Anime Hajime Review: Rail Wars

***Warning, the following may contain spoilers for Rail Wars. Reader discretion is advised.***

Series Synopsis

Our story takes place in a universe where Japan’s rail system was never privatized. Japanese National Railways (JNR) strives to provide the safest, most comfortable experience for their passengers. To meet this goal, JNR relies on its elite Public Safety Force (PSF).

Naoto Takayama (voiced by Jun Fukuyama) has always wanted to be a train conductor. His dream gets a little sidetracked when he ends up as an officer of the PSF. Though not what he wanted, he’s determined to perform his duties as one of the newest recruits of Tokyo Station’s PSF K4 squad.

Here Naoto meets his fellow squadmembers. This includes the tough and violent, Aoi Sakurai (voiced by Manami Numakura). As well as the kind and intelligent Haruka Komi (voiced by Maaya Uchida). Together these three hope to ensure the safety of everyone under their care.

Overtime, Naoto begins to embody the vision of JNR. He proves to be a capable leader and model PSF officer. A growth that has not gone unnoticed by his female colleagues. As his admirers increase, Naoto moves closer to becoming the conductor he’s always hope of being.

Series Positives

I present this as a technical fact. Rail Wars was the best harem anime I’ve seen in some time. Since Monster Musume, which, despite its insanity, was a rock-solid harem series. This is almost a year’s gap we’re looking at. It’s been a while.

Naoto

Under these terms, that sounds impressive. But what’s really going on here?

Since Monster Musume, I haven’t watched that many harem anime. Among those few include Maken-ki and Shomin Sample. So, the ones I did see were annoying and frustrating at best. And Maken-ki at worst. When you compare it to the competition, Rail Wars starts looking like gold.

Aoi and Haruka

In actuality Rail Wars was just alright. It wasn’t anything special. A little on the forgettable side. Yet while watching, it was fine. There were a few things this show did well. 

Bits of Excitement

The nature of what this series wanted to do, allowed for some exciting scenarios. The PSF weren’t mall cops. They were an elite squad.

Ever been to Tokyo Station? It’s a giant mess of crowds and confusion. As well as a potential target. It is the rail hub of Tokyo. As well as most of Japan.

Thus, the kind of training and authority granted to the PSF worked for this universe. Plus, the PSF did their job well. Everyone was reliable and competent in what they needed to do.

In the opening episodes, Rails Wars did the things you’d expect. A bomb threat, a kidnapping, drug runners were involved at one point. Par for the course. Yet these were great indicators that the PSF, and particularly K4, could handle themselves. This team built confidence.

That confidence paid off. This series had two strong moments that demonstrated K4’s in sync-ness. For how much the rest of this show was either meh or standard, there was a welcomed pick up here.

One of these moments was when the team served as bodyguards for a visiting Prince. Sure enough, there was an assassination attempt. Yet, how K4 handled this was impressive. It was a group effort. Everyone played their role.

Could you argue this storyline turned into a damsel in distress situation with Haruka? Though not untrue, Rail Wars put everything into context. And it came from Aoi. A little preview of what the negative section's going to be, this was Aoi’s best moment. She reminded Naoto they were all PSF officers. They all knew the risks. Haruka got captured while doing the job she was assigned to do. She may not have been a fighter, but she could take care of herself.

I enjoyed this arc a lot. Once it got going that is. There were no weak links in this team. Plus, Naoto had a real cool moment. He took several solid tazer hits and refused to go down.

The other instance was even better.

To start, this series got a little dire. A massive typhoon hit, closing all the roads and railways. A woman then appeared and she was frantic. She said she was transporting transplant organs. If she couldn't get her cargo to the hospital soon someone was going to die. Kudos to you show. That’s one way to crank up the seriousness.

The only viable option was a broken down box on wheels and a track that had seen zero use in at least half a century. The journey would be downhill in the middle of a major storm. The chances of everything going wrong were high. Alright, I’m game. Let’s do this.

This arc wasn’t over and done. It took a while for it to play out. And it was never boring. There were some stupid parts, don’t get me wrong. A few times had me going, “Hmm, that wouldn't work.” But it was, without a doubt, the strongest moment of the series.

I can’t say Rail Wars wasn’t void of anything entertaining.

Naoto

Though Rail Wars wasn’t the strongest harem I’ve ever seen, it did have an outstanding center. Naoto was a good example of how it can get done.

Here was a lead who was reliable. No matter what was happening, Naoto would at least see it to the end. He wasn’t the most intimidating guy, but he wouldn't run away. He wasn’t a coward. Although he didn’t want to be a PSF officer, that didn’t stop him from doing the best job he could. Plus, Naoto had a goal. There was something he wanted to do with his life. He wasn’t a lame, nobody main character.

Considering his situation, Naoto was always surrounded by gorgeous women. Without thinking, he would get caught staring, but it wouldn't go further than that. He never went out of his way to be a leech. A wimpy perv he was not.

Yet these are all reasons why he was a good lead. Not the main reasons why he was good harem center. How he became that has to do with why a harem formed around him. You could see why someone would fall for this guy.

Noato’s determination won over Aoi. Haruka had a previous encounter with him and the other traits I listed only added to that. Naoto's childhood friend, Mari Sassho (voiced by Hiromi Igarashi), fell for his sincerity. And all these were convincing.

Yet the best one was with pop star Noa Kashima (voiced by Minori Chihara).

Noa was helping promote JNR and K4 were her security for her next concert. During the job, Naoto went out of his many times to ensure her safety. To the point where he kind of got on her nerves when he insisted the concert should be called off. Noa found Naoto to be a little annoying but recognized he was looking out for her best interest.

