The Phantom World Filaments

The Phantom World Filaments

Manga Chapter 6-6

TV Episode 30

Manga Chapter Summary:

Tetsuro notices that it is suddenly getting colder on the train. Maetel says they are passing through a cloud sea, during which time the temperature always drops. The Conductor announces their next stop as the Silver Valley, with a layover time of nearly 5 hours. Tetsuro looks outside and finds hazy clouds in front of them that have what look like broken filaments from a light bulb. Maetel claims its substance from a planet that blew up around here, killing millions. The blast was so sudden that the citizens of the planet didn’t even have time to realize that they died.

Tetsuro runs off to the toilet. Meanwhile the 999 locomotive receives a message from the control center to reduce its speed as a huge biomass has been detected near Silver Valley. As Tetsuro heads towards the toilet, he notices shadows of people in the next car. When he opens the train car door though, it is just glowing humanoid figures, occupying each of the seats. As Tetsuro wonders what kind of people they are, many hands grab him and pull him into the train car. They ask him to play with them and won’t let go of him despite his pleas.

A cloaked woman approaches and takes Tetsuro’s hand, insisting he talk with her. The cloaked woman says they have no name and claims to not be mechanized. Tetsuro, quite nervous, tells her of his quest to get a mechanical body and that he is traveling with Maetel. The cloaked woman insists that they go see Maetel and despite his objections, Tetsuro brings the cloaked woman to her. The cloaked woman asks Maetel that it take Tetsuro with her and that Maetel can’t come. Tetsuro squirms as the cloaked woman tries to take him away. 

The 999 continues through the cloud sea, with the filaments surrounding the train. Maetel insists the cloaked woman unhand Tetsuro, but she says the train won’t move further without her approval. The 999’s control center requests Silver Valley’s Security division send out crafts to help the 999, which it does. The cloaked woman however threatens to destroy the train if they come closer, so they retreat. More of the glowing figures laugh and claim they are all powerful, and that they are bringing Tetsuro to their home.

The train the cloaked woman brings Tetsuro to detaches from the rest of the train. For once, Maetel is uncertain of what will happen to Tetsuro. The train car approaches a glowing part of space where Maetel claims the planet used to be. The train car starts glowing with light as it heads into the glowing part of space. The cloaked woman claims this is their planet, Filaments, even though it blew up. The cloaked woman claims it is going to enter Tetsuro’s body as it wants to be reborn as a human. Tetsuro insists no. Maetel and the Conductor notice the glowing light starting to pulsate. The light glows more and more around Tetsuro, then he suddenly finds himself back on the 999.

The cloaked woman tells Tetsuro that she gave up trying to seize his body as his soul was similar to hers when she was still alive. She claims Tetsuro was full of hopes, dreams and faith in the future like she used to be. She says farewell and walks out. Tetsuro asks her if mechanized bodies are worth having and she says that’s something someone else can’t decide for him, but Maetel might have an opinion on it. The cloaked woman departs the train and heads back towards the glowing spot in space. Tetsuro tells Maetel that’s where the souls of all those on Filament have gathered. He wonders if Maetel will ever tell him about mechanization.

TV Episode Summary:

The episode begins showing us people on the planet Filament. We see a pair of peasants, mother and son, heading past a fancy town where they are celebrating the return of the son of the manor, who now possesses a mechanical body. The peasant boy hopes for a mechanical body someday. Suddenly a large pink wave passes through the area (later explained by Maetel to be caused by the planet’s sun) and the entire planet blows up.

We return to the present afterwards and see a train pass by the 999. Tetsuro looks onboard and sees glowing humanoid spirits onboard.  The Conductor doesn’t believe Tetsuro when he says he saw another train. The Conductor also announces the Cloud Sea as if it was a formal stop. References to Silver Valley are cut, as the adaption of the upcoming chapter that features it was moved from directly after this storyline to far later in the series.

Tetsuro initially leaves Maetel in the manga to go to the toilet; in the episode he says he’s getting some exercise. Although Tetsuro does claim once grabbed by the spirits that he’s only here to pee. Tying in with the earlier flashback, the cloaked woman claims in the episode that she needs Tetsuro for her son (there is no reference to her having a son in the manga). When the defense force comes to take back the 999, the cloaked woman sends out beams that attack them in the episode (versus just making threats in the manga).

Once the train car is pulled away into the glowing area in space, we see the cloaked woman’s son approach and she claims that he will be entering Tetsuro’s body and traveling in his place to get a mechanical body. The boy approaches and jumps onto Tetsuro, but hesitates, and tells his mother he can’t do it. The train car returns to the 999. The reason for rejecting taking over Tetsuro is similar as to the manga, it’s just the son who says it rather than the mother. Tetsuro tells him he’ll get a mechanical body on his behalf someday and the boy says he hope he will visit him after that.

TV Episode Cast:

Tetsuro Hoshino – Masako Nozawa

Maetel – Masako Ikeda

Conductor – Kaneta Kimotsuki

Boy – Keiko Yamamoto

Boy’s Mother – Mieko Nobusawa

Train’s Voice – Keaton Yamada

Ghost A – Kouko Kogawa

Ghost B – Kouji Totani

Narrator – Hitoshi Takagi

Non-Spoiler Analysis:

Here’s another chapter that focuses on scaring us a bit. The 999 enters a section of space where a planet had blown up, yet clouds remain in the area where it used to be. Once entering a bunch of spirits, depicted as glowing humanoids start appearing on the 999. One of them appears in a cloak, and tries to seize Tetsuro. We have seen several prior chapters where Tetsuro is seized by a woman for some nefarious purpose or otherwise, such as Shadow or Mud Maetel. This chapter makes me think primarily of Laura from chapter chapters 4-7/5-1 as she literally tried to take Tetsuro’s body and live in it which is what the unnamed cloaked woman seems to want to do here. In the end however we get an ending very similar to an ending we only got a few chapters ago in chapter 6-2, “Goddess of the Snow Capital” where the woman decides that Tetsuro is a good person, and she’s not going to do the nefarious deed to him after all. I was wondering how in the world Tetsuro would get out of this predicament, so to see it end so similar to a way we saw a recent chapter wrap up is rather disappointing. Most of the chapter is pretty good, and it gets across what I think it was really going for in being rather scary, but Matsumoto should have thought of a better ending.

The episode changes things slightly in that we now have a backstory for the cloaked woman, she was a peasant woman on Filament, and had a son, making the relationship very similar to Tetsuro and his mother. Like Tetsuro, her son wanted a mechanical body, which they hoped to get for him someday. It is the boy’s spirit who they are hoping to use Tetsuro for rather than the mother. This change causes things to make more sense, and gives us some better backstory and motivation than what we got in the manga.