Pending Train (2023– ) User Reviews

Good...which becomes OK...which finishes as Ugh!

[divemabini · 5/10 · 22 November 2023]

Fun premise, ruined by absurd actions (as mentioned by other reviewers) of the lead characters.

GUY WHO DOESN'T TRUST PEOPLE - Gets life saved, has his precious tools returned, convinced not to stay behind.... still treats people like pests.

GIRL WHO THINKS SHE'S INVISIBLE - Helps everyone, plays critical role, eventually loved by all... still acts like a wet noodle.

GUY WHO THINKS HE MUST SAVE EVERYONE - Kinda does, still mopes around like a clueless tool.

They are just so unlikeable in that this traumatic defining period in their lives doesn't seem to affect them, or improve them, or change their behavior in any way. Normal people don't behave like this. Well written characters don't either.

And then the ending...oh lord the "ending". Can't really call it that. More of a two episode slog of people running around aimlessly doing their own thing without any coherence as to why it was being shown on screen. I felt like I was watching water molecules exhibiting Brownian motion. The whole, "you take her! No, you take her! No, YOU take her!" hot potato between the two male leads was nauseating as well.

By the end, I thought I was watching a really bad Korean Romance Drama, and not a "pseudo-sci-fi" show.

Very little drama, very long-winded, kliché progress

[kennethkrabat · 5/10 · 24 October 2023]

I remember sitting glued to the the screen over the years of LOST, loving every minute of its mystery and weird conspiracy and undermining western culture with exceptional knowledge of travel in time, and all of the insane and quirky and deceitful characters onboard the plane, who found themselves washed up on the island and had to survive and build relationships and trust and agree to survive and build alliences with the people already on the island and find food and water and keep up hope among each other and assist births and bury the dead and be inventive and strong and compassionate etc.

Pending Train tries and fails. No tension, just stereotypic characters acting stereotypical confronted with very little happening. And maybe they represent an average of Japanese culture, but when no one had moved to find water on day two, I began wondering if the series writers were paid to extend a 3-parter to 10 or more episodes.

This is WEAK and a wast of money and other resources, chiefly human watching this in the expectance that something will improve, but that is not the case. NOTHING happens that will come as a surprise to anyone. Most characters are depicted as outright stupid - as if having lived 20, 30, 50 years under all kinds of pressure in life had not emparted preference, idiosyncracies (apart from those needed to separate main characters from each other) and a general IDEA of how to survive. Like in a universe, where No One has spend hours binging youtube videos to gather an abundence of information about all kinds of stuff related to living and surviving and pleasure and communication and relations to others etc etc. IGNORANTS, basically.

Actually I am a little horrified that this "product" has met some kinds of production standards somewhere in the world. As if its basically a tax write-off, where nobody really cares. A deal, where some actors are introduced, payment for that service met, and production costs used to leverage an abundance of wealth.

Horrible. Just horrible.

So, why 5/10?

I am at episode 6/10, and there are 5 more episodes to go. So, 1 star pr. Episode, basically. But if wont end with 10/10, be certain of that. Ye Gods!

Melodrama overload

[Snootz · 5/10 · 21 August 2023]

The general story and plot line of this series was decent, but even only 10 episodes seemed long and drawn out. The core problem was excessive melodrama.

Several people's backstory is told in narrative detail (regularly breaking the sense of realism). The acting was quite a bit over the top, which is probably the doing of the director rather than the actors. I did like their choice of actors; with what they were given they did a decent enough job.

Fair advance notice: the ending is an anti-climactic letdown. Sigh. You'd think by now producers would know to start with a sharp script or don't do the series at all.

Throughout this entire series I regularly wondered if anyone in 160 people had any real leadership ability or any knowledge of survival at all. The first thing they should have done was organize into subgroups based on skills and taken care of water and food requirements. Not knowing the wildlife situation, quality weaponry should have been on the agenda; perish forbid a hungry bear would have come through the camp. But it seemed there was little or no organization. Some people tried and accomplished a little through emotional encouragement... but aside from the old guy that left early on, none of them seemed to have a clue how to survive in the wild. (Seriously, they're low on food and what they focus on is a bathtub? They're kidding, right?)

