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Description

I don't think I've ever seen such an underrated manga as Train Train. If you look it up, I guarantee you will find little to nothing, because that is exactly what I got when I tried looking it up. There is no fan art, and there's, like, two reviews of it on the internet.

I found it in a nifty little comic book shop recently. When I first saw the cover I thought "Pft! Are you serious? A Japanese manga about trains?" I took a look through it and what's the first thing that caught my eye? A woman dressed as a man putting bunny ears on an attractive young man, and a young bisexual adult man gushing over how adorable he looks. Now recently I've been overindulging in DouchebagChocolat's anime reviews on Youtube, so it's come to my attention that oversexualizing women is extremely common in Japanese anime/manga, whether it's obvious porn or just "regular anime/manga". So this got me wondering if there was even such a thing as oversexualizing a man in anime/manga without becoming gay porn, and finding this manga is like finding the light at the end of the tunnel.

Train Train focuses mainly on Asahi Saruta, a green-haired boy with a dream of becoming a train conductor just like his deceased father. After passing(?) the preliminary tests, he is sent to work at Minami Kitazawa Station, which is famous for having a staff of extremely attractive men. This staff mainly consists of Kaiji (the serious one), Hokuto (the free spirited one), Tsubasa (the heart-throb), and Hikari (the one that's actually a woman but pretends to be a man). This attracts flocks of women who mainly go to the station just to see the staff and drool over their attractiveness. Together, they're all placed in hilarious situations, have wonderful interactions with each other, and a few touching moments here and there. Overall, though, anyone who's read it can agree that it's funny as hell.
Oh, did I mention Asahi has a pet prairie dog?

It's a little similar to Ouran High School Host Club in terms of it's setup: young attractive men who have their own fanbase consisting of young women, the main character who has to get use to the strangeness of their superiors, and everyone else finding the main character very adorable and attractive. Unlike OHSHC, though, there's one thing in Train Train that greatly contrasts the two: the main character is a young man who is very aware of what everyone else thinks of him. When Hikari and Hokuto gush over him in the first chapter, he openly questions both their sexualities. Haruhi in OHSHC finds the other members of the Host Club a bit overbearing, but she's very oblivious to how they feel about her. Asahi is very aware of how the others feel about him, and at times he finds it rather uncomfortable, but they're his only friends so what can you do?

If there's one thing I don't really get in the manga, it's the fact that Hikari, who is really a woman who dresses in male uniform, has D-cup sized breasts.... Why? If she's gonna bind them anyway, what's the point of giving her enormous boulders on her chest? In OHSHC, Haruhi has A-cup breasts, which makes sense as to why people mistake her for a boy. In Hikari's situation, the only reason she chose to work at the train station is because she "has a fetish for uniforms". If that's the case, why do you bother binding your breasts and fooling your flocks of female fans into thinking you're an attractive man? It really does not make any sense. That's really the only problem I have with the manga so far, though, everything else is absolutely wonderful. UwU

Train Train (c) Eiki Eiki
doodles (c) me

Description

I don't think I've ever seen such an underrated manga as Train Train. If you look it up, I guarantee you will find little to nothing, because that is exactly what I got when I tried looking it up. There is no fan art, and there's, like, two reviews of it on the internet.

I found it in a nifty little comic book shop recently. When I first saw the cover I thought "Pft! Are you serious? A Japanese manga about trains?" I took a look through it and what's the first thing that caught my eye? A woman dressed as a man putting bunny ears on an attractive young man, and a young bisexual adult man gushing over how adorable he looks. Now recently I've been overindulging in DouchebagChocolat's anime reviews on Youtube, so it's come to my attention that oversexualizing women is extremely common in Japanese anime/manga, whether it's obvious porn or just "regular anime/manga". So this got me wondering if there was even such a thing as oversexualizing a man in anime/manga without becoming gay porn, and finding this manga is like finding the light at the end of the tunnel.

Train Train focuses mainly on Asahi Saruta, a green-haired boy with a dream of becoming a train conductor just like his deceased father. After passing(?) the preliminary tests, he is sent to work at Minami Kitazawa Station, which is famous for having a staff of extremely attractive men. This staff mainly consists of Kaiji (the serious one), Hokuto (the free spirited one), Tsubasa (the heart-throb), and Hikari (the one that's actually a woman but pretends to be a man). This attracts flocks of women who mainly go to the station just to see the staff and drool over their attractiveness. Together, they're all placed in hilarious situations, have wonderful interactions with each other, and a few touching moments here and there. Overall, though, anyone who's read it can agree that it's funny as hell.
Oh, did I mention Asahi has a pet prairie dog?

It's a little similar to Ouran High School Host Club in terms of it's setup: young attractive men who have their own fanbase consisting of young women, the main character who has to get use to the strangeness of their superiors, and everyone else finding the main character very adorable and attractive. Unlike OHSHC, though, there's one thing in Train Train that greatly contrasts the two: the main character is a young man who is very aware of what everyone else thinks of him. When Hikari and Hokuto gush over him in the first chapter, he openly questions both their sexualities. Haruhi in OHSHC finds the other members of the Host Club a bit overbearing, but she's very oblivious to how they feel about her. Asahi is very aware of how the others feel about him, and at times he finds it rather uncomfortable, but they're his only friends so what can you do?

If there's one thing I don't really get in the manga, it's the fact that Hikari, who is really a woman who dresses in male uniform, has D-cup sized breasts.... Why? If she's gonna bind them anyway, what's the point of giving her enormous boulders on her chest? In OHSHC, Haruhi has A-cup breasts, which makes sense as to why people mistake her for a boy. In Hikari's situation, the only reason she chose to work at the train station is because she "has a fetish for uniforms". If that's the case, why do you bother binding your breasts and fooling your flocks of female fans into thinking you're an attractive man? It really does not make any sense. That's really the only problem I have with the manga so far, though, everything else is absolutely wonderful. UwU

Train Train (c) Eiki Eiki
doodles (c) me