An Hour Happily Spent

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, as you probably know.

I have a little trouble with Thanksgiving because it suggests that we don’t need to give thanks every other day, which we do. Nor is proper gratitude to our Creator conveyed by eating too much, drinking, and watching large men beat each other up over a football.

This year it’s even harder to feel seasonal warmth, because I’m in a near-blind rage.

Maybe you’ve seen the reports of how real estate . . . fellow . . . Steve Witkoff, whom I think is probably Donald Trump’s bagman, was recorded instructing his Russian counterparts as to the best way to butter up Trump so as to get Trump to betray Ukraine yet again. (We don’t have tapes of earlier Witkoff-Russian conversations, but I very much doubt that this was the first time the cavy-faced New York “negotiator” has engaged in such a conversation. Perhaps — it’s likely — we’ll learn of others, unless the warning leak via Bloomberg proves effective.)

That was bad enough, but then I, a news junkie, watched an evening’s worth of Trump suckups (and Trump himself, which is no surprise) defend it all. The one actual news show of Fox Trump Channel, Bret Baier’s “Special Report,” found time for the politically infused “pardon” of two turkeys (who will fall stone dead before long, anyway — commercial turkeys are bred for fast growth, not longevity), but there was no time on the show for proof of what looks very much like treasonous behavior by the man who we’re told is Trump’s main man. “Special Report” has gone to the dark side.

Elsewhere, I saw the occasional thoughtful, knowledgeable person discuss the Witkoff offenses. On CNN there was the highly respected reporter Christo Grozev, who said that Witkoff is “colluding with Russia to gaslight the president of the United States.” There, too, we heard from Russian chess master Gary Kasparov, who said that Witkoff (and possibly Trump) were in it “for the money.” And we saw once-respectable, once-Republican Trumpists cast down and spit on their very souls in Trump’s defense.

Such displays fill one with pity and rage; perhaps they are there to encourage us to pray for mercy upon them, despite the strong temptation to do the opposite.

They certainly make it difficult to write a cheerful column about something we can happily do on Thanksgiving; an hour’s salvation from football and food. But I shall try.

Every so often I encourage readers to take a look at anime. Not all anime are good, but some are and some are tremendous, as good as any other art form you can find.

The problem is that unless you track down and watch superb animovies (such as Your name., A Silent Voice, or Wolf Children) which themselves take a couple of hours to watch, you need to watch entire series. Those take from a few to many hours.

But now, thanks to being told about it by Tristan Gallant, the Canadian reviewer known as “Arkada” who has the “Glass Reflection” YouTube channel, I can point you to an easily found, 12-episode anime that you can watch in its entirety in under an hour.

It is called Milky Subway. It is remarkable beyond the fact that it is totally enjoyable.

To start, the title is misleading, because it is neither milky — the reference is to the Milky Way — nor a subway — it’s a train used for travel from planet to planet. Never mind that. Oh, and its full title is Milky Subway The Galactic Limited Express.

It is available dubbed in a half dozen languages, and subtitled in many languages, too. If you’re an English speaker, you’ll find that the English dub is more than satisfactory. Not all anime dubs are.

The series is a sequel to Milky Highway, a less ambitious single-episode anime from three years ago. I recommend it, too — it’s less than four minutes long — but suggest that you watch it after you’ve watched Milky Subway. It is a prequel that explains what you just watched, and you’ll want it because after you want the series you’ll want more, and it’s very tasty dessert. Also, it’s available in English only subtitled.

Both are created by Kameyama Yōhei, largely by himself. Milky Highway was his art college graduate school project. You’ll be amazed that just one guy could make such a thing, but he did. (There are many names in the credits, but the important jobs all go to him, except for, say, voice acting.)

It is the story of six high school students. They have committed various minor offenses, gotten caught, and are sentenced to clean a somewhat decrepit interpanetary train. The train, though, takes off on its own, and it is up to them to make it stop and return to its station, lest they be lost in space forever. And the six don’t especially get along. They include two tough guys, what the Japanese call “yankii” because they seem to have gotten their inspiration from American occupiers following World War II. They are the closest to career delinquents aboard.

I just watched it again — how many times now? Five, maybe — and it still blows me away, it is so good. Each episode is less than four minutes long, which you would think would be an annoyance, but it isn’t.

Despite the short episodes, we learn all about the world in which the series takes place, and all about each of the characters. I continue to be astonished at how much content finds its way into the series, without it seeming rushed or hurried. It is like watching a very good 12-episode series of normal length — six hours total — that fits into an hour with time left over to watch the prequel. Either that or Kameyama-san has figured out a way to slow time.

Did I mention? I guess not. The characters are robots or enhanced humans or something, not ordinary anime people. Rather than detract, this makes them even more charming because they behave exactly like human high schoolers. In the dozen short episodes, you come to like them all a lot and are sorry when the story ends.

I should warn you, or, actually, encourage you: Milky Subway may well addict you to anime.

And it’s not the high-quality 3D computer-generated graphics that does it. My current favorite anime is Chibi Maruko Chan, which looks like it was drawn by a child with crayons, which actually it originally was. I’d love to point you to a place to find it, but there are many episodes and only a few are easily found online. It is a series where the subtitled version is better, because the dialogue is cuter when translated directly, rather than “localized.”

But for now I can highly recommend Milky Subway. It is wonderful and it is free. And you can find it here. You’ll not spend a more enjoyable hour.

I’ve come down with a cold, so I’m going to sleep . Wake me up when it’s spring, or Witkoff is arrested, or we get a new federal administration. Or when a new series of Milky Subway is released.

Happy Thanksgiving.