The Planet of 1,765,000,000 Beggars

Planet of 1,765,000,000 Beggars

Manga Chapter 2-4

TV Episode 74

Manga Chapter Summary:

This chapter begins with the 999 having already landed at its next station. Tetsuro smells something bad. He thinks it’s the toilet, backed up, but Maetel tells him its coming from outside. The windows have all been shut and she tells him it’s so no one can see them. Maetel goes to ask the Conductor when they’re leaving and Tetsuro looks outside, findings there are thousands of people begging, crammed up right outside the 999! The train starts shaking and Tetsuro finds a little boy inside the train car who begs him to give him something. He claims his entire family tree is made up of beggars. Maetel shows up and pushes the boy outside, shutting the door. 

 

Maetel tells Tetsuro there are 1,765,000,000 people living on this planet and they all live in poverty, with not one having the courage or will to work. Tetsuro asks why they are like this and she says this wasn’t always the case. The inhabitants of this planet lived in bliss thanks to corruption and bribery by their leaders. They gradually understood there was no point in working and they could live by begging. They eventually all gave up their jobs and there was no one to keep distributing bribes anymore. There are now so many beggars that they don’t feel shame anymore.

People continue to beg outside, but the train takes off. Tetsuro opens up the window and tells Maetel he’s glad he wasn’t born on that planet. He thinks they could accomplish great things if they helped each other. Tetsuro realizes he still can smell that strange stench, even though they’re now back in space. A beggar is revealed behind them, pointing at them with a bow and arrow. Tetsuro says he’s not a beggar, he’s just a thief. Nonetheless, he and Maetel hand over their suitcase and gun. The beggar demands that Maetel take off her clothes as well, which she does. He opens the door, taking Tetsuro with him, revealing there is a woman who came along, whom he gives Maetel’s clothes too. 

 

Maetel tells the beggar he can have a shower and when he responds that beggars don’t shower, she tells him he’s no longer a beggar, but a thief. The thief demands the 999 decouple the train car they’re on. Tetsuro asks him to let him go back on the train car; he wouldn’t betray him considering he gave him his gun. The man tells Tetsuro he is going to wander space, killing to survive if he needs to. He hopes his planet will one day get its beauty back, without any beggars, and he can’t stand living in the middle of people asking for charity. Tetsuro asks the Conductor to decouple the train car. Maetel says the thieves won’t have to beg anymore, even if they have to fight or steal to get by.

Tetsuro wonders if they’re holding the power to change the fate of the planet of beggars. Tetsuro happily says farewell to them as the train car is decoupled. The Conductor comes by, giving Maetel a duplicate of her coat and hat, saying Galaxy Express rules require them to do it. Unfortunately Tetsuro’s gun won’t be able to be replaced. Maetel tells Tetsuro he displayed priceless values such as friendship and mutual trust, and because of it, the thief will become someone with great determination. She thinks the planet of beggars will be able to change. As the chapter closes, the narrator claims that when Tetsuro closes his eyes he’ll think of the man with his iron will and the beautiful woman by his side.

TV Episode Summary:

The TV episode starts slightly earlier than the manga chapter does. We start off with the 999 in space, and see Tetsuro cleaning his gun. The Conductor stops by and tells him to close the blinds. On the planet, which is titled the Gimme Planet (it is unnamed in the manga) we see a number of beggars waiting at the station. Once they realize the 999 is arriving they rush towards it, creating the crowd we see at the start of the manga.

 

The TV episode provides a lot more development for the beggar/thief who boards the 999, who is now named Ikari. Ikari tries to stop the beggars from going to the 999, to no avail. We have a scene with him in his home preparing his bow with his female companion, who is revealed to be his wife, Nasake. We see the two of them sneaking underneath the 999 just before it takes off.

The differences continue once Ikari holds up Tetsuro and Maetel. When Ikari holds up Tetsuro and Maetel he appears a bit nervous at first. Tetsuro doesn’t initially hand over his gun in the TV episode like he does in the manga. Rather, after Ikari lets him go, Tetsuro gives him a rifle, although it doesn’t look like the one he usually carries. The Conductor later tells Tetsuro he’ll be reimbursed for it though so they are at least treating it as one he owns. Maetel is ordered to hand over her coat and hat as in the manga. While in the manga chapter she is naked without them, we quickly see her with clothes on again in the TV episode. Nasake appears to give back the hat and coat as at the end of the episode Maetel has them back and Nasake is back to her original outfit. While with Ikari and Nasake, Tetsuro claims begging and stealing are the same thing. We have a flashback to a machine man tossing a gold coin to Tetsuro. His mother throws it back and tells him to work hard with her and not expect charity. Tetsuro telling them about this convinces Nasake to tell Ikari they shouldn’t resort to thieving. He gives Tetsuro his money back. It is also revealed that Nasake is pregnant.

