Ulatores' Mountain of Screws

Ulatores’ Mountain of Screws

Manga Chapter 7-3

TV Episode 33

Manga Chapter Summary:

As the 999 heads through space, Tetsuro notices some shiny objects knocking against the glass of the 999. Maetel says they are close to Ulatores. The Conductor announces it as their next stop, with a layover time of nearly 9 days. Maetel says the planet rotates very slowly. The 999 will undergo maintenance while they are there. As they approach Ulatores, Tetsuro says the planet looks like a rusty ball bearing.

Tetsuro notices a bunch of screws outside the train. Maetel claims some were ejected into space, and that’s what hit the train’s windows. Tetsuro spots large pyramids off in the distance, but realizes they’re all made of screws! Screws even act as gravel within the road. We see a variety of screws used all over the floor and hallways of the hotel as they head through it. By the time they are in their hotel room Tetsuro says he has seen so many he wants to vomit. Tetsuro notices that a mountain of screws is directly in front of the hotel window and that if it crumbles, they’ll be buried.

An announcement is made within the hotel that there will be strong wind and rain that night and to lock their doors. Tetsuro wonders if it rains screws on this planet and goes to sleep. That night there’s a great blast of wind outside. Many screws smash into their window and into the room. The nearby mountain of screws collapses and crashes into the city, heading right into the hotel room. When Tetsuro wakes up, even more screws fall on his head and a woman in front of him calls him a klutz. She tells Tetsuro they are currently in her screw room. Everyone here makes screws and has such a room. Since he doesn’t know about them she realizes he is a traveler.

The woman pours Tetsuro some coffee, but it is filled with screws! The universe is vast she says and needs the screws they produce here. She considers the base of human civilization to be the wheel and the screw. She’s made them since birth and her death will mean the loss of a single screw. Tetsuro realizes his 999 pass is missing and she says she burned it in the furnace! Tetsuro is extremely angry as this has cost him the chance to get a mechanical body. The woman calls him a ghost bewildered by a robotized body. She claims it would be better for him to stay here with her and not get one. Tetsuro refuses and says she doesn’t understand.

The woman tosses Tetsuro in one of her rooms and screws the door shut. Tetsuro pushes as hard as he can and eventually breaks the door open but realizes she’s gone. He goes outside to ask where she went and a neighbor tells her not to go outside as it is about the rain. He says her name is Spiral and she’s gone to search for his pass. Tetsuro doesn’t care and tries to head off, but steps on a lot of screws and it soon starts raining screws! Tetsuro grows worried that Spiral will be hurt. He heads outs using a board of wood as a makeshift umbrella to block the screws.

Tetsuro hears Spiral in front of him telling him to go back to the room as the rain will kill him. Spiral shows Tetsuro that she has found his ticket and had lied about it, although her body now is mostly torn up by the screw rain. They go under a bridge and Spiral tears off all of her skin, revealing she is mechanized. She tells Tetsuro she wanted eternal life like him. Her parts are now bonded by the same screws she now makes. She doesn’t regret becoming mechanized, if someone in the universe is ready to use her screws she’ll make them forever. She says screws that are making screws want to talk to someone and listen to the heart of another. She tells Tetsuro to not be broken and complain and walks off, saying she’s doing what she loves.

Back on the 999, Tetsuro tells Maetel that he’s realized that no one should hate their job. He tells Maetel how Spiral had saved him and how she called him a ghost bewildered by a mechanical body. Maetel says it would have been better to say a screw. Tetsuro says he even fell in love with her.

TV Episode Summary:

Early parts of the episodes have a few changes. Maetel reveals it is screws hitting the 999’s windows in space from the get go rather than waiting until they are on the planet. After departing the station, Tetsuro and Maetel come across Spiral as she is crossing the street. She almost gets hit by a car and Tetsuro checks to see how she is doing. As such, when Tetsuro later wakes up in Spiral’s house, she references the kindness he showed her earlier.

Tetsuro’s time in captivity after being locked up by Spiral is a bit longer. Spiral despairs over her dull life of having to make screws over and over again. Spiral later tells Tetsuro she is going to go out shopping and will get him something to eat but he refuses anything. Tetsuro eventually escapes as he does in the manga.

After Tetsuro encounters Spiral in the screw rain and she tears her skin off, we have changed dialogue with her, with her mentality being changed from how it was in the manga. Spiral claims she had to go heavily in debt in order to get her mechanical body and live forever, which is why she’s forced to make screws. We later see Spiral on top of a cliff in a new scene, jumping off, to kill herself, but Maetel grabs her with her whip and stops her fall. Spiral thinks making the screws are meaningless, but Maetel explains that the 999 broke down due to a single screw. Maetel asks her to make a special screw to fix the 999. Spiral initially refuses to do it, saying she can only make regular screws, but Tetsuro spurns her on and she does so. Spiral successfully makes the screw and they are able to use it to fix the 999.

TV Episode Cast:

Tetsuro Hoshino – Masako Nozawa

Maetel – Masako Ikeda

Conductor – Kaneta Kimotsuki

Spiral – Mami Koyama

Resident Next Door – Seiji Sato

Narrator – Hitoshi Takagi

Non-Spoiler Analysis:

This chapter reminds me a bit of chapter 6-3, “Steel Angel”. The 999 heads to a heavily industrialized world, this time one filled with screws! The streets are made of screws, the mountains are made of screws, it even rains screws! When I heard that a screw mountain was right near the hotel I knew something bad would happen and lo and behold, the entire mountain collapses in a storm and destroys the hotel (another similarity to Steel Angel). Tetsuro finds himself rescued by a young woman, Spiral, but also captured by her, Yet again I am reminded of Steel Angel as she looks considerably like the main guest character of that chapter, Chromeria.

At least temporarily, the chapter also comes off similarly to earlier chapters where Tetsuro is seized by some woman and forced to stay with her, such as 3-12/4-1, “Mud Maetel” or 3-8/3-9, “The Graveyard at the Bottom of Gravity”. Spiral even tells Tetsuro that she burned his 999 pass, essentially stranding him here! Yet quite quickly she goes out in the rain to find it, revealing that it was all a lie. Her skin is largely destroyed by the rain storm, and she then tears the rest of it off, but she is able to find the pass enabling Tetsuro to go back to the 999 and leave.

Overall the manga chapter wasn’t the most impressive to me. In particular it comes off as too similar to previous ones, just this time with the theme being a world full of screws. Despite reading to the end I still didn’t really understand Spiral’s motivations at not wanting Tetsuro to have a mechanical body since she has one herself and doesn’t regret it.

The TV episode makes radical changes to Spiral’s background and mentality. In attaining a mechanical body for herself she had to go greatly in debt, which is why she is forced to make screws every day. She hates her job and her life. Her kidnapping of Tetsuro makes more sense than it does in the manga because of this. The TV episode also adds more scenes after this, including Spiral trying to kill herself but being prevented by Maetel, and Maetel helping Spiral realize her life does have meaning by having her create a screw to fix the 999.

On a personal note, this episode was another one I saw many years before the show become officially released in English, via a VHS fansub (it was in fact the last of 8 episodes in the collection I obtained, with the other episodes being 1 - 4, 7 - 8 and 26).

Spoiler Analysis:

There is a brief sequence in the chapter and episode where Tetsuro drinks a coffee cup full of screws. We see a similar sequence, with an overall much more comedic effect in the upcoming chapter 9-5, “Ghost Tunnel”.