Meet Misaki Sata, a self-described klutz who stumbles through life without knowing where she wants to go, mostly figuratively but sometimes also literally. While experiencing “Entrance Exam Hell,” she’s not particularly enthusiastic about studying. Her friend Ya-chan tells her that, as much as she respects her nerves of steel, she needs to start making choices about her future, or she’ll be cooked. Not that Misaki disagrees, but her mind tends to wander, and instead of going to cram school, she ends up listening to a talk by a very enthusiastic railway company agent. Could she find that kind of passion one day? Well, the first step is to have dreams! Misaki’s goals, though, are not the guiding light sort: to taste two ice cream flavors at the same time, to sleep for ten hours straight, to make a trip somewhere… We jump a few months, and Misaki has picked the same college as Ya-chan. But unlike her, she has not researched her classes beforehand, and the syllabus looks truly daunting. There’s something she’s sure she’ll do, though: join a club. But which one? Overwhelmed by the sheer number of choices, Misaki sits by the sidelines. But that is the place the oddball Railway Club chooses for its stand. The wacky members try to recruit her and start bantering until our heroine discreetly runs away. As she’s going back, however, a thought comes to her: What if, instead of stopping at her station, she were to explore the end of the line?

K-On! is sort of my kryptonite, and the genre of cute-girls-doing-cute-things makes me wary, so I didn’t expect to be invested in this show, but it surprised me in a good way. When he was about twenty, my father took a random train like Misaki as he was reading a book by the rationalist-vitalist philosopher José Ortega y Gasset. And, though I have yet to do this precise thing, I sometimes drive or walk to random places for no purpose other than expanding the limits of the world I see every day. The show captures this feeling remarkably well. What’s behind that name? What’s behind those hills? Setting the story at college and not high school is a good move, and the banter between Misaki and Ya-chan puts the central conflict right in front of our eyes. There are stakes here, for Misaki at least. This is not the only pitfall the show avoids: As I was suspecting during the presentation of the railway agent, this anime is an outgrowth of a corporate property. That would be Tetsudō Musume, an expanded universe of mascot characters belonging to Japanese railway networks, companies, or trains. But by connecting the idea of a young woman deciding what to do in life and the idea of a club that travels by train to random points in real-life Japan (which sounds amazing to me), TETSURYO! avoids feeling like a commercial, for now at least, and creates a pathway to character development and a relatable conflict without losing its warm atmosphere. So much so that I may jump aboard, even if I’m not totally sure where it’s heading. See what I did there?

TETSURYO! can be streamed on HIDIVE.