Maiden Railways is a collection of one-shots from prolific creator Asumiko Nakamura, themed all around romance. Ever get involved with a dude who believes his little brother’s potentially stealing his wife away while you’re pickpocketing? Met a tall girl with a rocket arm after your bag falls onto the train tracks amidst arguing on the phone with your ex? Have some concerns about your husband working overtime every Thursday? Had a talk with a stranger after wondering if your lover loves you enough to stop stalling and propose already?
Well, a couple of these definitely hasn’t happened to you, specifically! But in Maiden Railways, it sure happens, so hop on. All aboard the romance car!
Maiden Railways has a couple of romance cars. From Asumiko’s afterword, she checked out the Odakyu, the types of trains, and a couple stations as research for this project. And in this manga, a few characters mention the romance car like it’s one of those legends, as it relates to their situation. It’s unique in how all these stories take place at specific parts of a train. You’ll have a story set inside a moving train; one at the station; one at a bakery where people interact with a model train set; and one exactly at the train tracks. The romance aspect plays a part in each story in one way or another, whether it’s super personal or even one that’s quite distant.
The artwork is mostly on-point. There are times where the style looks sharp and clean, and then other times where a character is drawn like an ant that will wreck you. But certain moments express without words how a character feels, and it’s drawn so memorably it sticks out a ton. All comics obviously need both art and words to match each other, but for one-shots even moreso; with limited pages you’ll need whatever you have to communicate what you want. This manga does exactly that. Just, no action sequences or we’ll be seeing an unusual style of avant-garde art.
I’d say there are a couple of stories that happen to stand out or at least be interesting. The very first one hits you: high school girl happens to be a pickpocket and gets caught on the train. Instead of getting busted, she’s told by a man to go a specific part of the train and write words on a woman’s forehead. She’s stopped when a man in a Hawaiian shirt arrives. When she goes back, she learns that Hawaiian shirt is that man’s little brother. And that little brother appears to be with his big brother’s wife.
This is totally what I signed up for!
As you can expect, that story’s more complex than that. And most of these stories are (except the last one, but instead it’s a most appreciated epilogue), which makes sense if it involves loving someone. Romances can always come down to “I love you” and then they live happily-ever-after, but that’s usually unrealistic. There are human emotions at play, ranging from innocent misunderstanding to being an absolute scumbag. In this collection we get that not just from high school age kids, but from adults in their 30s, or those married with a kid. So Maiden Railways focuses on those types of relationships, which is a good call.
That all said, some of these stories will resonate with you, and some won’t. There’s one story where the romance between two girls is very sweet and cute… and there seems to be an age gap. One involves a high school girl on a girls’ baseball team and the other is an adult. It’s unclear how old the adult is (college age or late 20’s) so it might be ok, but if you’re leery of even that, how they got together might not matter.
From a structural standpoint, ”Night and Night” was disappointing. It did seem like the story involved a ghost…maybe a friend…after it got to the reveal, things were figured out — and then a time skip! I admittedly got lost. That sucks because the chapter and lettering for the name was great. One of the characters in a long skirt misses the last train, collapses on the ground and pouts, then lounges like she’s sitting on her couch watching TV. And lastly, this could be due to when and where it was serialized, but was a little disappointed it was just male/female and female/female romances. There’s a variety of stories in here so no male/male one was a bit surprising.
There’s little doubt Maiden Railways won’t engage you. From Asumiko’s clear passion of trains, the characters that have these stories inside or outside the trains, to the art style for each being either pretty or hilarious, this is a fine read. If you’re in need of a title that’s refreshing in how it approaches romances, you’ll want to check this one out.