Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I’m delighted to announce we’re embarking on a journey through another beloved classic of anime, the TV adaptation of Leiji Matsumoto’s Galaxy Express 999. Inspired by the fantastical Night on the Galactic Railroad (itself the recipient of a majestic anime film adaptation, to say nothing of its significance to Ikuhara’s Mawaru Penguindrum), Galaxy Express tells the story of a young boy who wishes to live forever, and boards the space train Galaxy Express 999 in the hopes of receiving the metal body that will realize his dreams. Along the way, he joins up with a beautiful, mysterious woman with her own reasons for the journey, and experiences a dazzling array of adventures as he travels to the end of the line.
Alongside Space Battleship Yamato and Captain Harlock, Galaxy Express stands as one of Matsumoto’s most consequential contributions to manga and animation, a classic whose influence can be felt in the scope and style of space operas to this day. His work is also one of my most significant remaining blind spots regarding the history of anime, and I am thus absolutely thrilled to be starting this adventure. As for the staff, chief director Nobutaka Nishizawa appears to be most notable for his significant work on this franchise itself, though I’m intrigued to see this episode’s screenwriter also wrote the harrowing Space Runaway Ideon: Be Invoked. Let’s see what’s on offer as we board the Galaxy Express!
Episode 1
Ah yes, the original Toei Pero logo. I wonder how many animators who worked through the classic film era were still on staff – at least for this episode, animation director Yoshinori Kanemori must have been quite young, as his credits extend all the way up to last year’s Pluto adaptation
The cry of the train whistle carries us into the OP, which begins with an ambitious motion-into-depth sequence as our perspective is hinged to the front of the train. The fact that this train is flying through space facilitates the ambition of the shot; there are no backgrounds to continuously redraw, just the tracks themselves against an endless void
It’s striking imagery, both in this and Galactic Railroad. There’s something inherently majestic and romantic about trains; their intimate, dignified internal world, their specific culture and protocol, their dream-like sense of being ensconced as you traverse a foreign world, and the way they inherently harken back to an age of discovery and adventure, particularly an ornate old train like this one
In his documentary, Yasuo Otsuka speaks of how walking out to the station and sketching trains was how he started drawing in the first place. The fact that their method of locomotion is all visible externally ignited his imagination – it stoked in him a crucial faculty for an animator, a desire to understand how the motion of an object truly works, what engine and pistons drive it forward and how
I like how these space-trains essentially have little space shuttles attached for the pilots
It is 2221 AD
“Departure Ballad”
Also like that there are no actual tracks, which apparently just isn’t a problem. Leiji Matsumoto clearly prefers concept-driven, fantastical scifi to hard scifi, which is absolutely my preference as well. I’m not here to double-check your math homework, I’m here to engage with a story about humanity
We begin in Megalopolis, a grand city filled with skyscrapers whose designs match angular brutalism to optimistic mid-century “world of tomorrow” opulence. People can replace their bodies with mechanical ones to live for thousands of years, but this procedure is of course only available to the rich
A gratifyingly sharp starting point for a children’s adventure – “the world of the future is fantastical for the rich, but capitalism still holds the rest of us in chains.” In retrospect, Kaiba is also clearly a descendant of this show, complete with its interplanetary travelog conceit
The poor have been forced from the city altogether, but are inspired by the hope that if they ride the Galaxy Express 999, they will be given a cyborg body for free
Some nice depth-rich compositions as we’re introduced to our lead and his mother. They adhere to two of Matsumoto’s most consistent design archetypes: majestic long-haired woman and little goblin man
The boy’s name is Tetsuro
Even the train ticket costs an enormous amount of money, of course
Powerful sense of atmosphere as the wind whips these snow-laden fields, limp weeds dancing in the breeze. Quite an effective economy of production here
“They’re human-hunters. Some of the cyborgs like to kill us humans for fun.” Without wealth and the bodies that accompany it, they have no rights at all
I like how the cyborgs ride horses, echoing the general quasi-frontier drama feel of this narrative
Tetsuro’s mother is briefly surrounded by radiance as the laser strikes her, as if we’re seeing the soul itself leave her body
“I want you to live a long life, to make up for ours.” All the have-nots can really hope for. And jeez, what a brutal opening!
