Africa the Great Dark Nebula

Africa the Great Dark Nebula

Manga Chapters 11-5 and 12-1

TV Episodes 72 - 73

Manga Chapter Summary:

The 999 approaches a dark nebula in space that is shaped like the continent of Africa. Maetel says it is called the African Dark Nebula. The Conductor comes in, announcing their next stop as “Kilimanjaro”, with a layover time of 28 hours. Maetel tells Tetsuro it has the same name as Mt. Kilimanjaro, a mountain in Tanzania. The 999 enters the nebula, and everything around the 999 is dark. They eventually pass an asteroid which Maetel claims is nameless. She says there are many planets in this nebula, as well as stars. The objects in the nebula float around like larvae in a beehive. Tetsuro starts getting bored due to their inability to see anything. The Conductor notices the door behind him open. A gloved hand comes out, and waves up and down. Tetsuro hears a noise from the other train car and runs in, finding the Conductor missing, with his clothes on the floor. Tetsuro wonders if he is wandering around naked. Maetel says they should go to the Locomotive.

Suddenly there is a bright light shining; it is a trio of suns glowing outside the train. Tetsuro stares straight at them, temporarily blinding himself. The Locomotive says the space shield has been breached and many unidentified lifeforms are invading its orbit. When we next see the 999, it has come to a stop in a snowy landscape. Maetel and Tetsuro are now wearing sunglasses to help shield their eyes from the triple sun. Maetel spots a number of dark humanoid forms in the distance with antenna, but they quickly vanish, before Tetsuro sees anything. Suddenly Maetel disappears! Tetsuro searches for her throughout the train car in a frenzy. He goes outside and rubs snow in his eyes but fears opening them again due to the triple suns. Tetsuro heads to the Locomotive, asking what to do. It says it doesn’t know, and that the train is surrounded. Tetsuro looks outside and sees several of them.

Suddenly one of the humanoid figures with antennas appears on the train! It disappears as quickly as it appeared, then appears again! The figure tells Tetsuro they are Ghost Hoppers. Tetsuro wonders what a Ghost Hopper is and looks up grasshopper in a book. The Ghost Hopper keeps appearing and disappearing, but Tetsuro realizes it is because their bodies are extremely thin, like a piece of paper, making them vanish when they turn to the side. Tetsuro struggles with the Ghost Hopper, trying to grab it and demanding to know what happened to Maetel and the Conductor. Tetsuro is knocked out by behind. The Ghost Hoppers note that Tetsuro is a different shape than the others but wonder if he’s related. They decided to take him with them, dragging him out of the train.

Tetsuro later wakes up in a dark room which the Ghost Hoppers say is their laboratory. It is pitch dark; they claim they don’t need light and it’s their enemy. Tetsuro hears the Conductor nearby, and he claims they are going to cut up his body! Tetsuro is only able to see his eyes but not the rest of his body. Tetsuro sees Maetel nearby as well. Any attempt to cut up Maetel doesn’t work and she gets up. The Conductor starts laughing, saying their machines have no effect on their body. Tetsuro realizes the Conductor is standing there naked. Maetel asks the Ghost Hoppers what they are going to do with them. They say they are experimental animals to them, all part of a experiment to help develop the science of Kilimanjaro. At that moment we see a lot of the Ghost Hoppers around the 999, picking up several of the train cars with some devices. They hope to disassemble it, especially the computer in the locomotive.

Tetsuro and Maetel listen as they hear orders go out about disassembling parts of the 999. Galaxy Express headquarters identify that there was an accident within Africa and that the 999 has been destroyed. As such, they decide to abandon the 999 and construct a new one. The Ghost Hoppers take Tetsuro, Maetel and the Conductor outside. Maetel has given the Conducter her coat and hat to wear. The Ghost Hoppers tell them they are bringing them to the Holy Queen of their planet. The Ghost Hoppers show them a relic of the indigenous people on this planet, a club. Maetel also spots an old abandoned structure atop a nearby hill. Maetel and Tetsuro realize the Ghost Hoppers are not the indigenous people of this planet but rather came from somewhere else.

