Koutetsujou no Kabaneri revolves around a boy named Ikoma who works as a mechanic of some sort in a settlement surrounded by big walls. Outside the walls are monsters called Kabane, former humans who were infected with a virus that turns them into man/eating zombies with a stee-like mutation that guard their hearts. Amongst the people in his settlement, Ikoma is the only one who seems to realize that the Kabane are infectees, while the rest of the people believe it to be a curse of some sort. When the kabane attack and Ikoma is bitten, he manages to halt his change into a Kabane, turning into a Kabaneri: Abeing inbetween huan and Kabane. Along with another Kabaneri, Mumei, he guards the koutetsujou ( a train ) on it's way to the capital where the people of his hometown look for shelter.
So far the synopsis
STORY 4
As far as the story goes, Koutetsujou disappoints heavily. The zombie-theme is not especially new to begin with ( albeit anime has not yet sen much zombie-oriented series ), and Attack on Titan explored it in a new light, so studio Wit must have felt like they needed to exceed themselves and fail in the process.
The world-building in this show hardly makes sense: We are in middle-ages Japan, where people live behind big walls to guard themselves against humanoid monsters. Of course, the threat of the kabane would lead humans to develop techniques and technology that works against that threat, but please explain how being attacked by the kabane leads to building railways all across Japan. To begin with, Japan is not known for having a lot of easily accessible ore, so how did the people gather it and forg the metal for the walls, railways and trains? It seems that the storywriters just tossed in whatever would be convenient for them so they could get the "from a to b plot" that is so typical for zombie-movies/series, totally ignoring the fact that the threat by the kabane would have had different effects than what is portrayed in the anime.
A lot of melodramatic flash-backs are inserted to make the viewers care about what is happening to the characters, but in all honesty, that is a cheap trick, much like killing off side-characters with little to no personality and screen-time just for shock-value.
Another problem with this show is that the main antagonis is introduced way past the halfway point. This gives little chance for proper character-development of all the antagonizing characters
ART 8
The art of Koutetsujou no Kabaneri was nice to look at. Steampunk is almost always nice to look at, after all. The character designs have a vibe that is similar to mature anime from the early 2000's which is a nice change of pace since the VN style has taken the lead in modern anime The colors are vibrant most of the time and the surfaces often have a paint-ish look, much like in Seraph of the End, which was also produced by Studio Wit.
SOUND 5
There were a few instrumental versions and reinterpretations of the ending-song, but other than those, no particular OST stood out amongst them. Again, this remixing of Soundtracks in order to create a wider array of OST's is something that also happened with AoT, but at least that show had epic soundtracks, such as E.M.A and The Reluctant Heroes, that are immediately recognisable from the first beat onwards.
CHARACTER 3
Other than Ikoma and Mumei, the only character whose Personality is fleshed out to some extent is the main-antagonist, whom I shall not mention anymore to avoid major spoilers.
Both maincharacters have similar circumsrtances: They lost their family to the kabane when they were kids, and had to kill them to prevent their transformation into monsters. So, rather than coming to identify themselves with the human qualities of the characters, viewers were supposed to care about the characters becaus of shock-value. A lazy way out for the creators
Ikoma is the I-want-to-protect-everyone kind of MC who does not have any other significant features other than his motivation and his tragic past
Mumei is the same as Ikoma, but with an extra dish of snobby attitude and spreading her legs for onii-sama ( in a figurative sense )
The othr companions are hardly fleshed out, personality-wise. Takumi can simply be described as the useless best friend of the MC. There's nothing more to him than that.
The same thing goes for the female side-characters: Ayame acts like a typical well-raised Japanese Ojou-sama, the red-head is the standard stilent type, and the other girl is the caretaker character. Kind of like an onee-sama.
The antagonsists are equally on-dimensional. All of the less important antagonists follow the Main Antagonist for unclear reaons, much like in Guilty Crown, while the MA does have reasons for his what he does, even though the actions he takes are way too crass, considering his motives.
ENJOYMENT 5
As it is a typical zombie-flick, the show has a certain amount of tension and nice action scenes. No doubt, but for me, the incoherent developments throughout the story and the bland characters killed most the show fpr me. I'm just glad I don't get myself all too hyped up for shows without having seen source material, otherwise this show might have made me hate anime, considering the hype this show got from some parts of the community.
Overall a 5/10