The second camp fared better, but they were located in a much better spot than the first camp. They pretty much had water and food handed to them on a platter. Not much to lead there... but at least they had things in order. Even then, some of the things that went on at the second camp were pretty illogical script-wise (sorry, no spoilers).

Overall there was too much angst, too much emo, too little focus on getting their act together and surviving this thing. There are so many other gaping holes in the logic of this that I can't go into them without spoilers. It's an okay series, but the ending is one of those "Really? They're stopping it there?" type of things. Disappointing is the key word. It's like the writers just suddenly ran out of imagination, time, funding, or all three.

This series is an "okay" watch, and some people may enjoy it. But for me it was only mediocre throughout, and a poor conclusion. They could have done a lot better with this unusual and potentially interesting theme.

Fast forwarded but Kept me hooked!

[talhakhter · 6/10 · 24 September 2023]

Kept me hooked although fast forwarded it some of it. The drama is good but it was slow mostly. The stories was a bit too much. Reminded me of many other same concept movies/series but overall it's not that bad.

We totally binged watched it on a weekday night so you can guess that it kept us on the hook. Could have been more interesting if some more characters would have been introduced.

After coming back to the real world, that storyline couldn't keep me hook. It was too much details.

It resolved a little more quickly than expected. Not my first foreign culture binge watch but not amoung the last.

Slow pace and boring

[chrischanauk · 2/10 · 19 August 2023]

I have watched the entire season, to be honest, it was quite boring. I would expect people to fight for survival, but instead, they wait for two days without looking for water and food.

They spend endless time arguing about nonsensical things and always hope to return to normal life, without using their time to build something meaningful.

If you haven't started watching this, I would say there's no need to start watching it at all. You should invest 10 hours in something more meaningful.

It's an interesting topic about traveling to the future, but the script is poorly written, and the actors are not convincing.

Too much slow drama

[sarahcular · 4/10 · 18 August 2023]

I really wanted to enjoy this because the plot is a good one but the slow burning repeated drama takes over the whole thing, it becomes exhausting and you will likely forward through the forced and dull unnecessary dialogue along with the character's long pauses.

The plot is easily split with 20% apocalyptic exciting storyline with a purpose, but is interrupted with 80% of depressing melodrama tears, flashbacks and unnecessary character-buildup attempts. It's like ordering a pepperoni pizza and receiving it with only one small piece of pepperoni on top. The rest is just covered with plain cheese.

Oh stop it already will you?

Great family show!

[debfebruary · 10/10 · 25 August 2023]

I've watched the entire season and loved it.

It's a great show if you feel like watching something without swearing and nudity.

There are fantastic themes about life and we were on the edge of our seat for the next episode.

You grow to love the characters and some really great acting in some of the scenes.

It also had such touching moments which made me tear up.

It played out, I think, very realistically. It was interesting to see the ways each character dealt with such a situation as the show progresses...how most of us have things we deal with in life that others don't see.

Good and bad in all of us.

Finally, something other than garbage on NetFlix.

Not for people who can't appreciate a story without trashy scenes!

Would have been better as a short thriller movie

[daveplumbzero · 4/10 · 3 September 2023]

What we have here is basically the Asian version of the TV show "lost", but with an explanation for everything within 1 season of 10 episodes. Japan is hit by an earthquake event that somehow triggers a moving train to be thrown into another world. In this world, the passengers of car 5 must find a way to get on with each other and survive in a strange territory.

I was initially intrigued by all of this, until I realised I would be spending each episode listening to the same piece of music over and over that tries to rouse some emotion out of you.

Characters achieve something towards survival, play music, show show mo emotional faces.

Characters realise a new strength, play music and show emotional faces in show motion.

