Galaxy Railways Review - 77,5/100
Matsumoto Leiji once was the pioneer of space operas, even before Yoshiyuki Tomino came with Mobile Suit Gundam. His influence was huge, and so even in the 21st centuries, his adaptations are still getting themselves spin-offs every now and then. The Galaxy Railways obviously based itself around the concept of “trains in space”, and while I wouldn’t recommend this series to someone who’s looking for a good introduction to Matsumoto Leiji’s style, it nevertheless is a pretty decent action-series.
The basic set up is that there are trains who travel through space. There sometimes (read: nearly every episode) goes something horribly wrong with them, and it’s up to our main characters to save those in trouble, acting as a combination of the royal defence force and a rescue squad. While trains randomly crashed a bit too often for my liking, the individual episodes were helped by the fact that the creators tried to stuff in lots of different ideas into their stories, whether they made sense or not. The series also has a great selection of character-designs. Matsumoto Leiji’s designs have always stood out, and the creators of this series did a good job of giving them a modern and epic look.
Unfortunately, the series does have a number of large and quite annoying flaws: it has both of what I’d like to call a “bad main character syndrome” and a “bad ultimate villain syndrome”. Manabu just keeps whining on and on about ethics and morals, and especially spends the first half defending his cheesy ideals. As soon as he starts developing, he thankfully matures, but as a result he becomes a bit too perfect of a character: loved by all women, perfectly skilful, no flaws left whatsoever. His female love interest is completely the opposite: completely useless throughout the largest part of the series. The side characters are the ones who end up saving this series: Bulge, Bruce and especially David are great to watch.
And regarding the villains who pop up in the final climax of the series: they’re just a cheap rip-off of the Mazone from Captain Harlock. There’s a difference between a homage and a rip-off, and in this case the creators didn’t seem to realize what made the Mazone work so well: they had firm resolutions: they considered their alternatives and went with the one that involved ending tons of lives. The villains here are somewhat stuck between good guys and “yeah, we weren’t evil; we were forced to wipe out half of the universe; have pity with us”. To be honest, it feels rather fake.
And it’s really a shame, because the rest of this finale was good stuff. It would have been epic if the main character and villains weren’t so annoying. Overall, it’s definitely not the best series, but there definitely were some good episodes in these first 26 episodes. However, the best thing that you should do if you want to get a taste of Matsumoto Leiji’s signature style is simple: check out either Captain Harlock, Queen Millenia or Galaxy Express 999.
| Storytelling: | 8/10 |
| Characters: | 7/10 |
| Production-Values: | 8/10 |
| Setting: | 8/10 |