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I'm not really happy with this piece, but I've been sitting on it for too long, just reading it over, and having a really hard time editing it. What I want to get across isn't really clear, and maybe what I wanted to write wasn't a review specific for cw, but a retrospective for shinkalion as a whole. Well, there are parts of that in here. It's actually most of it. |
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 In the western world, Shinkalion's primary fame is being the show that has Shinji Ikari and Hatsune Miku driving train robots. For myself, this is how I initially found out about the series. I began watching it and stopped after just a couple episodes due to how childish it seemed, and really, that is just the nature of it. Shinkalion is a nearly decade long running toy line, and the primary audience for it is 5 year olds. It is meant to be used with plarail, which is the same plastic rails used by Thomas the Train toys, if that tells you anything. Now, I am not a stranger to kodomo anime (children's anime). I mean, I love the original Pokemon anime, Medarot, Danball Senki, Sgt. Frog, Shin-Chan, and I can go on. For some reason though, Shinkalion just seemed exceptionally childish. I just could not get it. However, I soon picked it up again, and I was hooked, I understood it a bit more. Shinkalion is absolutely still an anime for very small children, but aside from that, it's an anime where the goal is to not just advertise its toys but to advertise the Japanese railway system and highlight not only the physical connections it makes but how it also brings humanity closer together emotionally.
Prior to becoming invested in Shinkalion, my passion for trains and railway systems was 0. Nonexistent! However, Shinkalion changed this. Really, it couldn't be helped with the clear passion the series has for the subject. Constantly, it will brazenly hold the shinkansen and the railways as humanity's unmatched achievement. It is also constantly bombarding you with cool facts that create interest/intrigue and sentimental stories that help humanize it all.  With the brain, there is a concept known as mirror neurons. When we observe a person's actions/reactions these mirror neurons have a tendency to want us to copy them physically and emotionally. My point of saying this is that watching a series that is constantly discussing the shinkalion in the most enthusiastic manner can't help but activate these mirror neurons and turn many people into railway fans, as long as they can connect in some way to the series. Just like how the characters around the MCs couldn't help but catch at least somewhat of an interest towards it, I couldn't help it either. For some people, they can't get past the childish aspects, they don't enjoy mecha, or for whatever other reason, they just can't find a way to connect with Shinkalion. I love mecha and tend to be a fan of kodomo anime. While Shinkalion took me a few episodes to get it, eventually I accepted and appreciated very much what it was. It's kind of like a GaoGaiGar for slightly smaller children. Like a Raijin-Oh--or something like that--except just a tad bit more kiddish than that. Despite the fact I keep harping on this show for being a bit kiddish, it does manage to be a very fun ride. All of the characters have great interactions together, and it does have some older characters of importance to add variety to the cast along with varying messages to viewers of all ages. It does a great job at that. I can imagine a family sitting down at breakfast to watch the newest Shinkalion episode and the parents, older sibling, and youngest sibling (the target demographic) all have a character they can relate to and they all have their moments to really get invested with them. It's pretty neat stuff, and is what I believe all children's media should strive for--knowing what their primary audience is, but understanding that older people will be engaging with it as well and being able to connect to them.
For those people who can't connect to and appreciate Shinkalion for what it is, I don't think it could develop a railway fan. For me, it has! I appreciate it for that. Ever since I first watched Shinkalion I've really been reading and learning a lot more about japanese railway and have even gotten into model railroading. It even gave me the desire to check out the Kyoto Railway Museum when I was in Japan awhile back (it was very cool seeing them show it in CW). But this is a review for Change the Word, and while I feel setting the stage was necessary, it is time to move on. 
In February of 2024, a preview for CW is released. The characters are much older, the music seems to be more grandiose, and from the small glimpse we get of the E5, the mecha designs appear to be quite different. It gives totally different feel from before. This is really the first bit of info about the series, and I was on board with it. Just a month or so later, the series would begin airing, and every week(mostly), I followed along. A major standout when viewing the series is just how different the mecha look this time. Before, the Shinkalion would typically carry half of the shinkansen's front car on each side of its legs, but CW did away with this design trend. While it creates Shinkalion with very samey looking base forms, the designs are much slimmer, and they have a drastically different silhouette than before. What truly distinguishes each Shinkalion is their ERDA vehicle combinations. These are vehicles commonly utilized in real-world railway tasks that combine with each Shinkalion to add armor, weapons, and other additions to each unit to make them appear fuller. It creates a very refreshing look for the series! However, without the vehicle combinations, they do just end up looking too barren for me. 
