This show tells you it's a cozy girls-on-a-train comedy, then systematically destroys that assumption every three episodes. The humor works because it's rooted in genuine character moments, the girls actually care about finding their friend, which makes the increasingly surreal and horrifying stops along the way land harder than pure absurdism ever could. It's a show that knows when to be funny and when to be quietly devastating, and it refuses to pick a lane even though that should make it fall apart. The pacing suffers from fitting 24 episodes of ideas into 12, but what made it through is strange enough that you'll keep thinking about specific scenes weeks later.

After the launch of 7G Network technology throws Japan into chaos, the land itself changes and people mutate in strange ways. In the rural town of Agano, every resident aged 21 or older has turned into an animal. High school student Shizuru Chikura cares less about that than about her missing friend Youka Nakatomi, who appears in a newspaper photo taken in Ikebukuro. With public transport shut down, the town's senile old conductor Tairo Zenjirou, the only human adult left, teaches Shizuru to run an abandoned train. On the day she leaves, classmates Nadeshiko Hoshi, Reimi Kuga and Akira Shinonome decide at the last minute to come along. The four set off into the outside world, unsure they will make it back alive. The result is a sci-fi adventure comedy with a supernatural edge.