Then Naoto did something so selfless, it hit Nao hard. Afterward, there was no way she could deny or wanted to deny the fact she had fallen for this guy.

If a harem series doesn’t sure up the center, nothing can work. Rail Wars built the foundation with Naoto so that something could come out of it. Whether this show took that advantage or not is another story.

Series Negatives

K4 had four cadets, Naoto, Aoi, and Haruka. The fourth one, Sho Iwaizumi (voiced by Satoshi Hino) was useless. Why was this guy here? He added nothing. He did nothing. All Sho had was a one-note personality, hungry. Other than that, he was nothing more than background filler.

Okay, sure, Sho may have been worth having in a fight. But so was Aoi. In fact, I would argue she and the other two would’ve been more than enough.

That said, Sho didn’t take anything away from this series. He wasn’t a problem.

Something that was a problem, Rail Wars couldn’t decide what kind of fan service it wanted to give. This was the same issue Vividred Operation had. This series would go from rather tame to full on nudity. With no reason when it was going to do either.

At first, I was very impressed with Rail Wars. It had plenty of chances to have pointless, awkward upskirt shots for the sake of having an upskirt shot. moments And it didn’t take them. That was a surprising amount of restraint on your part show. Nice going. Sure, the PSF uniforms on the ladies were suspiciously form fitting. But whatever. At least this wasn’t going to be that type of series.

Until it became that type of series.

This is frustrating because Rail Wars was doing so well. I don’t know why it decided to give up on this. Not to mention, these instances were glaring since they weren’t that common. If you’re not going to make this a regular thing, why do it at all?

Then the first five episodes went by. Naturally, I assumed we had seen how far this series was willing to go. I mean, why would a show start doing anything else at this point. Unless that show is Rail Wars and bare breast appeared half way through because why not. These nude scenes were even more out of nowhere. They almost never happened.

When fan service is all over the place, it’s distracting. If a show wants to go to that level, fine. Except it needs to start there and stay there. When a series cranks up randomly, it’s an indication that the series doesn’t have faith in what it’s doing. Instead of trusting the story or characters to do the work, Rail Wars relied on boobs.

Though I do see why this show may have felt it necessary to do that.

Confusing

There were so many times in Rail Wars where I had no clue what was going on. Characters started doing things, events started happening because... I can’t finish that sentence since I don’t know what the “because” was.

All of the confusion had to do with the unlimited amount of conveniences in this show. Everything had a habit of working out perfect. Everyone was right where they needed to be at the right time. Nothing ever went wrong. Even the two arcs I mentioned earlier were filled with unexplained moments.

One of the biggest to throw me for a loop occurred when K4 was bodyguarding for the Prince. When the kid showed up, the Prince and Naoto connected over their mutual love of trains. The Prince also took to Haruka because of how lovely and nice she was. Or at least that was what I though. As it turned out, the Prince and Haruka had a history. I would say this was a bombshell, but Naoto seemed to be aware of this. I don’t know when this conversation happened, but I wasn't part of it.

One of the more aggravating instances happened right before the organ transplant delivery. It was, I guess, a huge shock that Naoto had no interest in being a PSF officer. He joined JNR to be a train conductor. When Aoi heard this, she got upset. Why? Beats me. Naoto was never quiet about his intentions. This was common knowledge.

The most hilarious example was Naoto's friend Mari’s ability to be working at whatever venue K4 was at. I say hilarious because this had to be deliberate. This happened without fail. If this series intended this to be nothing more than coincidence and not a joke, it would be beyond stupid. I’m giving Rail Wars the benefit of the doubt on this one.

The Harem Members

This is odd. It’s the harem center who’s often the most underdeveloped. In Rail Wars, it was the harem members.

Of the two main routes, neither Aoi or Haruka were that exciting. They were cute and I liked their character designs. But that was pretty much it. Both women didn’t have much of a personality.

Aoi was your stereotypical tsundere. She did nothing to deviate from this troupe. All she had going for her was a hatred for men. The show never explained this, yet she had it. Also, her father was a cop. So why she joined the PSF instead of the police is beyond me.

Haruka faired a little better. She was the smart one of the group. She was nice, kind, and sweet to have around. Unfortunately, a huge part of her character was the fact she had big boobs. That should always be an extra, not a main feature. Also, going back to conveniences, it sure was lucky how she ended up in the same squad as Naoto. The person she had a crush on since she was little. Even though they had not seen each other for years.

The two secondary routes were much stronger.

Mari was a good childhood friend. She had a long-standing crush on Naoto and cared for him a lot. But she wasn’t as active in her attempts to win his heart. I liked that and it was a shame she was always sidelined.

Noa, on the other hand, was very open about her feelings. This was great because she had no problem calling everyone out on their hesitation. She knew Naoto had a lot of admirers. Instead of that stopping her, she chose to go for it. I’m mentioning this in the negative sections because she was almost never around.

A harem anime kind of fails when it doesn’t create much interest in most of the possibilities. And that was what Rail Wars was. A series full of possibilities and none of them were all that fascinating.

Final Thoughts

I’m not going to pretend I don’t like harem anime. It comes from my love of romance stories. Rail Wars, in this sense, was serviceable.

This series did things well. It had some decent action and intense moments. As well as a solid lead. There was nothing awful about this show. But there were too many things that weren’t worth getting excited over. This hurt Rail Wars in the long run.

There were some aspects I liked about this show. Yet it's hard for me to recommend it since skipping it would lead to the same thing. I say that because Rail Wars is the type of series that will be forgotten.

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