New Fantasy Roadtrip Anime Announced From Creator of Beloved Series

Tsutomu Mizushima, director of the Girls und Panzer series, is heading a new original project, titled Where Does the Doomsday Train Go? The anime, which is set for an April 1 premiere in Japan, has many of the director’s hallmarks rearranged in new ways. In a time when “fantasy” means dungeons and guilds, Where Does the Doomsday Train Go? bucks the trend with its fantastical premise of a train trip through the true unknown.

Preview trailers for the upcoming anime can be viewed on Kadokawa’s YouTube channel. While the story’s cast is predominantly made of young girls, the foreboding premise and visuals promise that their train trip will include plenty of drama.

This is in line with Mizushima’s popular Girls und Panzer franchise, which, while being known for its silly premise, still maintained tension with meaningful stakes.

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Doomsday Train Provides is a Fantastical Roadtrip From Girls und Panzer’s Director

Anime produced by EMT Squared

Anime News Network has the following synopsis for Where Does the Doomsday Train Go?:

The anime’s story is set in a town in a not-so-ordinary countryside, where a big and strange occurrence is happening to its residents. But a young girl named Shizuru Chikura has a strong desire to see her lost friend again. Shizuru and three other girls board an abandoned train, and they set out to the outside world, where survival is not certain. What awaits them at the last stop of the “Doomsday Train?”

Besides Mizushima, Michiko Yokote is overseeing Doomsday Train’s scripts, while Asako Nishida serves as character designer. Chika Anzai voices Shizuru and will be performing alongside Azumi Waki, Erisa Kuon, and Hina Kino. Fans familiar with Girls und Panzer will find Mizushima’s familiar touches in the upcoming DoomsdayTrain: both shows employ a soft art style for their characters, which contrasts them with the heavy machinery they operate to explore their world, be it tanks used for sports competitions, aircraft carriers turned into floating cities or in DoomsdayTrain’s case, a mysterious passenger train being used for a supernatural cross-country trip.

Doomsday Train may be able to distinguish itself come April, thanks to its unique premise and visuals. While the anime industry produces plenty of fantasy shows,they often styled after high-fantasy works, or otherwise are inspired heavily by video games like Dragon Quest. Even highly acclaimed works like Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End or Delicious in Dungeon rely on common visuals like elves and dwarves, while urban fantasies like Solo Leveling focus on battling monsters. Doomsday Train’s premise of an otherworldly train trip, meanwhile, feels truly novel and lives up to the adjective of a “fantastical” tale.

Doomsday Train Sets Itself Apart With a More Grounded Approach to Fantasy

While the extent of the plot remains unknown, it is unlikely that Doomsday Train will be an easygoing anime, despite its cast not looking like rugged warriors. Girls und Panzer consistently provides legible, but not lethal, stakes that matter, such as the realistic goal of preventing a school’s impending shutdown.

The title of Mizushima’s new project, along with the foreboding imagery hidden in its promotional art, promises that the quartet of girls will be facing challenges during their journey. When Where Does the Doomsday Train Go? arrives next month, it will surely provide a unique experience amid other formulaic fantasies.

Source: Kadokawa (YouTube), Anime News Network