Be it The Orient Express, Firefly, or FFVIII, you can rarely go wrong with train caper, and TSJ is no exception. The great mass and speed of the huge vehicle never fails to deliver not inconsiderable measure of energy, momentum, and gravity to whatever’s going on aboard it.
And there’s a lot going on aboard this train…and around it. First, Yuliy comes face-to-face with his long-thought-dead brother, whose current status as a vampire throws a big wrench into Yuliy’s life’s whole “Kill All Vampires” directive.
Then, the Hyakko Party decides to block the train’s path, forcing an emergency stop. They board the train and both the army and the Jaegers work separately towards the same goal: protecting the innocent passengers, among them Naoe Ryouko, whom Dorothea discovers and immediately diagnoses as having chased after her crush.
Ryouko denies having a crush; she’s just “interested” in Yuliy, the other Jaegers, and their very different way of life. The one place where they are similar is that they want to protect the weak…and have the means to do so. Only Ryouko only has “dojo” skills, and has yet to test them in a real-world situation.
Since this is a time when soldiers with rifles go up against revolutionaries with swords and arrows, martial arts are still a very useful skill to have.
The Hyakko Party raiders have some success against the soldiers and reach the car that contains the Frankenstein monster, whose operator lets their leader think it will do whatever he commands. The Hyakko leader is eventually relieved of his head after getting a little too close to the monster, and his cohorts scatter, making the train a runaway train.
Yuliy jumps off the train just long enough to rescue a little girl and reunite her with her parents, perhaps proving to Mikhail that he’s too “softhearted” to continue pursuing a quest for revenge (especially since he’s avenging his brother’s death…while his brother is still “alive”, albeit as a vamp).
After Fallon and Phillip board the train and decouple the passenger car, Ryouko takes a running leap to remain with them, not wanting to miss out on the action as long as she can assist. Yuliy jumps over everyone to get to the front of the train to try to stop it, but he’s blocked by the monster, who proves a tough customer even against a Jaeger.
Major Iba’s troops and the other Jaegers eventually come together, with the latter saving the former from one last bad guy with a gun, proving to the former that they aren’t the bad guys…just good guys taking a different path.
Ryouko almost instinctively ends up on the Jaeger path when she spots a vampire that’s still alive when no one else does, and remembers her kendo training. In a split second, she’s borrowed a soldier’s sword and eliminated the threat.
I’ll now just state for the record that I LOVE Ryouko and think she’s the coolest character on the show. What’s strange is that in her time on the train up to that point, I’d forgotten her swordsmanship, which makes her sneaky cool, not like the “ostentatious” cool of the Jaegers.
When Yuliy can only fight the monster to a stalemate, Mikhail steps in and finishes the job. I was a little confused as to his motives considering the monster was built at the behest of his master Kershner, but the fact it had gone completely out of control rendered it expendable…and Mikhail wastes no time expending it with some slick moves and a couple of well-placed grenades.
The train ends up jumping the end of the line and derailing, but all parties involved are okay. Yuliy has one last moment with Mikhail, who decides to give his little brother more time to consider what he should do next. Heck, he even charges his little brother with killing him should he become something like the monster he just destroyed. They can’t be both brothers and enemies, according to Mikhail; it has to be one or the other.
RABUJOI - An Anime Blog 