The Graveyard at Gravity's Bottom

The Graveyard at Gravity’s Bottom

Manga Chapters 3-8 and 3-9

TV Episodes 7 - 8

Manga Chapter Summary:

The 999, now 750,000 light years along on its journey, is about to arrive at a location where an accident occurred 2 days ago. The 999 is traveling so fast that the stars appear as blurs to Tetsuro. The Conductor asks Maetel to sit backwards as part of their defense against the strange happenings. The 999’s navigation starts failing, then it plummets downward. Eventually the 999 stops, having run into another derailed train. The Conductor says they are at Gravity’s bottom; it’s like a space version of the Sargasso Sea, a deadly sea where ships washed up. The Conductor says that the other train appears rather old, and they are able to travel over to it because of the 999’s barrier. 

 

As they head inside the other train, Tetsuro and Maetel find all the passengers, still sitting in their seats. But when the Conductor is able to restore the lights, they realize the passengers are all skeletons! Maetel notices that the skeleton’s clothes are deteriorating despite being of a kind that lasts several centuries. The Conductor thinks it is as if the train has aged 300 years. Maetel tells Tetsuro that in the mere 2-3 minutes they’ve been on this train, more than 34 hours have actually passed. For some reason time is passing by on this train at an incredible speed. It is dangerous to stay here much longer or they may become like these skeletons. 

 

The Conductor senses someone walking up from behind. They see a strange cloaked woman behind them. Maetel and the woman, whom Maetel calls Ryuzu, seem to recognize one another. Ryuzu claims she has affected 20 trains in this manner, and that she will let the Conductor and Maetel go, but she wants Tetsuro to come with her. Unless they obey she will accelerate time 1000-2000 years immediately. Maetel leaves silently, and Ryuzu drags Tetsuro with her, claiming he will be living at her home from now on. 

 

Ryuzu brings Tetsuro into a small spacecraft and flies over to her home, which is located on a tiny planet. As they arrive at Ryuzu’s house, Tetsuro notices skulls and bones everywhere. Ryuzu claims they are those who didn’t listen to her, so she accelerated time. Ryuzu tells Tetsuro to come with her to her room, but he is still considerably frightened. He goes along with her, finding her room to be a large circular room with a round screen on the ceiling that Ryuzu claims can see the flow of time in every corner of the universe. 

 

Ryuzu removes her cloak, revealing her mechanical body.  Ryuzu tells Tetsuro she will give him a mechanical body if he stays here and shows him numerous mechanical bodies she obtained from train passengers. Tetsuro claims he didn’t take this journey to exchange his freedom for a mechanical body and he must decline if that is the cost. Ryuzu claims that she has been the sole inhabitant of this planet for 300 years; before that she had a warm, living body, but got a machine body to seduce the one she loved. She was a mere pawn for his entertainment however and left her for another woman with a newer model. She eventually came to this planet, at the bottom of gravity’s well to live. Somehow an error occurred when she received her mechanical body that enabled her to control the flow of time.

Ryuzu asks Tetsuro again if he still prefers not to live here even though she can age him to death. Tetsuro claims that he wants to decide his future and will have no regret dying for that. Ryuzu tells Tetsuro his mother must have been an exceptional person. She wishes she had the same determination rather than becoming mechanized, against her will, to please the one she loved. She tells Tetsuro that one day he’ll have to lose his freedom to protect Maetel. 

 

We cut to a later time; Tetsuro has been returned to the 999 and is with Maetel. Maetel says Ryuzu has brought back the flow of time so the 999 is able to move again. She tells Tetsuro she let Ryuzu take him without saying anything as she had faith Ryuzu would never harm him. Tetsuro, thinking of how Ryuzu lived on that planet for 300 years wonders how old Maetel is. Maetel asks Tetsuro if he would like to visit here again someday after he has a mechanical body and Tetsuro says yes.  Maetel thinks Ryuzu will be waiting for him.

TV Episode Summary:

Following the television series order, this is the first 2 parter (it is not if you go by manga order). Episode 7 concludes when Ryuzu heads off on her craft with Tetsuro.

 

The two episodes encompass everything within the manga chapters and add some additional material, primarily to pad things out. The 999 continues to travel with the high speed 444 in front of it, which it joined with at the end of episode 6. In what is a dark pair of episodes, we do get a little more humor added including the Conductor’s hat briefly falling off and Tetsuro freaking out when he doesn’t see a head, Tetsuro imagining himself becoming a skeleton and some funny Tetsuro facial expressions. 