 

When explaining the backstory of the planet to Tetsuro, Maetel provides a little more backstory and it is a little different. Maetel claims the society was those who worked and those who controlled them, with those who controlled them living in luxury. From there it gets into the bribery story she talks about in the manga. In the TV episode when Tetsuro asks how they survive, all being beggars, Maetel claims the beggars give and take from each other so it evens out.

A few more minor changes include the Conductor throwing the beggar kid out of the train rather than Maetel, the 999 engine detecting Ikari on board and telling the Conductor about it and the Galaxy Express Administration initially rejecting requests to uncouple the train car, but ultimately permitting it later on. 

 

TV Episode Cast:

Tetsuro Hoshino – Masako Nozawa

Maetel – Masako Ikeda

Conductor – Kaneta Kimotsuki

Ikari – Toshio Furukawa

Nasake – Kazuko Sugiyama

Boy – Satomi Majima

Mechanical Car Voice – Kouji Totani

Tetsuro’s Mother – Akiko Tsuboi

Narrator – Hitoshi Takagi

Non-Spoiler Analysis:

This chapter features the 999 coming to a planet filled with beggars. There are so many of them they surround the entire train and several are able to successfully get on board. The 999 doesn’t remain there very long though, which was probably for the best as the train may have been destroyed if all the beggars outside desired it so. 

 

A planet where 1.7 billion people all become beggars seems quite unrealistic to me. In such a society, the vast majority of these people would have died from starvation long ago, without anyone producing food. It is pretty easy in today’s society to take for granted simple necessities like that, but once the supply chain is gone, things will likely go bad, very, very fast. You’d think such a planet is apt to not have many visitors, and it’s kind of surprising that the 999 went there in the first place. Would anyone board from this planet? I highly doubt it. Why would anyone get off? They probably couldn’t even go anywhere with so many people all around the 999. I wonder if the 999 had any charitable purpose coming here, such as dropping off some supplies or something like that. Although with so many beggars there it would be hard for them to satisfy the big crowd. Well, if any genre is going to focus on a bizarre scenario like this, I suppose a sci-fi one and especially a story like Galaxy Express 999 is the place to do it.

As the 999 leaves, we find one of the beggars and his girlfriend have snuck aboard the train and demand Tetsuro and Maetel hand over what they have. The beggar has elevated himself to a thief. Rather than sit around hoping someone will give him something, he is taking action on it. I’m torn by the message the chapter is delivering. I am glad that someone from this planet is finally sick of simply begging and hoping to get hand outs from someone else without providing any real reason or value for them to do so. At the same time, stealing from others isn’t the way to go about it either. The chapter tries a lot to portray the character and the role he has taken in a good light; such as if he’s the shining beacon that will deliver this planet from being one simply filled with beggars to a more respectable one. But if the message is to steal from others instead, that’s still not a good direction for this planet to go into. 

 

Once the train car was decoupled I wondered how in the world Maetel would get her famous coat and hat back; oddly enough the 999 has another copy of them and give them to her. Yet another luxury of being on the 999 is revealed; if you are stolen from, they will give you back what was stolen. Although I suppose the Galaxy Express has a feeling of being liable considering the theft happened on their train and they failed to keep the thief out.

The TV episode makes a number of changes, most of which I found to be improvements. The biggest thing is that while in the manga, you really can come away with the sentiment that it is okay to steal, as its better than begging, in the TV episode Tetsuro is able to convince Ikari and Nasake that it is wrong to steal, that it is essentially the same thing as begging and they decide to earn their way instead. This is supported by a flashback where Tetsuro’s mother teaches him the value of hard work. I couldn’t agree with this sentiment more and was very happy to see the TV episode adjust things to go in this direction. Also, just overall, I think the TV episode makes Ikari and Nasake a lot more likable and sympathetic, a feeling you don’t really get in the manga chapter.

 

There’s a few other lines unique to the TV episode I wanted to focus on. Maetel has a line about the fact that the beggars survive because they give and take from each other. This makes no sense. They’re all beggars. None of them actually contribute or produce anything, they just beg for things from others. It would have been a wiser choice to cut Tetsuro’s question about this out entirely. The other, a more lighthearted one, is when Tetsuro claims that Nasake looks just like Maetel once she puts on her hat and clothes. “Well duh!” is what I told myself as pretty much any young woman in the manga or TV show with long hair looks just like Maetel. One flaw with Matsumoto’s character designs, it’s hard to get much variety among the women!

Spoiler Analysis:

It isn’t explained which gun Tetsuro hands over here, but I’ve got to assume it is not the famous Cosmo gun that he obtained on Titan as that gun is specifically referred to in later chapters, such as chapter 8-5, “Space Ride of the Valkyries”. My recollection is he had another gun at the start of the manga, so it must have been that. Or this is just a continuity error.