Illusion World of 4 1/2 Mats

Illusion World of 4 1/2 Mats

Manga Chapters 2-1 and 2-2

Episodes 60 and 61

Manga Chapter Summary:

The Conductor announces the 999’s next destination as the Planet of Tomorrow, with a layover of 14 days. Maetel tells Tetsuro to keep the fact that he is seeking a mechanical body and the Galaxy Express a secret. This is a peaceful planet that doesn’t even know of the existence of the Galaxy Express. She tells him to leave his cosmo gun here. The 999 lands, trying to blend in with the local trains. As they arrive it is pitch dark out. Tetsuro imagines this is what the Earth must have looked like when he was a baby. 

 

The next day the two of them find it to be quite crowded. Maetel asks Tetsuro if he’d like to eat some Ramen. Tetsuro is quite pleased; on Earth it was difficult to find healthy ingredients and it became a rare dish. They go to a restaurant. Tetsuro starts tearing up with joy as the food is delivered and he eats it with such joy that the owner throws them out, claiming they’re overdoing it. Tetsuro is quite happy and he and Maetel fall asleep in a park. When they wake up, they find that their passes and money have all been stolen. They are unable to mention anything to the police about the Galaxy Express and thus must find their passes within the next 2 weeks in order to be able to leave.

Through a real estate agent the two of them are able to find a place to live, saying they’ll work off what they owe. Tetsuro and Maetel claim to be brother and sister. As they arrive they meet the old woman landlord who lives there and Adachi, a young tenant who like Tetsuro loves Ramen. Another houseguest is working on making razors to sell to the Yakuza. The landlord lends them some futons to sleep on. When Tetsuro and Maetel wake up, they find they have been robbed again; now their clothes are gone! 

Later, Adachi tells Tetsuro that he should get a job and tells him he doesn’t look anything like the true beauty that his sister is. When Adachi asks Tetsuro where he was born, Tetsuro points up to the stars, but Adachi doesn’t believe him. Adachi does however mention he heard of rumors of the Galaxy Express and would really like to get on board. Adachi brings Tetsuro to a restaurant that ends up being the same place that he ate at yesterday! The owner agrees to let them eat before working, but Tetsuro and Adachi eat so much they pass out! Meanwhile, Maetel visits the Galaxy Railways local office and is told that lost passes can’t be reissued. If they can’t find their stolen passes, they will be forced to stay here. Maetel is told to be cautious as people on this planet are starting to believe in the existence of the 999.

Maetel returns to their home where the landlord provides her some wine and cakes to eat. She finds Tetsuro is already asleep, but he left her a package of ramen to eat. Tetsuro talks in his sleep, first about Count Mecha then saying Maetel over and over. Tetsuro wakes up and goes to Adachi’s room, asking if he can sleep there with him. Adachi provides a lot of shorts for them to sleep under and tells him to be more optimistic; things will get better. 

The day arrives when the 999 is to depart. Tetsuro says it is a really nice planet and even with the bad stuff that happened he likes this place. They decide there’s no harm in going to the station. When they get there they find a boy sitting on a bench, holding both of their passes. The boy gets up and angrily slams them down, leaving. Maetel stops him, asking him why he threw them away. The boy claims he wasn’t able to find a job here. Even if he left for another world he wouldn’t be able to accomplish what he can’t here. He feels it would be cowardly to leave his friends and girlfriend behind. Tetsuro provides him some cups of Ramen that he bought with his wages and lets him go. Maetel asks Tetsuro why he let him go and Tetsuro says it doesn’t matter, and they would have been good friends had they grown up together.

Tetsuro rushes back to the home they stayed at and tells Adachi to continue to fight and never give up. He says he will never forget him. Tetsuro leaves him some ramen cups and leaves. That night as Adachi eats his ramen he looks up in the sky and sees the 999 departing. He asks the landlord if she would believe him if he said he saw a flying space train. She claims she saw a couple when she was young but now he needs to find a job and finally become an adult. He wonders if Tetsuro and Maetel were on that train. On the 999, Tetsuro tells Maetel that perhaps this is called the Planet of Tomorrow as the future of everyone on the planet is probably wonderful. Adachi is fighting every day for his own future. Maetel says maybe they would have lived a happy life there had they not found their passes. 

TV Episode Summary:

In the TV series adaption, these chapters are spread across 2 episodes, 60 and 61. The biggest change to the episodes is a lot more time focused on Taro, the boy who steals Tetsuro’s pass (he is unnamed in the manga). While in the manga we only see him at the station on the day the 999 is to leave, we see a variety of scenes featuring Taro, his girlfriend Hanako and their friends. This includes them being introduced spotting the 999 as it approaches their planet. Taro following Tetsuro and Maetel and stealing from them twice and it makes more sense why he stole Tetsuro’s clothes as he plans to wear them as he boards the 999. We see several additional scenes with his friends including him offering Maetel’s pass to Hanako, who declines it, Hanako and his other friends planning on making a magazine about Taro’s departure (which they eventually produce) and a scene with him returning to his friends after the 999 takes off. They decide to change the focus of their magazine from being about Taro’s departure to being about the discovery of the 999.