More excellent use of these swaying weeds in the foreground, which appear as if they’re mourning his mother
“Yes, this is an absolutely gorgeous human. Perfect for mounting on my wall.” Abhorrent when declared out loud, but in truth not very different from how we already treat the global underclass. We recoil in horror at individual acts of violence, but international trade and first-world abundance implicitly rely upon the subjugation of entire nations, wherein desperate individuals are treated little differently than cattle, and rebellion against inhumane factory or farm conditions is met with brutality and assassination. Our assumption of personal moral character relies on a whole lot of simply not thinking about it; we can’t really “opt out” of modern society, but modern society necessarily implies a torrent of inhumane bloodshed
Tetsuro swears to one day get revenge
The atmosphere is so strong in spite of the limited animation. The foreground particles of snow effectively trap Tetsuro within the compositions, which themselves are designed to dwarf him through the scale of the expanse around him. And then his hushed whisper, a very human refrain of “it’s so cold”
“If I were a machine, I’d be able to move. It’s no good being a human.” Surely machines are better-suited to this heartless world than human beings. I wonder if the show will actually explore that vein, diving into how modern society would prefer automatons to frail, sentimental creatures of flesh and blood
“In my next life, I’ll be born with a mechanical body right from the start.” What a sad hope!
Neat transition here, as flames are overlaid over the frame to cut us into a perspective shot, the disorientation and indistinct nature of the frame echoing Tetsuro’s mental muddle as he wakes
He’s rescued by another classic Matsumoto-style woman named Maetel. How do these women manage their thigh-length hair?
Maetel heard Tetsuro and his mother on her audio transmitter
She offers him an unlimited-use pass, so long as he takes her with him
Interesting to see some exaggerated styles of expressions that have clearly fallen out of general anime favor, like Tetsuro reacting in shock by having his eyes splatter like fried eggs
The group who killed Tetsuro’s mother are apparently led by “Count Mecha”
Damn, kid’s bold! He immediately grabs a gun and heads out for his revenge
I like these cyborg designs – Mecha and his friends are all basically decked in stylish ‘70s fashion, making for an eerie contrast with their expressionless faces
And Tetsuro just obliterates them! No hand-wringing about the inherent inhumanity of violence here – these cyborgs grow fat on a system that will only ever inflict cruelty on humanity, and must be destroyed
Even on the brink of death, Mecha expresses no remorse, only self-pity. He simply cannot imagine valuing a human being
And then Tetsuro burns down the mansion, at last letting himself say goodbye to his mother
Now he’s being chased by a goddamn cyborg police tank! This show certainly isn’t wasting any time easing us into the drama
Tetsuro is rescued from the cyber police hounds by Maetel. This is basically a scene from Fahrenheit 451
An amusing mixture of old-fashioned and futuristic technology, with Maetel using a whip to urge on her mechanical horse
Waiting for the train at a hotel, Tetsuro overhears Maetel communicating with someone who orders her to “stick with that child,” lest her body be incinerated
The police find them as Maetel dons her iconic fur hat and coat
Maetel gets them free with some kind of flash grenade. I like how her run cycles actually take account of her hair billowing behind her; Matsumoto designs in motion are something else
Seeing the slums full of hopeless would-be passengers, Tetsuro can only wonder why Maetel gave him specifically a pass. I didn’t expect this story to get into the thornier assumptions of its premise so quickly; we’re diving into issues of stratified society right from the start, and that of course includes suspicion of the apparently wealthy Maetel
The 999 is a steam locomotive, embodying the old-fashioned grandeur of classic trains
“The bright spots are places where cyborgs live.” “There are dark places all over, huh?” “That’s where regular human who can’t buy mechanical bodies live.”
And Done
Hot damn, what a premiere! That was far more action-packed than I expected, full of dramatic chase scenes and shootouts and harrowing treks across the snow fields, even while it constructed this overarching atmosphere of melancholy and regret. I also didn’t expect this premiere to immediately get so ferocious, to instantly couch its vision of humans and cyborgs in terms of class relations and capitalism, and even give us several reasons to distrust Maetel’s generosity right from the start. I can’t really fault a show that begins with the lesson “shoot the rich with laser rifles,” and Galaxy Express 999 has far more than that going for it. Onward to the cosmos!
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