 As this is a mecha series and a series for small children, what is probably even more important than the actual show itself is the toys. I can whole-heartedly say that CW has absolutely the best toys out of the entire Shinkalion franchise. In prior iterations, the Shinkalion would typically be composed of 3 cars--a front, middle, and back. Typically the front and back would combine and the middle would be left for weapon storage. CW changes this. Now, the entire unit is inside of just a front car. While that may seem as if it would compromise the toys in some way, it's quite the opposite. They have never felt as sturdy and detailed as they do now. The transformation is incredibly simple, satisfying, and it is a bit shocking at how they were able to cram it all into just the front car. Looking back, Shinkalion toys of the past felt a bit flimsy, floppy, and unstable. The toys of CW feel greatly improved. However, this may be due to buying all mine second-hand and clearly used by children while the CW toys I've bought are brand-new. While in Japan last year I even had the chance to visit a Takara Tomy Plarail shop, and was able to purchase the E5+ERDA Trailer in person. How neat! (I'd later buy a second one to be able to display the shinkansen form). Overall, the toys look spectacular, feel spectacular, and transform spectacularly. It truly is a major upgrade from where the toy line began. CW has brought some seriously robust toys that any Shinkalion fan must get.
Moving back to the actual show, an important area to consider is the soundtrack, and. as mentioned before, the music is much more grandiose, spectacular, and varied. Music is reused of course, but it has a much more dynamic range than before. Not a single track in this soundtrack felt out of place, boring, or tiresome. The main trio ended up even having their own theme associated with them, and that really rocked. I enjoyed the soundtrack so much that I even ended up pre-ordering it. Every so often I've put it into the CD deck in my car, and just give it a listen. Though, I can't recommend that, as the CD release is missing like 12 songs for some reason, so just download it or buy it on iTunes. Nonetheless, amazing music can only carry a show so much, and an important area in mecha anime is the fight scenes. I will say, the battles in CW are some of the best the Shinkalion series has to offer. The choreography presented in each episode's fights is largely great. Camera angles are pretty dynamic and varied, shot composition is exciting, and the special effects look great. Each week also brings you about 5 minutes of high-quality stock footage transformation/special attack sequences, as a treat for tuning in each week. Combined with the incredibly enjoyable music, the action scenes are really enjoyable. I do want to also give special mention to the CGI used in this series. It's often a meme that the Japanese can't create good CGI (Berserk 2016, Ex-Arm, Sailor Moon Crystal), but Shinkalion truly has pretty great CGI. It's fluid, movement looks realistic, and is used to create some pretty great shots. Some may be quick to call any use of CGI lazy, but it's clear that the staff working on CW were adept at this form of animation and were not using it as a simple shortcut. While I adore the first Shinkalion series, a lot of its fights did feel a bit underwhelming in this regard. A downside with CW is that the actual story relation the fights have is lacking. The fights often have little relation to the actual episode itself. It feels very tacked on and too MOTW. In the original Shinkalion, the fights often connect to the main story in a way. An example from the original series is when Hayato and Asuna go to Kyoto, and as a part of that trip, Asuna is in samurai armor, slips, falls, and Hayato catches the blade with his bare hands. This later is how Hayato wins in the fight! It does a nice job of bringing everything full circle. Meanwhile, in CW, we have the plot outside of the Shinkalion, their phone rings, and then they have a totally unrelated fight. Now, this wasn't true for the entire series, as some do tie back into the story better. Additionally, all of the major plot fights also are built up really nicely and end up being some pretty extreme highs not just for CW, but for Shinkalion as a whole. However, I really wish this show would have handled the Unknown more like Raijin-Oh. In Raijin-Oh the weekly enemy is created due to the hatred of a person, and the cast has to overcome that fear to win. GaoGaiGar does a similar thing, and I think it would really work well with Shinkalion. There are probably a few different ways the Unknown could have been handled, and I just wish they would have tried a bit more with it. I recognize the story reason for doing it how it was done, but it really does just result in probably half of the fights in the series feeling more underwhelming than they should have. Though, the intense action and spectacular music did make every fight feel great. 
