This is the version that hits you like a runaway train, because compilation cuts strip out the breathing room and leave nothing but the Aragane Station collapse and the Koutetsujou tearing through the dark. Ikoma spends the whole first act being laughed at for his piercing gun, then bites down on his own bandage and cinches that tourniquet around his throat so the virus can't reach his brain, and suddenly the joke is the only thing that works. Wit Studio animates the Kabane like a physics problem you can't solve, glowing steel-caged hearts that shrug off every rifle in the station, and Sawano Hiroyuki scores it with the kind of vocal drops that make a steam engine feel like a war crime. Mumei walks in barefoot and outclasses every soldier on board, and she's still a kid who wants to be told she did well. Watch it for the moment the gates fail and everyone realizes the people inside were never the plan.

A plague of undead creatures called Kabane sweeps across the land, transforming anyone bitten into one of the cursed monsters. Humanity survives behind the walls of fortress stations, linked to one another only by armored trains. At Aragane Station, a steamsmith named Ikoma keeps the trains running but resents how helpless people are against the Kabane. In his spare time he has built a new weapon to fight them, and he gets his chance to use it when the undead break into the station. The film is the first of two compilation movies retelling the television series, with added scenes found only in the film. It mixes action, horror and supernatural drama.