4/5 stars

Compiling all 12 episodes of Yohei Kameyama’s 2025 animated series of the same name, together with additional scenes featuring brand-new supporting characters, this theatrical release of Milky Subway: The Galactic Limited Express is a riotously entertaining science fiction juggernaut that produces more laughs, surprises and innovations in 47 minutes than many feature-length offerings.

Milky Subway is itself a sequel to Kameyama’s 2022 graduation project Milky Highway, a four-minute web anime short in which the superhuman Chiharu (voiced by Momoka Terasawa) and her cyborg friend Makina (Anna Nagase) – a pair of tearaway gyaru, women with gaudy fashion styles that go against traditional Japanese beauty standards – are arrested for speeding and destroying police property.

Milky Subway picks up the action with Chiharu being interrogated by police officer Ryoko (Mikako Komatsu) in the wake of a catastrophic event that has left Makina damaged beyond repair. She recounts how they were sentenced to a week of community service for their traffic offences, cleaning the carriages of the Galactic Limited Express, otherwise known as the Milky Subway.

Chiharu and Makina do not suffer alone. Condemned alongside them are the cyborgs Kurt (Koki Uchiyama) and Max (Yoshitaka Yamaya), and two members of a notorious biker gang: the young mechanic Kanata (Makoto Koichi) and Akane (Hisako Kanemoto), the gang’s female leader.