Anime

Ten or fifteen years ago I almost certainly would not have found the girls as bland and annoying as I do watching this today. I think a combination of having read/watched dozens of series with similar characters, as well as aging out of the teenage/young adult demographic, made me completely uninterested in these characters... to the point that watching TEW felt like I was unironically "watching it for the plot": I'm just here for the trains, bizarre setting, and surreal vibe!

This is entirely a matter of opinion, of course. However of the people I know aged 30 and up who watch anime, I don't think most of them would particularly enjoy the girls, and most likely would shy away from the series specifically because of their presence. That's generally the type of audience I write reviews for; these reviews are posted to the "Animation and Comics after 30" community first and cross-posted here when relevant. Once upon a time I was into "cute girls find cute things series" (I re-watched Lucky Star at least once), but tastes change as you age, and while some older viewers may still enjoy these characters, I definitely did not.

One series I am really interested in this season is Dead Dead Demon’s Dededededestruction, in part because the teenage girl cast don't look or act like stereotypical anime girls. Compared to most anime girls, it's almost as if the manga author pulled an Alien and wrote the characters to be gender neutral, since they often act more how I'd expect teenage boys in anime to act. Watching this series reminds me of watching the live action series Derry Girls: here's a cast that compared to most media feels like a real-life group of teenagers, awkward and weird. I don't think the manga quite translates to the animated format, but that's a topic for a separate review.

I don’t know what Kino’s Journey is

Oh man, you are in for a treat. It ranks up there as one of my favorite series ever. It is an anthology series where the main character, Kino, travels from nation to nation with their companion, talking motorcyle, Hermes. So, each episode typically is a self-contained story that takes place in one nation with not that much that connects the different episodes other than an occasional returning character. I didn't watch Train to the End of the World, but Kino's Journey seems like it would be a different kind of tone. Kino's Journey is very serious and sometimes extremely dark in tone.

If you do decide to check it out, there are two different anime adaptations. The first adaptation is from 2003 and is very good, but the visuals do definitely feel dated by modern anime standards with heavy use of scan line filters and the like. The second adaptation is from 2017 and is also very good. I usually recommend people start with the 2017 show if they are coming in fresh because it looks gorgeous. Because of the anthology nature of the series, the two shows adapt some of the same stories and some different ones. So, if you really like one, then you will likely enjoy the other as well.

For sure, the tone of TEW is nothing like Kino (I only read the light novels, but I'm assuming the anime is similarly dark). However I thought the setting hit similar notes: visiting isolated city-state-like communities separated by vast, unpopulated expanses, each dramatically different from the others in some strange, unfortunate manner. I loved this world-building premise in Kino, and was happy to see it again but with a different twist in TEW.

Thanks, I'll hop over and see what others said