Non-spoiler review:
I watched with English subtitles, and would have definitely struggled without them. I had no familiarity with the series before watching this, and didn’t even read the synopsis, haha, so I went into it totally blind.
Overall, I thought it was decent! It’s interesting retroactively noticing its influence in other works that I have seen.
Spoiler review:
I love trains and just the concept of train movies in general, haha, so I loved the basic premise here, with a train that travels through space. I love that they kept the design of it very much like a real actual train, complete with windows that you can just open while the train is traveling through space.
The train and the pirate ship were both totally romanticized designs, but I loved that they went for feel over believable sci-fi physics. It feels like despite all of the sci-fi elements, the core story itself was very grounded in familiar tropes and settings.
There’s a lot of weird sexism and objectification of women in this movie, plus a real freudian twist at the end… That’s probably the only thing that really turned me off of it. The women are either mothers or love interests (or both…) for the men, and none of them are really proper characters in their own right. Unsurprising, considering the time, but still disappointing.
I thought the story of this film felt sort of bigger than it, and it turns out it’s a manga adaptation with an anime and a sequel film as well! I wonder if the story has a bit more room to breathe in the manga/anime. We floated the idea of watching the sequel in the film club discord, and I’d probably tune in if we did, though I don’t think I’d seek it out on my own.