Written by Rei Caldombra 5/22/2024 Video version: https://youtu.be/ZT9XAa0xWtw

Previous Train to the End Post: https://www.blogunderalog.com/blog-collection/train-to-the-end-eps-6-7-review-insensitivity-and-degen-zombies

This train ride isn’t ending, and from now on I think I’ll proceed individually rather than covering two. In this episode we deal with trauma and shogi, which makes it sound like we are talking about March Comes in Like a Lion. But there is also magical tv show silliness here that makes the difference clearer.

We start out with the train passing through a few new areas. First we have an itchy wasteland of stone piles.

I have no idea about this one. Gonna chalk it up to another one where it’s based on folklore type stuff that I don’t know or it's genuinely just random. If you know or have any ideas on things I may be missing please share.

Then onto a normal looking ruined city, at least at first. It’s hard to say for certain if this and the next area are the same, but I am going to assume they are because we don’t see anything happen to them, but in the next area Akira questions if anything is going to happen this time. They continue forward into an area where all the buildings are the exact same, looking straight out of a city from a horror game.

And oh boy does that comparison fit with what actually happens. Everyone is accosted with memories of serious trauma.

Akira’s memory shows her watching as someone’s hands are reaching out from a pool of water.

I think that she at the very least watched someone drown to death, and most likely had a hand in it. Perhaps she ran somewhere dangerous like a swamp or wetlands and when an adult followed her, they ended up drowning. She apologizes for “turning a blind eye”, which means to ignore something that you know is wrong, or intentionally ignoring information. That could have been her ignoring warnings not to go to the dangerous area. She knew she was doing something she shouldn’t, but she did it anyway. Or she did not take the warnings from the adults seriously. And as a result of whatever the scenario, someone ended up getting killed. I don’t think this person survived, it would not fit the gravity of the situation that she just put someone in danger for a moment. This definitely would be traumatizing, and maybe this could explain some of her strange behavior. Maybe she relied on weird parts of the internet to distract her.

Reimi prays for a Mr. Badger to rest in peace, with a memory of her holding a bloody ax over an animal.

In this one we can see Reimi’s face, where she is sad and/or surprised. This one feels much more open to interpretation as there could be many situations where she could kill an animal. The background does not help, with us just seeing trees and the sky. Perhaps she got scared of it and killed it, feeling bad because that may not have been necessary. Or maybe she was defending herself, or told to do it by her parents. If you want to go to the darker end of things, maybe she thought she was just playing with it and did not expect to kill it. But this is theorizing just for the fun of it, maybe it will be brought up later but as of this episode it is not too substantial.

For Nadeshiko the situation is very clear, her parents were in an unhealthy relationship that ended in divorce.

We get two memories, one of the mother and father arguing behind Shoji walls, the traditional Japanese paper walls, with Nadeshiko crying on the other side. The second showing her father leaving with a suitcase, indicating that he left the family. She wishes she stopped them from arguing, showing her regret over not being able to keep her family together. This is a feeling many children of broken families share, and is understandable for someone to think they could have changed things. But it is far better for children to not involve themselves when their parents are fighting, doing that puts them in danger and the anger being turned on them can be even more damaging. But you can’t expect everyone to just take that explanation at face value and get over those feelings easily. Especially when you have the constant reminder of the parent missing.

We even got trauma from poor Pochi, who was being abusively sprayed with water in a kennel. Yeah this definitely rivals Pontarou (the 7G guy) for displaying true evil.

Then we get to Shizuru, who we can go through quickly because hers is the fight with Youka. Shizuru’s trauma being the fight with Youka is more confirmation that the pain from that fight really does run deep in her mind. It is being put directly on the same level as death and divorce.

We have one more passthrough of an area with giant Kogomi (I think).

The girls think about the 7G incident for a bit before reaching our main destination of Oizumi Gakuen, which is now a place dictated by the fictional story NeriAli. Which is an exaggerated weird magical girl show with wacky, quirky characters.

That’s a chill way of putting it, they’re properly used to it now.

So this is our proper Nadeshiko episode, with her getting the leading role in the episode and in universe. She gets to play the main character of the story, Alice. Nadeshiko gives us a lesson for this episode, which is linked with the trauma we were previously shown.

It is important to contemplate and recognize our mistakes, as that is how we learn. But you cannot be stuck on them, as that will keep you from moving forward. This applies to all of the traumatic moments we saw, but it is most important for Shizuru. A big focus of the last writing was about Shizuru’s insensitivity and immaturity. I talked about how she was not able to move on from the pain she was left with after their fight. Here she will hopefully get the message that in order for them to make amends and move on when they reach Youka, she will have to stop fixating on that moment.

I really appreciate the staging and energy of the main plot. The girls get to sneak around a city overrun by the anime characters. They try to follow the main plot to fix everything, but it turns out that the world does not properly follow the story anymore. So the girls have to find their own way to win by using the shogi rules to defeat their enemies. We get super wacky designs, scenarios and setpieces that we move through at a brisk pace. The pacing definitely felt faster this episode, which did hurt the episode a bit from a thematic standpoint, but for the execution of the main plot I think it actually worked in its favor. We have them fighting in a graveyard dressed as ridiculous magical girl characters who have to fight enemies who operate in shogi rules. It's very silly but genuinely fun and interesting. Everyone got to play a part, most notably Nadeshiko got to be a beast with the bow. It’s definitely the most memorable and unique action sequence we've gotten so far.

I am sad the trauma on the other girls did not get touched on more. It is followed up with the message of moving on, but this was very direct and simple. We have Nadeshiko realize that these words apply to her, and are shown that Shizuru recognizes that it applies to her too. But that is pretty much it. Since Nadeshiko was the main girl of this episode it would have been nice to get more substantial thoughts from her on the situation. After we had multiple episodes giving serious focus to Akira and Reimi it feels like Nadeshiko got a bit less. This stuff is fully functional but not as substantial as I would have liked. We also got a scene of Youka enthusiastically telling Shizuru about the show. This like the Nadeshiko stuff does work, as it gives us more about the relationship and fits Shizuru being told she needs to move on. But it definitely feels like we could have gotten more from this. Like how Shizuru realizes she was not seriously listening and recognizing Youka’s love for the show the same way she did not properly recognize and respond to Youka’s passion for astronomy. We can infer this as I did, but this does not feel like it or something else was strongly laid out. Considering the previous episodes I do wonder if this was meant to be another two parter that they had to cut down for what is coming next. I still very much enjoyed this episode, but I wish the character details got focused on a bit more.

So at the end of the fight we get our big reveal, the identity of the Witch Queen of Ikebukuro that was brought up first in the previous episode. Not too surprisingly, it’s our long lost girl Youka.

This comes with the positive that they know she is safe and is there, but with the negative that reaching her may be more difficult than they expected. Especially with the big question of this episode, which is who messed with the state of things in NeriAli. Since Chaos said he was going to report back, it sounds like he has contact with Youka or at least someone who seems to have influence on the areas closer to Ikebukuro. There has to be an outside force that released the villains and gave him power. Perhaps someone is trying to make the world as they desire, or someone believed that things would be better changed. I’ll leave more thinking on that for next time. Thanks for reading!