It warms my heart to see how the author of the astondishingly excellent 2022 ONA Milky Highway has now a movie streaming on Netflix, Milky Subway: The Galactic Express Gateway… which is actually a film recut-compilation, i somehow missed (or fogot) that Yohei Kamiyama made a sequel series, Milky Subway, that aired on Youtube and television.

I really don’t know how i could have missed that, but i’m making amends now by reviewing this recut that compiles the 12 short episodes into a 47 minute film, that also introduces a couple new side characters (at least so sayeth the articles and the Wikipedia page).

The premises follow Makina and Chiharu, arrested for the events of Milky Highway, and now joined by four other young delinquents, all sentenced to do community service by cleaning an old rundown space express train, but when they all set foot on the vehicle, it goes off by itself, so the group has to collaborate in order to find a way to stop the train, and along the way deal with other weird malfunctions….

It’s a compact story that actually has enough going on, and it uses the time to develop not only the returning duo from Milky Highway, but also the new deliquent youths, making for some really good charaterization and dynamics, also due to the dialogue going for a more realistic style than most anime.

THAT aside, the retro scifi aesthetic is perfect, the character designs are amazing, animation is beyond impressive, it’s unbelievable how this is a self produced work (manned by a VERY young author, too) that in less than a hour puts stuff from experienced studios to shame.

I really wanna see more of these characters, of this world, so give the series and this compilation film some love, will ya?