Idle One's Mirror

 Idle One’s Mirror

Manga Chapter 4-5

TV Episode 59

Manga Chapter Summary:

The 999 approaches a planet that Tetsuro says looks like an inverted Mars. Maetel says from here to Andromeda, the natives of some planets resembling this one can look like mirrors. The 999 descends downward, towards a heavily mechanized city. Tetsuro claims the planet looks like what the Earth would have if it had reached its peak. Maetel says here people have managed to master machines and it’s entirely free of danger, rather quiet in fact. 

 

The Conductor recommends against Tetsuro heading out by himself, but he does so anyway. Tetsuro gets into an automated car and asks it to take him to the liveliest place in town. The car brings him to such a place, but it’s just an empty street! Tetsuro is frustrated, but heads into a local coffee shop. The place is attended to completely by machines, doing the tasks of waiter, busboy, etc… Tetsuro returns to the automated car and asks to go to a place where a lot of people live. 

 

Tetsuro is brought to a residential district, but there is no one outside. Tetsuro approaches one of the houses and is invited in. But when he opens the door he finds a squishy barrier preventing him from opening. Tetsuro soon realizes that the house is occupied by an extremely fat person and he had walked into his leg. Tetsuro is told that humans are locked in their homes here. Tetsuro sees an explosion nearby. He heads there and realizes the house exploded due to its massively fat occupant expanding their body. 

 

The occupant tells Tetsuro that he doesn’t have to worry; the government will read his brainwaves and construct him a new house. As the car Tetsuro is in departs, more houses explode and we see the monstrously fat bodies of other people. Tetsuro returns to the 999, which takes off. He asks Maetel if humans on Earth would become like this if they hadn’t given into mechanization. Maetel claims no one on this planet wanted to be mechanized, but they still live long lives.

TV Episode Summary:

The TV episode begins with the Conductor finding Maetel alone. She tells him Tetsuro is in the library car. There, Tetsuro sleeps, flashing back to working with his mother. She pushes him to work hard and not be lazy. The Conductor wakes him up by telling him of their next stop, Idle One’s Mirror. Tetsuro says he was researching the upcoming planet but there’s nothing on it in the guide. He returns to Maetel who tells him there’s no one who will write about the planet. Tetsuro speculates about how this could be as they arrive on the planet. In a briefly added scene, Maetel declines to get off the train with Tetsuro when they arrive.

After Tetsuro first gets in the automated car we see a woman calling for it to wait, but the car ignores her and takes off. When they arrive at the “lively” place in town Tetsuro sees a fat dog and cat cross the street in front of him. When he takes off in the car again the woman nearly catches up but is too late again. This happens a third time after Tetsuro encounters the first person in a house. 

 

After many more houses explode Tetsuro finally encounters the woman head on. She says her name is Saborina. She brings him to a fat man, Gudara, who is rather lazy. Saborina wants to board the 999 and leave the planet, asking Tetsuro for help. She claims they weren’t always like this and we flash back to when she and Gudara were thin. They had come to this planet to chop lumber. The government soon sent machines to do it for them instead. Gudara stops working and tells Saborina to stop. 

 

Saborina wants to leave but Gudara doesn’t. She greatly desires to go to another planet where she will be able to work. She claims that the government stopped her when she made any attempt to leave on the 999 before. In his house, the house starts falling apart around Gudara due to how heavy he is. Saborina says she doesn’t have a pass for the 999 so Tetsuro asks the Conductor about it, wanting to use his allowance from the 999 to pay for it. The Conductor refuses causing Tetsuro to yell at him and almost get in a fight with him. 

 

Saborina tells Tetsuro to stop fighting for her. Another house explodes in the distance. Gudara is now as fat as everyone else. Saborina thanks Tetsuro and says she’ll be fine; they’ll get on the 999 the next year and revert to normal. The 999 takes off. We get a lengthy scene as Tetsuro runs through the 999 train cars looking upon Saborina and saying goodbye to her.

TV Episode Cast:

Tetsuro Hoshino – Masako Nozawa

Maetel – Masako Ikeda

Conductor – Kaneta Kimotsuki

Tetsuro’s Mother – Akiko Tsuboi

Air Car Voice - Norio Wakamoto

Alien A – Kimori Yamamoto

Alien B – Kouji Totani

Gudara – Hiroshi Masuoka

Saborina – Tomoko Watanabe

Narrator – Hitoshi Takagi

Non-Spoiler Analysis:

This is the first single-storyline chapter since 2-9 that is short in length, at 18 pages (most chapters/storylines in the manga are 32 pages or more), and as a result is a fairly simple storyline. The 999 heads to a planet that is for all intents and purposes a paradise. Technology has hit such a level that people don’t really need to do any labor anymore, or struggle to attain anything. Everything is totally peaceful. Yet the results of this aren’t as ideal as you would think. For starters, there isn’t really anything going on. Tetsuro desires to go to the liveliest place around, and yet it’s an empty street. There is no one walking around, no one in the local restaurants, nor do any humans staff them. Tetsuro finds himself totally alone having a drink. 

 

Tetsuro eventually finds the planet’s occupants, but they are all monstrously fat, so much so that they cause the houses they live in to explode. To reach such a state the people of this planet must be consuming enormous amounts of food while not doing any real physical effort at all. While what we see in this chapter certainly is taken to an extreme, our society is heading more and more in this direction. So much of what we want can be obtained these days without leaving our homes. People are moving around less and less. People are getting more and more overweight. Our society is unlikely to go to as much of an extreme as this one, but I fear for what we may eventually become. The chapter doesn’t really get into it, but I’ve got to think it is a rather lonely existence too. It doesn’t seem like multiple people could fit in those homes. While brief, this is another chapter where Matsumoto explores a rather odd concept and it was enjoyable to read.

 

The TV episode expands things a bit, introducing a new character, Saborina, who came to the planet with her lover Gudara. They were once thin but when the government’s machines did all the work they intended to do, Gudara eventually lost all of his work ethic. They both grew fat although Gudara considerably more so. It was good to see at least one person on the planet who knew the importance of hard work. This is further expanded upon by a flashback of Tetsuro’s mother pushing the importance of hard work on him, a concept similar to something we saw back in chapter 2-4, “The Planet of 1,765,000,000 Beggars”. The new footage also provides some rather comedic scenes at Gudara starts destroying his home due to how fat he is and ends up destroying his entire house and becoming as large as everyone else.