series of misunderstandings involving a life insurance advert that Naoto misinterprets as a death threat from the mad bomber, Haruka’s bizarre concepts of spy stuff, and Aoi misusing the firearm that really should have been taken away from her when she was on leave, this results in the two of them constantly running from both real and imagined threats, with Haruka shedding layer after layer of her clothing along the way.
At the end, they find themselves in a presently closed transit museum, where flashbacks reveal they met years ago when Naoto helped rescue Haruka, who got herself locked in a storage closet. She loves him absolutely for this, he doesn’t seem to remember that day in the least, and so we reenact it a little when Haruka (down to just her panties) ends up in the closet again and Naoto has to face off with some actual criminal goons who were meeting there unrelated to anything. Reinforcements arrive just in time, and of course Naoto takes a fair amount of blame for this stupidity.
This is also the episode where Rail Wars decides its ecchi isn’t enough so it’s going to start showing nipples, but it thankfully both goes no farther and uses this power in a limited and vaguely responsible manner (in that it doesn’t bombard you constantly like Rosario + Vampire when that show hit Season 2).
After that episode, we actually spend most of the rest of the show in multi-episode arcs. The first starts as K4, back on the force, is offered a chance to go to advanced training. They take it, but Aoi gets royally pissed when she hears that Naoto wants to drive a train rather than joining Public Safety to shoot criminals like her, even though she’s normally loudly opposed to Naoto’s existence and offended by his lack of skill in all things bad guy busting. She absolutely screws over everyone on a big test, and after the shameful display of non-teamwork they’re given a day off. They use this to go out on the town, with the expectation that Aoi and Naoto will patch things over, but a series of hijinks leads to the two of them meeting together in a spot suspicious enough to really, really trigger Haruka. Except it was actually Noa who called Naoto there, and she’s more annoyed anyone else showed up.
It starts to rain, Noa declares her affection for Naoto in clear and certain terms, and we putter for a little bit with the fact that it doesn’t actually matter before the rain picks up enough that one of the train lines is taken out by a landslide. This is bad news for one woman, though, who was using public transportation to attempt to deliver transplant organs on a tight timer. With all the roads and the main train line closed it seems hopeless, but Naoto figures there’s an old line that might be navigable.
Thus, K4 is given charge of the briefcase full of organs and sent along the old line down the mountain in the world’s worst trolley. They spend most of two episodes careening out of control through a series of tunnels, barely managing to stay on the rails at all by having everyone put their butts into it at critical moments to shift the out-of-control trolley’s center of mass for turns. I hope you enjoy people yelling on a lame yet potentially deadly roller coaster because, again, it’s the better part of two episodes. The payoff is that the organs arrive on time and both girls (and the guys, but mostly the girls) are soaking wet and clothing-damaged as well as having a feeling of pride and accomplishment. They’re able to pass the re-test together and Aoi accepts that Naoto wants to drive, the end of that.
So, we have K4, a set of serial bunglers who admittedly have something of a record of coming through in pinches, even if by doing everything wrong. Surely this is the best group to be the security detail for visiting royalty.
Yeah, the second and final major arc involves a prince from a “no real locations were harmed” European nation, who of course loves trains and can thus talk very easily with Naoto. Apparently, Haruka also already knows the prince, having gone to school with him in Europe.
Over the course of a trip, Naoto learns the deep secret that the prince is actually a princess (gender a secret for reason not announced and revealed to us for reason not… oh who am I kidding it’s so that the show could show us her tits despite her being awkwardly younger-feeling than the leads). That doesn’t matter. They’re also attacked by hired goons there to kidnap and/or assassinate the prince(ss), who they fight off in a series of the show’s phenomenally okay fight scenes. There are at least a few notable high points, like whenever Mari (who is of course waitstaff on this very train) is put in danger you legitimately don’t want to see her hurt, and Naoto gets his one kind of badass moment taking a hell of a lot of taser zap without giving in.