 

The Conductor also gets more to do. When Ryuzu first shows up he tries to lead her out of the train car but she throws him off the train. Later, while Maetel waits in the 999, the Conductor tries to separate the train from the crashed 333. There is a small amount of new dialogue between Ryuzu and Tetsuro, and Ryuzu claims to have been on her planet 500 years rather than 300. We also get some additional padding via some more scenes with Maetel waiting while Tetsuro is with Ryuzu, Tetsuro having a flashback to Maetel giving him the pass in episode 1 and Tetsuro imagining crashed ships in the Sargasso Sea.

 

Unlike the manga, where Ryuzu just tells her story to Tetsuro, we see actual flashbacks of it here. We see Ryuzu as a human dancing for her lover, Baron Clock. Clock pressures her to get a mechanical body, which she relents to. The two of them dance at a ball and Ryuzu shows off her new mechanical body to the crowd. Later at a cookout, many women remove their clothes and reveal they all got the same mechanical body as Ryuzu. This angers Clock, who rides back to his mansion in a rainstorm with Ryuzu falling out of his carriage as they arrive. He heads inside and locks her out, telling her he’s no longer interested in her since she no longer has the newest fashion.

TV Episode Cast:

Tetsuro Hoshino – Masako Nozawa

Maetel – Masako Ikeda

Conductor – Kaneta Kimotsuki

Ryuzu – Haruko Kitahama

Computer Voice – Kouji Totani (Episode 7 only)

Clock – Kan Tokumaru (Episode 8 only)

Narrator – Hitoshi Takagi

Non-Spoiler Analysis:

Quite a scary pair of chapters this time! We rarely get to see what is going on with the other trains of the Galaxy Express and here realize that one of them has suffered a previous accident (and later, that it has happened to a great many of them!). The 999 plunging and eventually crashing with the other train is an exciting sequence that changes to sheer horror as our heroes step on the train and find everyone on board is dead. Ryuzu’s ability to speed up time is a scary one. I’ve often heard said that time is our most precious resource, the one thing that everyone wishes they had more of. With Ryuzu’s ability she can cause a days to go by in mere minutes, or scarier yet, cause a thousand years to pass by in a moment. It’s effectively the ability to kill any living being at a moment’s notice, making her someone you definitely don’t want to get on the bad side of!

 

Ryuzu brings Tetsuro with him to her home; she doesn’t go in depth about why, but I’d assume she wants companionship given the bodies of all the others there, meaning she has done what she did with Tetsuro to many other people. Perhaps it’s a motherly instinct in her that causes her to desire Tetsuro to be with her rather than the others. Tetsuro is offered the choice to obtain the mechanical body he so desires, but it will cost him his freedom as he will be forced to stay here with Ryuzu. Tetsuro bravely refuses the offer; he’s willing to die if it means not giving up his freedom. It is a commendable decision. Would many do the same? Perhaps. I feel that in today’s society freedoms are being chipped away little by little, so people don’t notice what is happening or push back against it as much as they should until it is too late. Tetsuro has a very direct choice in front of him here; it takes some bravery, but the outcomes either way are made obvious to him.

 

Ryuzu is another in the line of mechanized women we meet who regret being made a machine (Claire and Shadow being other examples). Ryuzu gave away her humanity in order to please a lover who threw her away as soon as she was no longer “the newest model”. It’s a sad story, and it is unfortunate Ryuzu was unable to see the way her lover really was until it was too late. Obviously that is not a justification for Ryuzu to do the horrible acts she does which resulted in many people’s deaths, but it is good that we don’t have a one dimensional villain here. In what is probably a continuity error in the manga, Ryuzu’s hair changes both length and color when she removes her cloak, as if she was wearing a wig. 

 

After faithfully following the order of the manga for the first 7 chapters, the TV series skips 21 chapters to bring us this story. I’m not sure why they jumped around, and they will continue to do this throughout the adaption. While I didn’t care for the additional padding in the episode, I do think Ryuzu’s backstory comes off as a lot more effective in the TV show because you actually get to see it happen rather than her just explaining it. Similar to the added content for Shadow in episode 5 of the TV series, I do think the adapters have shown the ability to provide some more effective emotional moments in the show with their new material (although most of the additions tend to be not necessary).

Spoiler Analysis:

While Ryuzu doesn’t appear in the movie version, her name was used for another character, a newly created blue haired singer who was the lover of Count Mecha. Said character would then eventually appear in the manga chapters “The Pirate’s Time Castle”, with the name Leryuzu, and is revealed to be the sister of the Ryuzu from this chapter.