Suddenly a triangular shaped craft descends from the air. There is a large explosion; both the triangular craft and the Ghost Hoppers have vanished! Tetsuro and the others make their way to the remaining passenger cars of the 999. Maetel and the Conductor are able to put back on their normal clothes. Tetsuro smells food. The Conductor heads to the end of the car and realizes the dining car is still attached. A variety of different dishes are all laid out across the tables. They initially wonder if this is a dream, but they eat and the food is real. They suddenly start feeling sick and pass out; the food must have had poison in it. They hear the voice of a woman who says she is the Holy Queen of the Ghost Hoppers.

Some time passes by. Tetsuro and the others wake up and the 999 has been put back together! The 999 has departed Kilimanjaro and is already in space. They hear the Queen’s voice again; she says she caused a rebellion amongst the Ghost Hoppers, and was able to reconnect the train and start it. Tetsuro says usually it is the people who rebel against their rulers, but she claims she rebelled against her people. The Ghost Hoppers were only able to think of themselves and viewed other living creatures as experiment subjects. She is forced to wander the universe alone, and says Maetel should know her feelings, those feeling of wandering in space regretting forever. The Holy Queen says goodbye and we see a small rocket take off from the 999. Tetsuro notices the tears of the Holy Queen on the seats nearby.

TV Episode Summary:

These chapters are adapted across TV episodes 72 and 73. The first episode is fairly faithful to the original chapter, with only a few changes.  The first TV episode begins with the Conductor holding a map of the Earth but having it fall out the window. The narrator explains to us how many years prior, explorers visited the continent of Africa, comparing it to the exploration of space. We see Maetel provide Tetsuro the sunglasses he is wearing once they arrive on Kilimanjaro. We see the 999 descend towards Kilimanjaro, in the manga we just cut to the 999 already there.

The Ghost Hopper that first appears by Tetsuro tells him they are this planet’s version of a grass hopper; in the manga Tetsuro speculates this and looks it up in a book. Upon discovering that the Conductor is naked, but he can’t see him, Tetsuro starts fooling around, trying to touch him until Maetel tells him to stop. In the episode Maetel demands the Ghost Hoppers release them when they tell them they are experiment subjects.

In the second episode, we see Tetsuro and the others in the Ghost Hopper’s lab and see Maetel giving the Conductor her coat, this is just cut to in the manga. While walking through the snow, Tetsuro finds a small hammer in place of the club. The Ghost Hoppers explain how they traveled to Kilimanjaro, searching for a planet to live. In a flashback we see a bunch of indigenous people that look to be like cavemen approach the Ghost Hopper’s craft. The Ghost Hoppers, who still appear as humans here, fire beams at the indigenous people, killing them. The Queen appears on the bridge, telling them to stop. The indigenous people were all wiped out.

The Ghost Hoppers decide to then create an artificial sun to adjust the climate of this planet. The Queen asks the military commander to stop this but he lets it go on as planned. Their device fires a beam into the sky, creating the triple sun, but this changes them all to their current form. The Queen says they can no longer abuse science like this, even though they want to turn themselves back to normal. The Queen then headed off to the mountains on her own. Tetsuro and the others are forced into a cell, which is actually a large area within a hollowed out mountain. Maetel says asking the Queen for help is their only hope. Tetsuro notices there are a bunch of bones around as well, scaring the Conductor. Maetel thinks these are the bones of the indigenous people.

We see a meeting held at the Galaxy Express Administration offices. In the manga we did hear some verbal reports, but didn’t see any people. The triangular craft appears as it does in the manga and we find the Queen is either on it or controlling it as we hear her talk out of it to the other Ghost Hoppers, wanting them to stop. We see the triangular craft shoot a beam at the laboratory of the Ghost Hoppers. It then fires beams at the 999 train cars and starts lifting them off of the ground, which Tetsuro and the others see happen. The other Ghost Hoppers prepare energy cannons which fire. The Queen fires back with the triangular craft. She then blows open the caged door holding in Tetsuro and the others. This enables them to head back to the 999 as they do in the manga.

