The "dream railway paradise entertainment" story is set in a parallel world where Japan did not privatize its national railways.
I’ll admit I only got through the first sentence of Rail Wars!description before passing judgement on it. I decided to watch it primarily on the strength of illustrator Vania 600’s character designs but without knowing much else. The alternate reality and mention of privatisation of the railways evoked images of different government departments duking it out on trains - it had “wars” in the title after all. As is my brain is wont to do, it pattern-matched this idea to what I’d heard about Toshokan Sensou (Library War) which had a similarly ridiculous sounding premise of library backed paramilitary groups battling with government censorship groups.
he is now part of the thrilling and sexy world of trains
Having not previously seen Toshokan Sensou, I decided to watch the two series in parallel, fully expecting to be equal parts amused and baffled by the surreal alternate histories but otherwise underwhelmed. What I didn’t expect was for Toshokan Sensou to be so serious, and for Rail Wars! to be quite so pants-on-head dumb.
In my three episode preview of Senkou no Night Raid (Night Raid in a Flash / Night Raid 1931) I expressed my concerns over whether the series would sensitively deal with Japan’s questionable activities during that time period. I can safely say that it is all too aware of the feelings evoked by that era and is hyper cautious about stepping on anyones’ toes, perhaps even a little too cautious. For example, when it first aired, the series’ seventh episode was streamed rather than broadcast amidst rumours that the episode’s Japanese point of view on the events around the Mukden incident worried some TV executives.
at ideological odds to the hard scientific and political background the rest of the story has
That should give you an idea of the kind of emotions that, even 80 years later, revisiting 1930’s Japan can evoke. For America it may have been a time of prohibition and organised crime but in the prelude to the Second World War, Japan was embroiled in grand scale military imperialism in and around Korea and China. Buoyed by their successes during the Japan-Qing and the Russo-Japanese wars (the latter of which, bizarrely, was rather covered by the atrocious series Lime-Iro Senkitan), it’s at this turning point that Night Raid starts.
It’s an intractable problem with converting a book to another medium: your outlook of the franchise as a whole is almost entirely dependant upon which media you consume first. It’s perhaps not such an issue with light novels translated into anime given that the two are, structurally and narratively at least, very close. For a novel like Yukikaze though? A novel that is often mentioned in the same breath as Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game and George Orwell’s 1984. In this instance I read the first novel - simply Yukikaze - before seeing the 2002, five episode OVA series - Sentou Yousei Yukikaze (Battle Fairy Yukikaze) - and though I obviously can’t say for sure, I’m fairly certain had I seen the latter first, I would be disinclined to read the former.
the book questions humanity in an inhuman war, the OVAs postulate a kind of quiet insurgency by our own machines
Starting this argument with “It’s not that bad, but” is tantamount to starting a conversation with “I’m not racist, but” - the justification invariably ends up contradicting your opening statement. The OVAs are extraordinarily gorgeous, and especially so for their time, it’s no wonder that Gonzo - then at the height of their creative power - twice won awards for it’s visual work on the series. Unfortunately however they take the plot of book, smash it into jagged pieces and disjointedly try and fit them back together in the hope that they make some kind of sense. They don’t. Coming out several years after it, I can’t rule out that the second novel (that I haven’t read), Good Luck Yukikaze, somehow contextualises the direction the series stakes including the wholly original final episode; my gut feeling though is that the OVAs will remain as inscrutable as they’re perhaps intended to be.
Soul Link is absolute, unmitigated dross. It fails on all levels to entertain, engage, or even hold interest beyond the few minutes of morbid curiosity it takes to realise what uninspiring mediocrity it is. It has neither the aesthetics, the intelligence or the big names to let the series be even passable and each episode ends up being twenty minutes of utter drivel where one feels they've lost far more than they've gained by watching it.
overlooking the fact that a hardened terrorist organisation employs a diminutive, top-heavy girl in hot-pants
Liberally adapted from an erotic visual novel by Navel, Soul Link doesn't even have the decency to integrate fan-service or any kind of racy content; the best the bargain-basement visuals can come up with is the leather-clad dominatrix masquerading as an antagonist and a mercenary with breasts which look like they've been badly modelled after a Madonna video. With no naughtiness in sight, the series is left to scratch around in the dirt and try and come up with some kind of manufactured drama which, ultimately, the characters are too incompetent to do anything about.
