With 12 episodes running three-and-a-half minutes on average, the entirety of Milky☆Subway can be watched in 44-minutes—48 minutes if you also include the prequel short, Milky☆Highway. Yet, this series makes the most of its limited runtime thanks to fantastic dialogue that feels unlike anything you run across in the vast majority of modern anime.

To put it simply, the dialogue feels like real people talking rather than reading off a page. The characters stumble in their line delivery—constantly talking over one another, like in normal group conversations. The dialogue is often hilarious—fast-paced and witty. However, that’s only the surface level. The lines themselves are filled with personality, revealing a bit about each speaker.

With its short runtime, this proves vital for character development. There’s little time for flashbacks and backstories. The most we get for each is their intake interview with police officer Ryoko. Thus, it’s mostly through their interactions in the present that we learn about each character and what makes them tick—and this is done with great efficiency.

The characters in Milky☆Subway come in pairs. When it comes to Chiharu and Makina, Chiharu is impulsive but rather naive. This leads to Makina constantly having to stand up for Chiharu—often utilizing violence. However, it is also clear that Makina sees little issue with this, as Chiharu is the only person who sees beyond her family’s status to the girl inside the robotic frame.

The next pair of characters are Akane and Kanata. Akane is large and intimidating—a physical powerhouse. Kanata is her opposite—a chihuahua-like teen that is all bark and no bite. The trick is that both of them know this, causing Akane to be overprotective and Kanata to try to figure out a way to be more useful to her.

The final set of characters is the cyborg pair of Kurt and Max. Together, they form the perfect team—one a fighter and the other a hacker. However, they feel unrecognized by the world at large, which has made them see the world solely through a transactional lens.

As these three groups move through the train, mixing and matching, we not only learn about them but also see them grow—moving past their first impressions to see the complex people beneath. This, in turn, brings out the moral of the story: don’t judge a book by its cover.

Of course, the dialogue and character interactions are only half of the anime—and it wouldn’t work half as well without the visuals. Milky☆Subway is a fully CG anime that looks on par with something from a Hollywood animation studio. It’s smooth and well-directed, be it an action scene or one of the characters fixing their hair in front of a mirror.

The series’ look is bolstered by fantastic character design. Kurt looks like a traditional cyborg while Max looks like a member of Daft Punk. Makina is clearly fully robotic, with a curved screen projection serving as her face. Meanwhile, Akane, Kanata, and Chiharu have red skin, pointed ears, and antennae. Yet, each of them sports recognizable fashion—and not of the typical cyberpunk or alien variety. Makina wears a letterman jacket while Chiharu is enveloped in a sweater that is almost falling off her. The cyborg boys are clad in street fashion, while Akane and Kanata dress like biker gang members. To put it another way, it is their clothing more than their race or augmentations that tells us more about each character.

It also helps visually that the entire series takes place in a grand total of three locations: the police station, the train platform, and, most commonly, the train itself. This keeps the setting contained and familiar—not to mention economical, as they are reused constantly. This also likely allows for greater attention to detail in the backgrounds, given the limited number of locations.

Musically, the anime sports an ’80s-style theme song which highlights the retro-future aesthetic of the work, as does the fact that the accompanying credits appear as if they are being viewed on an old VHS tape. The other big musical moment comes at the action climax of the series, where we get a new poppy idol song that also serves as a callback to the song in Milky☆Highway that got Makina and Chiharu into this situation in the first place.

All in all, Milky☆Subway is a series well worth an hour of your time. It’s fun, witty, and has a visual style that just oozes charm. The cast is fantastic—be it the original Japanese or the English dub—and their delivery of the dialogue delivers the laughs on a silver platter. And best of all, it’s free over on YouTube, so you have no excuse to give it a watch.

Episode 6 of Akane-banashi presents Akane with a challenge she can’t rise to right away – and that’s what makes it great.

In this week’s episode, we are introduced to Koguma, a unique foil for Akane. He challenges her in a new way that Akane has yet to be tested in. Namely, his background is knowing the background; Koguma knows more about these stories than Akane does, and in ways she had never considered. This is a fascinating challenge for Akane, specifically because it ties into rakugo while going beyond pure on-stage performance capabilities.

What is so critical about Koguma’s approach is that he understands rakugo’s essence as an art form. Rakugo is obviously analogous to a solo play/monologue of sorts, but they are also fundamentally a period piece. These are tales with defined historical settings, with unique considerations that could only come from that time and place in Japan’s past. The historical details, such as clothing styles, housing arrangements, and what everyday items were made of – these might seem like academic details, but they are so much more than that. Sure, you can tell a story about people gambling with dice-based games of chance in 2026 and 1626, and there will be many similarities. But other details will be of the utmost importance! Consider something as simple as the dice: modern dice are plastic and mass-produced, whereas dice in the Edo period were hand-crafted from bone or another material. They will have a particular sound and feel, and even replacing them is not so simple if something were to happen to them.

All of this is to say that Kugoma is leveraging these aspects to couch his stories in a sense of verisimilitude. The people feel real, the place feels real, and both will be familiar yet given an allure of novelty because of the time displacement from the here and now. Additionally, Koguma develops a unique bond and confidence with the stories he researches, and he can impart that knowledge to the audience. This opens up a new vector of enjoyment for them, too. Now, whether or not they resonate with the story or the performance, they have the opportunity to learn something about the historical reality of people living in that time.

Akane has none of these qualities. What’s more, they take a new kind of dedication for her to explore. This will require her to do more than parrot stories (“just words,” as Koguma put it) and demand that she grow in her learning. Akane will need to dedicate her time and passion in a new way to become more academically studied in rakugo and the stories therein, a feat that only comes from hard work.

Rating:

Akane-banashi is currently streaming on
YouTube.

Shounen

Utsuranain desu by Ruka Konoshima (Weekly Shounen Sunday)

Kaoru Hana wa Rin to Saku by Saka Mikami (Magazine Pocket)

Gachiakuta by Kei Urana (Weekly Shounen Magazine)

Madan no Ichi by Osamu Nishi and Shiro Usazaki (Weekly Shounen Magazine)

Shoujo

Uruwashi no Yoi no Tsuki by Mika Yamamori (Dessert)

Shinimodori no Mahou Gakkou Seikatsu wo, Moto Koibito to Prologue kara (※Tadashi Koukando wa Zero) by Eiko Mutsuhana and Gin Shirakawa (Flos Comic)

Taiyou yori mo Mabushii Hoshi by Kazune Kawahara (Bessatsu Margaret)

Tonari no Stella by Ammitsu (Bessatsu Friend)

General

Kimi to Uchuu wo Aruku Tame ni by Inuhiko Doronoda (&Sofa)

Darwin Jihen by Shun Umezawa (Afternoon)

Nezumi no Hatsukoi by Riku Ooseto (Weekly Young Magazine)

Heisei Haizanhei Sumire-chan by Satomi U (Weekly Young Magazine)

Mii-chan to Yamada-san by Nene Azuki (Magazine Pocket)

The selection committee of the 50th Kodansha Manga Awards is composed of mangaka Shin Kibayashi (Bloody Monday), Natsumi Ando (Watashitachi wa Douka shiteiru), Yuuzo Takada (3×3 Eyes), Hikaru Nakamura (Arakawa Under the Bridge), Kaoru Hayamine (Meitantei Yumemizu Kiyoshirou Jiken Note), Hiro Mashima (Fairy Tail), and Hidekichi Matsumoto (Sabage-bu!).

Source: Kodansha 1, 2

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