April 15th 2024
"Same routine day in and out / No idea what it's all about / Must be nice to live without a care" - Train to Nowhere by Chicken Choice Judy
Three years ago, the fourth (and currently final) season of Infinity Train was released.
When thinking about what has been the worst part of my life so far, I can identify the period between being around fifteen to being around seventeen-and-a-half as the hardest period. From early 2020 to mid-2022. In April 2021, Infinity Train’s fourth season released, and since my best friend was a big fan of the show, we watched the entire show together as well as the new season. For many months prior, most of my hyperfixations (though I didn’t know them as that at the time) were driven by a desperate need for comfort.
I had only come to terms with my transness at the start of the school year, and was too exhausted and miserable to consider being out with my new name, so I chose to just grin and bear it until I escaped to college and could start over. I was always hungry for any queer representation, because up until this point I’d struggled to find many characters I’d felt represented by - besides Shane in the Twelve Forever pilot, none of the shows I liked had anyone that looked like me. Feeling represented by the semantics and relationships of queer characters was more common.
So seeing Ryan Akagi on screen for the first time - shoulder-length dark brown hair and glasses, wearing jackets and jeans, with big plans to play music in a band with his best friend - was a huge deal for me. This was the closest resemblance a character had ever had to me, and I was ecstatic.
Then, watching Min-Gi Park be swept up into this crazy world of the Infinity Train, taken out of his stable customer service job by his childhood friend who he left behind out of fear, struggling between the grand plan he’s had for so long and figuring out what he really wants, his rigidness and resistance to spontaneity - this was huge too.
The panic at the prospect of change and commitment, the fear of not knowing what you want, the complexity and nuance of long-term friendships, the underlying romantic tension - it all struck me so intensely. So many of both of their issues were things I was struggling or had struggled with.
For a couple weeks after I first watched it, I’d draw and redraw the number 202 on my palm with a neon green felt tip, just like Ryan and Min’s number in the show. Looking down at my palm at school gave me a little bit of comfort when I couldn’t listen to music to calm down.
Towards the end of the season, they reconcile a fight and Min says “So you had a bad thought. I have those all the time!” Though this is never elaborated on, it didn’t really need to be. For the sixteen-year-old who could barely make it through each day, trying to figure out how to deal with the constant barrage of horrid, torturous intrusive thoughts, that was enough. To know a character who’s behaviour already reminded me of myself knew what it was like to have bad thoughts.
Going beyond my story for a second, I can’t even imagine how much these two mean to Asian people. Part of Min-Gi’s reluctance to being in a band with Ryan stems from the lack of role models they have - “we’re just two Asian guys from BC in a band called Chicken Choice Judy. Can you think of anyone doing what we wanna do who look like us?”. Their story involves issues that people of colour face to this day, and showing these while letting them face and overcome them by the end must mean so much to so many people.
The show is often praised for its representation, though a lot of it is implicit - which has been a point of contention behind the scenes.
In these tweets, the show’s creator Owen Dennis responds to fans explaining how they prefer when characters have explicit representation, so that it cannot be disregarded or denied. Dennis has talked multiple times about the restrictions Infinity Train faced in terms of the kinds of character they were allowed to portray. In Book 2, the protagonist MT (who is essentially a clone of Book 1’s protagonist Tulip) spends the season on the run from the equivalent of a police force while trying to forge their own identity outside of the person they are a clone of. They begin by shaving their hair, piercing their ears, and ripping the sleeves off of their shirt. By the end of the season, they are no longer on the run, they’ve fought for the right to personhood, and finally had it granted. The season finale ends with them deciding on a chosen name - Lake - and introducing themself with it.
Many fans, including myself, see this as a very blatant trans allegory. This seems to be the general consensus among the fandom, and for many it goes without question. They avoid using the name MT, they refer to Lake exclusively with they/them pronouns. To a lesser extent, Ryan and Min are like this. The higher-ups restrict what can be shown, so ‘performance’ and Min’s struggle with breaking convention and doing what he wants can be considered a queer allegory. There’s more than enough moments where Min and Ryan awkwardly touch, look or blush at one another to support this interpretation.
Book 4 was never meant to be the last season of Infinity Train (and I still stubbornly hold some hope it won’t be). The original plan was for the anthology series to have eight installments. Book 4 was only supposed to be a more peaceful break between Book 3’s cult and psychological horror and Book 5’s heavy backstory and exploration of side character Amelia’s grief after losing her husband. As a result, the writing seemed to drop in quality ever so slightly, with some awkward wording here and there. Despite this, it’s still my favourite season, by a long shot.
So, many months later, I wrote a poem very directly based on Ryan and Min-Gi’s relationship. At the very end of 2022, I’d listened to Hatchie’s album Giving the World Away, and one song in particular had stuck with me. The Key reminded me so much of Ryan and Min.
It seemed so much like the lyrics could’ve been questions Min was asking internally, and I swear one of the synth lines is the exact same sound as something from the Infinity Train soundtrack.
So I took the idea and ran with it. I knew I loved using questions in poems, so I based the entire poem around questions Min would ask Ryan if he got the chance, guided by some kind of anxiety. It isn’t really set at a certain point, since some questions are asked to the Ryan from before the events of the series, and some are asked to the Ryan who is in a band with Min following the events of the series. It still has a narrative guiding it, and it’s one of my favourite poems I’ve written (also the second longest).
I think about the penultimate stanza a lot. I wanted to really lean into the queerness of their dynamic, so the blurring between Ryan’s guitar and Min’s body felt really right. Min being too afraid to ask anything of Ryan but desperately wanting to be held, to be loved. When I write a poem based on/inspired by fictional characters, I often don’t end up liking the result. I’ve written poems inspired by Howl’s Moving Castle and Our Flag Means Death and even though I liked parts of them, I never really felt connected to them the way I do my usual autobiographical poems. They feel random. Inauthentic. But not this one. Ryan and Min-Gi feel so inextricably linked to my understanding of myself, to my history. I still cry watching clips of them.
Although I’m getting more comfortable with writing poetry not based on my own experience. Escapril this year has helped me with this - several of the poems I’ve written for it so far are based on either fictional characters or just imagined feelings and settings. I am currently three days behind on Escapril, though hopefully I’ll catch up tonight. I wanted to write this first to get it done before I rewatch Infinity Train Book 4 on its third anniversary with the same best friend who introduced it to me. If you haven’t watched it, please give it a go! Hope you enjoy it if you do.