Characters sneeze, play music and show slow mo faces.

It's terrible and makes up the overwhelming playtime of the show, especially when throwing in a love triangle and people delving into flashbacks of their previous lives. It's even funny when something bad is happening, yet upbeat sounding music starts playing

If it were shortened to just the bare minimum melodrama, it would be alright.... ish. The last 2 episodes do a lot more for me but I can't really spoil much. Was the stock footage at the end necessary though, it's more cheap cheese thrown on top.

Slow pace but entertaining

[hafR33 · 10/10 · 19 August 2023]

Slow pace drama, not so complicated, heart warming and I enjoy to watch until the end.

The acting is good, the chemistry also good. This represent ordinary people with their own character and different background.

If you like classic dorama, then you might be like this too, the triangle love story is entertaining, it is pleasant drama with not something new with the plot, even the science fiction story is not really mindblowing, and every character development is not really shown, but the visual, acting, overall story, I still love this drama over others. I feel good after watching this show.

Its simple, and I love it.

Poor acting, direction, soundtrack

[jpross-95318 · 2/10 · 16 August 2023]

The premise is good but I watched the whole first episode and can't bring myself to watch any more of it.

All the 'actors' are pretty boys and girls no normal looking people at all. They all seem to be terrible actors over acting every emotion and scene. The direction seems to go for melodramatic shots everywhere with an awful melodramatic soundtrack. In one surreal scene there is one of the characters over acting a crying ad sadness scene with an upbeat pop tune playing quite loudly as the soundtrack. It's just weird. There's a scene near the end where it shows each character's serious face multiple times - it reminded of the nodding scene in Family Guy.

Slow moving, poor direction

[muraliwizard · 3/10 · 16 August 2023]

Barely a science fiction except for the plot and a few rare strange things here and there.

Basic common sense things missing, actors are always fresh, wearing new clothes, survive just fine not feeling hungry for extended period of time. Some character development is the only thing that is not so bad. Strange unnatural emotions such as not being grateful for someone saving your life! Overall not very entertaining, if you have nothing else to do and you are extremely bored you can watch it in 1.5x speed. Don't let "japanese" mislead you, they can be bad too :) Highly doubt there will be a second season any time soon, if at all.

Boring, slow and unconvincing

[yajiwahabu · 2/10 · 19 August 2023]

Worst series movie I watch.

The movie was very boring and slow. Poorly scripted and repeating same insignificant issue severally.

The actors aren't convincing and serious, also the scientific and wormhole phenomenon wasn't convincing. How can a scientistist work on a supposedly world ending catastrophe in his lap without any other colleagues, scholars, security, authority and international collaboration?

The futuristic scene wasn't also convincing to show evidence that it's the same city that was destroyed. The only tower and electric line and substation weren't clearly showed to convince the viewers.

By the way, what is the source of the substation's power supply? Wish my my 10hours spent would be refunded.

Very good, character driven sci fi

[joncronin · 10/10 · 28 September 2023]

Entertaining and involving sci fi series, with focus on characters. The three leads are quite wonderful and engaging as strangers who cope with their pasts while thrust 40 years into the future. The main idea (think Manifest, Lost) is very well executed, not overly complex but coherent. Only ten episodes, there is a real tension created throughout, with each episode moving the story forward with good pace.

Acting is quite good by all, and allows many of the secondary characters to develop their own stories (using both real time action and flashback character development) in interesting and story advancing ways, and adding both dramatic and comic ways.

The concluding two episodes do something quite remarkable: they cleverly (and realistically) bring the series to conclusion, often quite emotionally, and offer up a way to continue the story.

Sappy, soapy, saccharine, over-sentimental, hyper-dramatic trash

[badrobotrover · 1/10 · 30 August 2023]

I couldn't even finish the first episode due to an overwhelming urge to throw up over this sappy, soapy, saccharine, over-sentimental, hyper-dramatic trash full of tropes and populated by people who behave as if they're living life on a Shakespearean stage.