The Conductor tries to report to the Galaxy Express Administration via the Locomotive, but it tells him they can’t communicate outside the nebula and the tracks have also been cut off. When Tetsuro and the others eat the food and pass out, they claims it is because of the stress the triple suns have caused. The Queen appears there, and when they wake up the 999 is in the process of taking off from the planet. At the end when the Queen departs, it is on the triangular craft rather than the rocket we see in the manga, presumably because it didn’t blow up. We have a brief scene where the Conductor reports back to the Galaxy Express that they are still alive.

TV Episode Cast:

Tetsuro Hoshino – Masako Nozawa

Maetel – Masako Ikeda

Conductor – Kaneta Kimotsuki

Ghost Hopper A – Kan Tokumaru

Ghost Hopper B – Seiji Sato

Ghost Hopper C – Shigeru Chiba

Mechanical Car Voice – Kouji Totani

Queen – Toshiko Fujita (Episode 73 only)

Narrator – Hitoshi Takagi

Kan Tokumaru previously appeared as Clock in episode 8. Seiji Sato has appeared as a variety of minor characters throughout the show. Shigeru Chiba appeared as Adachi in episodes 60 – 61, as well as Headquarters Member A in episodes 51 – 52. Toshiko Fujita appeared as Bee in episodes 54 – 55 and the Police Chief in episode 62.

Non-Spoiler Analysis:

This chapter/pair of episodes features the 999 visiting a nebula that has the shape of the continent of Africa. It is a rather interesting location as it is a dark cloud in space that is large enough to contain many stars and planets within it. Eventually the 999 makes its way to the planet Kilimanjaro. For a place based on Africa you’d expect a hot, desert-like environment or some sort of wilderness, but instead it is a world covered with snow! The sky contains triple suns, bright enough to temporarily blind Tetsuro, although they don’t appear to heat up the world at all.

We soon meet the planet’s inhabitants, the Ghost Hoppers. The concept of the Ghost Hoppers is a really interesting one. From one angle, they appear humanoid, but they also have the width of a piece of paper, so if they turn it is as if they become completely invisible! It was fun to see Tetsuro struggling with them at times, as if he was fighting with a cardboard cutout of a human being. Within the the episode, the Ghost Hoppers say they are this planet’s version of grass hoppers and Tetsuro looks them up in the manga chapter, but that doesn’t really make any sense as they aren’t insects. In fact in the TV episode, we have footage showing they originally looked just like normal human beings, but the creation of the triple sun caused their form to change to what they are now. It was unfortunate to see the flashback with the planet’s native population completely wiped out. The overall aim of the Ghost Hoppers is to perform experiments. We don’t really get a clear reason in the manga, but in the TV episode it is to return to their original form. They are willing to perform experiments on other living, intelligent creatures; kinda makes us feel like what it would be like to be the animals that human beings currently experiment upon.

The Ghost Hoppers try to drill into our heroes, only for it to not work at all due to being too weak. This reminds me of something we saw not that long ago, in the “Tale of Endless Summer” chapter when an insector tried to boil Tetsuro alive but the water wasn’t hot at all compared to what he was used to. Incidentally enough the voice actress for that character reappears here as the Queen.

This was a rare chapter where the Conductor has to go without his normal clothing, although when he is completely naked it is in a dark room so we see his eyes as we normally would. I would assume he’d be completely invisible if he appeared in the light. It was kind of fun to see him wearing Maetel’s outfit. In the TV episode order, following right after this episode is the “Planet of 1,765,000,000 Beggars” storyline which also features another character wearing Maetel’s clothes.

Ultimately our heroes are able to make it out okay due to the efforts of the Queen of the Ghost Hoppers. In a rare inversion, we don’t have the subjects rebelling against the Queen, but rather she rebels against her own people and decides to help the 999 and leave the planet entirely. The TV episode provides further background, showing she was against many of the Ghost Hopper’s previous actions.