These are all mostly the technical aspects, but what about the actual meat of any show–the story, the characters? The plot is pretty typical of a children's mecha anime–a young boy is coerced by outside forces into piloting a giant robot. In this case, the young boy is Taisei Onari–whos goal is to “be a cool person with something to protect”. It's a very vague expectation, but it does a good job at providing some raison d'etre for driving the Shinkalion. Joining him is a wide cast of drivers from other ERDA branches. The most notable are the two others from JR East–Akane Folden and Ryota Kuzuryu. All three of them pretty much have the same personalities of the JR East drivers of the original series, except as the cast is aged up, there is a slight bit more emotional edge to them. Together, they create a nice balance of character interactions and have a variety of interests and motivations that help drive the story while maintaining balance with who is the focus of the story at each point. The other drivers are more side characters. As with other Shinkalion series, they get introduced, get a couple episodes of focus, and then mostly become side characters. Is that a bad thing? I don't think so. The characters are all diverse, have unique personalities, and when they are apart of an episode, they typically do get a decent amount of screentime to enjoy their presence outside of Shinkalion combat. I would like to point out that while I discussed the JR East drivers earlier, I did leave one out. Driving the Shinkalion E8 is Ganma Mogami. He is an interesting case, as while he is in the same division as the main trio, he was introduced later and made to be a few years older, so he is treated about the same as the other drivers. It was a smart move to handle it as they did. I don't think the JR East group would work very well with four people with the main focus. Shinkalion CW has a bad problem of not really telling you anything. Show don't tell is a popular way to express information in stories; however, this is only really effective with some context. With CW, there isn't really any given context for anything–no clues, no tidbits of info, nothing. The expectation is that you are very heavily questioning it until the very end. The Unknown exist, do their thing, and it isn't really found out what the deal is with them until the last few episodes. I understand what they were trying to do, but it just ended up being frustrating. The major villain of the first arc is introduced, given a few episodes to do their thing, develop an idea, and then are memory wiped and it isn't really thought of again. Eventually a new villain is introduced to replace them, and basically does the same thing, except they take until the last 10 episodes to really do anything besides be a face and a name. I guess what I'm trying to say is that the series has a pacing problem. It held its cards for too long. It's frontloaded with a lot of generally insignificant material. Sure, there are cool fights, and there are a few sprinkles of exciting story moments, but then it goes back to being generally nothing. If the episode count was longer, and it could afford to spread out and evenly distribute driver introductions and overall plot moments, maybe it wouldn't have been a problem, but I really don't see how this story could have been extended. Does CW hold up to the expectations I had for it? Mostly, yeah. It has its faults like anything else. It may be weaker than the original series overall, it absolutely dominates the original series in other areas--not to mention how it is a million-billion times better than Z. While it may not be the deepest most engaging story, it told a coherent story with moving music, pretty good fight choreography (some of the best CGI modern anime offers), fun, but often underutilized characters, and it had a specific charm to it that only Shinkalion is capable of. Will you appreciate this charm? Maybe, maybe not. I can't say. I don't know you, but you know you, and you are capable of determining if this is worth your time. It may not have been a perfect entry in the series, or even the best I feel, but it was an amazing attempt at “modernizing” (the anime series isn't even 10 years old) Shinkalion. Just as the shinkansen unites people from different backgrounds, Shinkalion does the same. Shinkalion has connected me with a world that has brought me newfound happiness, and I am grateful for that. Shinkalion is an advertisement, and it is charming enough to have worked a great deal on me. The shinkansen come and go–within the next 2 years, we are losing 3 shinkansen--the 500 series, the N700A series, and the Doctor Yellow. Despite the events of our real world, Shinkalion seems to be willing to include decommissioned shinkansen in their lineup (0 series, 300 series, and E4 Max). With the next series, we very well may see the introduction of the Shinkalion E10. In a decade we'll be able to talk about how cool the Chuo Shinkalion is, if the Chuo Shinkansen project ever actually finishes. As long as Shinkalion exists, it will bring in a new generation of railfans, who will express their passion in their own unique ways. Whether they become tori-tetsu, modelers, fans of history, or maybe a combination of specialties railfans are united for their shared passion for trains, and despite differences in expression, they always have that common ground. Until Shinkalion has a chance to ignite a passion in the hearts of a new group of people, let's enjoy everything Shinkalion has to offer for its 10 year anniversary! |
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