12 Days of Anime, #12: A wonderful trainwreck.

This, my friends, is the face of a champion.

Rail Wars! was a decent show. Not the best from this year, but an entertaining, if flawed, train security procedural nonetheless. Of all its flaws though, there was one thing really held it back in my eyes: the sheer amount of fanservice, and sometimes quite absurd fanservice at that. I love anime fanservice as much as the next anime fan, and I love Makoto Uno’s character designs. But Rail Wars! was a good example of show that would have been better off without it. Or at least with it toned down.

There are plenty of examples I could give. Many of which involve Koumi, the member of the Railways Security Force who has large breasts.

Very, very, *ahem* …large breasts.

See that? Her breasts are so large, that—as one person on twitter put it—it almost looks like they’re eating Takayama’s fingers.

At another point in the series, at episode 4, the series even felt the need to have a beach episode. In this episode, the gang is assigned as security for an idol’s concert, and since the concert happens to take place at the beach, they’re superior decides “Hey, since we’re here anyways, why not wear some swimsuits?”

And these are supposed to be security personnel who are on duty. But very nice looking security guards, at least.

I forget what the context of this gif was, but damn is this kid lucky.

Our champion by the way, Takayama, is a guy who is a total train otaku. He still lives with mom. Which sounds funny, but to be fair he’s still fresh out of highschool. He might even still be highschool age; it’s hard to tell with the strange, fantasy world that Rail Wars! takes place in. So anyways, his room his chock full of train stuff, including a miniature train that goes around his room with a camera fixed to it.

So one episode his co-worker visits him, and causes a literal trainwreck:

Haha, what a riot this show is. What train enthusiast wouldn’t love this anime?

The most ridiculous, most absurd instance of fanservice for Rail Wars!, however, occurs in episode 6. In the episode Takayama and Koumi receive a letter which they mistake for a terrorist threat, which causes them to run around town as they avoid perceived dangers. Throughout their little goose chase, Koumi’s dress gradually get stripped and ripped apart. It all begins when they climb over a fence, which causes her skirt to rip, and she and Takayama fall onto a pile of cat food.

This causes cats to chase them throughout the episode, which the two of them think is all part of the terrorist’s plot to get them. The first time they’re chased by a hoard of cats, one leaps from above towards Takayama, and Koumi pushes him out of the way to save him from the feline’s fury. Which then gives Takayama a rather nice view as Koumi takes a powerful pose to protect him:

A cat then leaps onto her jacket, which she strips off to get the cat away. They then run to the local Transportation Museum, which is closed, and decide to take refuge there. But they are met with another hoard of cats, and guess how Koumi decides to ward them off?

She takes off her whole catnip-smelling dress for the cats to go crazy. Leaving her with just a dress-shirt and her undergarments:

Just look at that guy’s smile.

Which brings me to the moment that this whole post is really dedicated to, that I’ve been building up to.

Now, as it turns out, there happens to be a couple of actual criminals hiding out in the museum. I forget why it was exactly they were there. Probably to steal money or something. But then these masked thieves stumble upon Takayama and Koumi, shout at them to get their attention, and then start chasing the two. I’m not exactly sure why the thieves were so intent on doing that, but it leads to THIS:

The criminal grabs Koumi, Takayama shoves him out of the way, and Koumi…is almost completely naked, save for her panties. To be fair, in the actual show you hear the shirt getting ripped off, so it at least makes a little more sense in context. But then you wonder what happened to her bra; those aren’t as easily ripped off as a shirt, and the criminal only had his hand on her shoulder. And then Sakurai gets to see Takayama running away with a naked Koumi. It’s all so ridiculous. But hilarious.

And so eventually Takayama locks her in a closest to keep her safe, the bad guys get beaten up by Takayama’s other co-workers, and then once again our champion gets the girl.

But not without more trouble from another member of his harem:

Haha, good luck with that one, Takayama. Good luck with that.

 

Update 1/19/15: I’ve been asked by the creator of the of swimsuit gif above to give them credit for it, so here’s a link to the blog post where it originally appeared.