Other changes included the layover only being 2 days rather than 14, Adachi being a struggling manga artist, Tetsuro having a flashback to eating Ramen with his mother back on Earth, the dagger-making resident at the dorm owning mini-turtles instead and a scene with Maetel on a bridge as Hanako and her friends pass by. When Adachi sees the 999 it gives him inspiration for his manga!

TV Episode Cast:

Tetsuro Hoshino – Masako Nozawa

Maetel – Masako Ikeda

Conductor – Kaneta Kimotsuki

Hanako – Keiko Yokozawa

Taro – Kiyoshi Komiyama

Boy A – Yoku Shioya

Boy B – Kiyonobu Suzuki

Adachi Futoshi – Shigeru Chiba

Dormitory Woman – Miyoko Asou

Ramen Shopkeep – Jouji Yanami

Real Estate Agent – Kunihiko Kitagawa (Yonehiko Kitagawa) (episode 60 only)

Tetsuro’s Mother – Akiko Tsuboi (episode 60 only)

Narrator – Hitoshi Takagi

Non-Spoiler Analysis:

Dread quickly built up in me early in this chapter when Tetsuro and Maetel’s passes were stolen. This is now the third time we have had this plot occur in merely 10 chapters. Yet as I read more of the chapter I didn’t mind it as much. It allowed for the ability to explore the life that Tetsuro and Maetel may have lived had they stayed on this planet. We didn’t see them really spend any time looking for their passes, and with the fact that the 999 is kept a secret on this planet, that made some sense. After all how can they ask about passes for a train that doesn’t exist? Although there are at least some rumors of the 999 and Adachi sees the train depart. I have got to figure that more people can see the 999 as it leaves. I wonder if there are mysteries surrounding it like there are for UFOs in our society? The stolen passes plot is resolved fairly easily in the end as Tetsuro comes across the boy who stole them as they arrive at the station and he decides to give up on them. Considering the passes were stolen in order to board the 999, it does make sense to simply wait for the thief at the station rather than spend a countless amount of time searching for them. The boy claims he doesn’t want to leave his girlfriend and friends behind, although he had two passes so he could have brought his girlfriend with him. Although I again go back to the explanation of the passes in the first chapter, that once someone’s name is signed on them, anyone else using said passes will be put to death. It kind of makes any pass-stealing plot moot. But with this being the third time it has come up, I suppose Matsumoto just expects us to act as if it never happened. 

In terms of other stuff from this chapter, I did enjoy quite a lot Tetsuro’s love for Ramen. Tetsuro’s love of Ramen noodles is one of the things that I fondly recall about Galaxy Express 999 and this is the first time it has come up as a plot point. I’ve always been a big fan of Ramen myself. Tetsuro claims they don’t have it on Earth anymore which surprises me, as it is kind of a cliché that Ramen is the perfect type of food for broke people as its cheap and all you need for it is hot water. Fellow tenant Adachi is a likeable character and as Tetsuro mentions, I think he and Tetsuro could have been good friends had they lived on the same planet together. I wonder if his spotting of the 999 will spur him on to try and board it someday. 

The TV adaption provides a lot more development for Taro, the pass thief. While I think this was included to provide more backstory for him, I think the net result is that Taro comes off as extremely unlikable. He often has this angry look on his face and is too dismissive of his girlfriend and friends. Stealing from Tetsuro not once, but twice is quite cruel. He makes a comment about how Tetsuro and Maetel must be rich and can easily buy more passes, which is incredibly dismissive and just him trying to shift any guilt for his bad actions off of himself.

Although the Planet of Tomorrow wants to keep the 999 a secret, changes in the TV episode means it probably won’t be for much longer, as Taro’s friends plan on making a magazine about it and it also is inspiring Adachi’s manga (perhaps in universe he will be a proxy for Leiji Matsumoto?)

Despite this being a relatively early pair of chapters, in the TV adaption it was held for a considerable amount of time before being covered. I think this harms the TV episodes considerably, and in reading over comments I made from viewing the episode years ago I found that I was extremely critical of it. This was primarily due to the stolen pass storyline which by that point had been done many times. With it coming up a lot earlier in the manga it’s not as bad for me this time. The manga is helped by the far smaller role of Taro too. He is probably my most disliked character in all of Galaxy Express 999 thus far so the less of him the better.