Ghost Tunnel

Ghost Tunnel

Manga Chapter 9-5

TV Episode 50

Manga Chapter Summary:

The 999 starts making a loud, unbearable noise. Maetel tells Teturo they can’t help it, as its going through a long tunnel, one which doesn’t absorb sound at all. As a result, all the sounds the train is making are echoing. Tetsuro is dismayed to hear from Maetel that this may last another 2 hours. The noise is so loud that the 999’s sound proofing can’t block it.

The Conductor comes in, saying their next stop is “Mammoth Cemetary”, but for some reason the train has gotten stuck in the tunnel and has gone down a strange branch. The 999 comes to a sudden halt, sending Tetsuro and the Conductor flying. The 999 appears to have come to a complete stop, and is in a tunnel with a dead end. The 999 is surrounded by hundreds, perhaps thousands of black orbs. Tetsuro asks the Conductor if they can contact the railway administration, but he says it’s not possible. Backing up is also not possible as the orbs have blocked the path.

Tetsuro realizes that someone is coming from behind the train. A woman approaches, saying her name is Iroze, welcoming them to her tunnel and asking passengers to get off the train. She asks Tetsuro to come off and play with her, tears falling from her eyes. With them ignoring her, she starts crying, then turns around and leaves. Maetel tells Tetsuro that she is a very troublesome person. Suddenly, the orbs around the train start closing in on them. The Conductor wonders if the space barrier the train has will protect them. Maetel says she must be angry since Tetsuro didn’t get off the train.

Tetsuro shouts out enough, and that he will get off the train. The orbs pull back slightly and Iroze appears again, telling Tetsuro to come down. Maetel tells Tetsuro to be careful, and he says not to get off. Maetel tells the Conductor that she thinks Tetsuro will be okay. Tetsuro walks up to Iroze and she shows him the way to her home, which is inside one of the orbs. She offers Tetsuro some coffee, but upon drinking it he realizes it is full of ball bearings! Iroze apologizes and gives him a sandwich instead, but quickly admits it’s a plastic dining room sample, not real.

Iroze tells Tetsuro to take a rest in a bed, which he finds is rock hard! Tetsuro asks Iroze if she’s a mechanized human and she says yes; she’s an android, who has the same soul as her master. She claims to be operating the spherical tunnel with her gone. She shows Tetsuro a device that enables her to control the spheres. Tetsuro grows angry and smashes her in the head with a pipe, then repeatedly strikes her until her body is completely destroyed. Tetsuro turns the lever of the device, causing the orbs to back away from the 999.

Tetsuro returns to the 999 and tells Maetel he destroyed Iroze. Maetel believes Iroze will repair herself and do the same thing again. She was made by a very nasty person a long time ago, a person who was happy to harass people and cause them to suffer. That person was disliked by everyone so she killed herself, yet she left her soul here in that android. This is the ghost tunnel where her soul will remain forever.

TV Episode Summary:

The TV episode includes some minor additions with the Conductor. Early in the episode the Conductor has to repeat saying the next destination as the tunnel is so loud neither Tetsuro nor Maetel hear it. When Tetsuro is about to get off the train, the Conductor says he’ll get off instead, but Iroze says no. There is some funny dialogue in the episode about the Conductor trying to get Tetsuro a special service award for what he’s doing. Yet when he talks to the 999 locomotive about it, it says the reward will be deducted from his salary due to his failure as a crew member, causing him to immediately back off on the proposal.

The sequence of Tetsuro being in Iroze’s home goes on a bit longer, although her giving him the plastic sandwich was cut. After lying on the hard bed, Tetsuro wants to leave, but Iroze tells him he can’t yet, and that she holds his pass. She brings him into another room that contains a winding staircase and appears to be an illusion as Tetsuro jumps at her, but she vanishes and he falls down a chasm. When Tetsuro wakes up, he’s back in the bed with Iroze sitting next to him.

Rather than smash Iroze to bits with a pipe, Tetsuro destroys her with a chair instead. He only tells Maetel that he knocked her out, while in the manga he said her body was scattered to bits.

TV Episode Cast:

Tetsuro Hoshino – Masako Nozawa

Maetel – Masako Ikeda

Conductor – Kaneta Kimotsuki

Iroze – Hiroko Suzuki

Mechanical Car Voice – Kouji Totani

Narrator – Hitoshi Takagi

Hiroko Suzuki previously voices Sakura in episode 41 (The Chieftan of the Spherical Housing Complex, part 2).

Non-Spoiler Analysis:

Rather than head to another planet, we get an interesting change of tune here as the 999 finds itself in a mysterious tunnel in space. We have heard reference to tunnels before, all the way back in chapter 1-3. There we saw a hallucination almost kill Tetsuro until Claire sacrificed her life to save him. Again we have a tunnel where scary and bad things happen, although it’s arguably worse this time! The design of the orbs surrounding the 999 I found really interesting to look at and it provides some tension as the 999 is nearly destroyed by them.

A mysterious beautiful woman, Iroze steps out of the tunnel and desires for Tetsuro to join her. Tetsuro seems to be quite in demand, I think back to chapters 3-12 and 4-1, “Mud Maetel” where a woman also wanted Tetsuro to stay with her. In the manga, while she looks like a full grown adult, Iroze kind of comes off like a child. She claims she wants Tetsuro to play with her and starts crying when he initially refuses. and the sequence where Tetsuro joins her in her home is one of the funniest scenes thus far in the manga. She first gives him a cup of coffee, which is full of ball bearings, claims it’s a mistake and hands him a sandwich, which is a plastic fake, then tells him to rest on a bed, which is rock hard! It’s like she is mimicking what these things are supposed to be, but has no idea how a real human will react to them.

Just a few panels later things take a very dark turn as Tetsuro smashes Iroze in the head with a pipe and continues to bash at her body until it’s completely destroyed. She may be an android, but she looks like a human, and Tetsuro is just a 10 year old kid. It makes me think back to Tetsuro casually shooting a man back in chapter 1-7; a kid just killing someone like that just doesn’t sit right with me. In the TV version, Iroze comes off as more evil, threatening the 999 more when she first appears, and taking pleasure in trying to crush the 999 again once Tetsuro’s in her home. There’s also an added scene where she lures Tetsuro into another room, just to screw with him. In both versions Maetel tells more of the sinister history of Iroze’s creator, and that she thinks she will repair herself. I’m not sure how, Tetsuro reduces her to mere scraps. The line makes more sense in the TV episode as Tetsuro simply says he knocked her out there.

The TV adaption contains some more for the Conductor to do; I found particularly hilarious the added dialogue about trying to get Tetsuro a special reward, only for the locomotive to claim it would come out of his salary!