Amongst one of *MANY* awful melodramatic scenes, in a flashback, one of the main male proponents (a fire-fighter) wearing a tank-top is mopping his brow and admiring a rainbow, with one of the female proponents who is a gym trainer sharing the moment from behind, admiring her fire-fighter crush, and struck by some live-changing epiphany. Did some high-school student write the stupid script? Or is this an example of a script generated by a ChatGPT-like AI trained on the bunch of silliest sappy novels ever written?

It is as if Japan's most dysfunctional, melodramatic, unrealistically stupid group of people happened to crowd into the same train car just so that they could share an adventure. Shame to the top brass and producers who approved and funded the production of this piece of utter trash.

Worth watching

[prothomagupta · 10/10 · 12 November 2023]

This drama is about the lives of many people who are in future. In future the world is a different place. Much more different than this present. There is no people,not much food,short of water. The train takes some people to a new place. There are emotional scenes where everyone tells their different stories. There are scenes where they make future a good place to live together. Morever the drama teaches us we have to make future a better place. A better place for us and for those whom we love.

The acting is good, the chemistry also good. This represent ordinary people with their own character and different background.

Did anyone notice this is a shameless Lost rip-off?

[santiagoviveroshenao · 2/10 · 26 August 2023]

The level of shameless plagiarism on this series is shocking. I'm not even going to bring myself to comment it, not worth the effort, which I think is something that the creators thought given that it does not seem like they took too much of it do create this mediocre series. The series tries and sometimes succeeds with wholesomeness and midly-crafted emotional scenes. The cinematography is not something to admire here, the sets and the shots feel as bland as sushi rice and why do they recorded this at such an uncomfortable frame rate? I felt like I was watching a painting made by the mentally disabled offspring of the reality Survivor and the show Lost.

Now that I have reached the character quota for the review I must say: I watched the just third episode because my girlfriend was watching the series, she really enjoys it. I guess there is a public to this, that is something to respect and if the creators and producers want to stick to mediocrity, that's fine, just don't plagiarize that just sucks.

interesting idea bad execution

[renorent · 3/10 · 6 February 2024]

I tried but this was really awfull. I watched 3 episodes, story does not become interesting , characters are without any convincing backstory and the general acting is poor. Same can be said for the music and cinematography.

With so many korean and japanese series out there i would give this a pass and if you like something similar there is plenty out there better then this.

I give it 3 stars because i like hitomi tanaka who is unfortunatly not in this movie :( what else is there to say ? Its bad .... really bad and i watch lots of stuff so .... you know ... almost there.

Thank you all for reading !

Slow paced drama

[dewjim · 5/10 · 9 April 2024]

This show is fine if you're looking for something that is more drama than Sci-Fi. It is listed as thriller also but, no thrills to be found. The show so far, could have been condensed into a 90 minute feature and still told the same story.

One major flaw I see in the story when it comes to the time travelers convincing people in the past about the situation they were in is, no proof other than a plant they brought back. I'm going to guess every single person on those two cars had a cell phone. They showed multiple people with them, until their batteries died. Not one thought to take pictures or video of the surroundings they were in?

Pure drama with great messages for humanity

[zameright · 10/10 · 25 December 2023]

If you are fully aware that this is a drama, where one of its characteristics are slow pace and consisted of many scenes that explore emotions, this is the right watch.

This film is not supported by impressive visuals. Also not supported by the typical plot twist of today's films. But it's filled with important lessons about the value of being human.

This film is also very entertaining if you are someone who likes life and social values. He also taught a lot about the importance of the human perspective on the complexity of the problems of modern life. I think this also really helps us become wiser individuals, especially in interpreting life today.

The acting of the actors is also quite good and quite deep. I think it's easier to act in action or comedy films, rather than films that are intended to explore emotions like this. I personally take my hat off to the cast.

Highly recommended to watch, especially with family.