Eventually one set of goons is dealt with, but another has kidnapped Haruka in the process and offers to trade her for the prince. The gang decides to have the prince do a clothing swap with Naoto to fool the kidnappers, sending the prince away with good people. As much as there’s a point to it this works shockingly well despite how different in size Naoto and our royal visitor were, and leads to a gun fight rescue of Haruka, followed by a desperate struggle to stop the train that had its controls damaged in the shootout. Naoto once again ends up in the worst of it with Aoi, who puts on her most tolerable attitude for a crisis, but they get saved all the same.
The final episode is all that’s left: a cooldown where Naoto and Iida ride a special train home, and help fix its various minor mechanical or electrical problems while there, which somehow gets Iida to shed her stockings and sweat through her white shirt for the audience at various points. Once they’re home, Naoto finds he has a surprise party at his place with all the girls (Noa included, who is still completely 100% upfront that she likes him while everyone else dithers), and the show comes to a halt.
I’ve seen worse.
I think the most interesting thing about this show is that it has all the ingredients for an ecchi-harem affair, but doesn’t have the least drop of romantic inclination and thus assembles those parts into something else. Technically, the dynamic is there: Naoto is our male lead and he has pretty much every girl in the show, at least that’s in his own age bracket, falling for him. However, even the most plot-focused Ecchi-Harem show that actually wants its genre has more time and effort spent on its lead’s love life and romantic chemistry. Here, the real investment in chemistry is as co-workers, particularly with Aoi but also with Haruka, and as really good close friends with Mari. They’re all three interested, as is Noa, but we don’t know if Naoto is interested back because nothing is riding on whether he is or he isn’t. He’s certainly going to be maintaining some form of positive relationship with all these girls, and while I think his interactions with Mari might veer affectionate, it’s really immaterial whether they do or don’t. Thus, I kind of file this as the ecchi it absolutely is, but not really as a “harem” show despite looking and often sounding like one.
Because of this, the girls are allowed to keep more of their unique characters than some shows would otherwise allow. They don’t have to excessively fawn over the lead, because their competition for Naoto’s heart isn’t the point at all. This would actually be a pretty fun dynamic… if I actually wanted any of these characters.
At their best, the characters in this show are passable, the kind of characters who can successfully not hurt you for half an hour. But, that’s basically it. The characters in this make me realize how much of better shows, like The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, can be taken for granted until you’re served up the worse versions. The two shows offer some similar type characters. You’ve got your everyman, Kyon there and Naoto here, but Kyon was an enjoyable deadpan grump while Naoto is just Milquetoast aside from being into trains. You’ve got your busty hyper-feminine girl, Mikuru there or Haruka here, but Mikuru was still a time agent under the thick wall of ditz and had a good degree of granularity. And of course we have the spunky firecracker, Haruhi herself or Aoi here. They both tend to make their male leads suffer, but Aoi is unpleasant and often unfun to watch while Haruhi… she could be plenty awful, but you always got the feeling that she wasn’t malicious (which sometimes may have made it worse) and she was never not fun.
I will give the show some limited credit in two areas. For one, the characters did improve over time. Aoi’s prickliness started off worse than it ended, even if she remained a kind of poor tsundere, and Haruka got some direction to her character other than being a busty waif. The second area is that, while she’s somewhat underutilized, Mari at least has a good energy to her and some real chemistry with our lead, as I’ve mentioned.
However, cooking up a somewhat interesting variant recipe doesn’t save this show from having stale, tasteless ingredients. Whatever you want out of Rail Wars, you can get better elsewhere, except maybe the trains and if that’s what you’re here for I think you’re going to be largely disappointed. It’s deficient in some way just about everywhere, and while I have to give it some respect, I think somebody else needs to retry the formula with better materials. Rail Wars! gets a D+ from me. It’s not good enough to recommend even if it’s harmless.