Symphonic Poem of a Witch's Harp

Symphonic Poem of a Witch’s Harp

Manga Chapter 11-2

TV Episode 65

Manga Chapter Summary:

As the 999 continues through space, the narrator explains that people want to leave evidence and a trace of their existence when they leave this world. As they approach their next stop, Tetsuro comments on the planet looking bony and weird. The 999 descends down to the planet, passing a sea and odd desolate landscape. The 999 eventually makes its stop at the station and Tetsuro finds the town around it deserted. Maetel says they should head to the hotel. We see some weapons pointed at them from inside a hiding place. A shot rings out and Tetsuro is hit!

Tetsuro wakes up later in a bed with a bandage around his head. Maetel says they are in the hotel. Tetsuro notices the condition of the hotel is quite poor, although it is still like a grand palace compared to the hut he lived in on Earth. Maetel says while he was shot, it is no big deal, but this is a strange place they are at. They head downstairs to the dining room, down a staircase that sounds as if it could collapse any second. Tetsuro looks around at samples of the various dishes they can find, seeing they are all extremely small except for one large dish. Tetsuro happily chooses that food but upon cutting into it, it immediately deflates, revealing it was full of air. A small, ragged looked child comes by and asks Tetsuro if he can have it, and Tetsuro hands it over.

The waitress stops by and says she hasn’t eaten herself in 3 days! Maetel offers the waitress her dish. The mother of the child who Tetsuro gave his food to comes in and starts taking off her clothes, saying this is all she has to offer. Tetsuro says to stop, he’s okay and has his cloak. Tetsuro comments to Maetel on how horrible the lack of food is here. Tetsuro hears the sound of a loud vehicle outside. He goes outside and finds a large truck filled with a massive amount of food! The waitress explains to Tetsuro that the people here can’t have that food; they are crops that are saved for the Queen. The music of a harp starts ringing out from the far distance.

The waitress claims that the Queen starts playing her harp at night, demanding crops and clothing. It has been this way for 200 years! The waitress also says no one on this planet is able to buy a mechanical body. She says people are sentenced to death if they stop making crops for the Queen. Maetel finds it strange; the Queen should be against mechanization; and yet she must still be alive if she’s making these requests. Tetsuro and Maetel stare off to the distance, seeing the harp music is coming from an island far away. We cut to the two of them making their way across the water towards the Queen’s island in a mechanized boat. As they approach the island, there is a glow at the top of the mountain on it. A voice shouts out that they are not allowed to approach any further and must turn back, or they will be killed. Shots fire out and strike the boat.

Tetsuro nearly drowns but Maetel grabs a hold of him and they make it to the beach of the island. Once there Maetel realizes that they aren’t being shouted at any longer. The Queen’s automatic tracking device seems to only detect metal objects, not humans. They start walking around the barren island and eventually make it to a giant pit, which Maetel says is the entrance to the palace. An elevator ascends, enabling them to get on board. Tetsuro is shocked to find numerous human skeletons atop the elevator, but Maetel tells him they are thousands of years old and to not fear them. They get on and the elevator starts descending, to a location Maetel says is 10 kilometers below the ground. Maetel claims the Queen here, Metamelina didn’t like mechanization and considered it playing with minions of the devil.

The elevator makes its way to the bottom and Tetsuro and Maetel jump off with the reduced gravity. They find themselves in an area with numerous tunnels going in many directions. Maetel directs Tetsuro where to go and he wonders if she’s been here before. They head through a dark tunnel with vinyl-like walls which Maetel claims is like a living pipe. The tunnel leads to a giant room where Metalmina sits on a lofty thrown. A voice shouts out to Tetsuro to not approach any further or he will be killed. Maetel tells Tetsuro to look closely at the queen and she is revealed to be a skeleton. Maetel claims it is the chair that spoke, not the Queen’s body. Only the machinery here is alive and the Queen has been dead around 200 years. Tetsuro wonders why the demands have continued to come. They look above, spotting a giant harp making up the room’s ceiling. As wind blows into it, the harp starts playing. Maetel says it is the wind that has been causing the harp to play.

Tetsuro says that the Queen is dead, the harp should stop playing. People here don’t know that she is dead and are starving for both food and clothes as a result, similar to how he was. Maetel says the mechanical equipment and robot subordinates left behind are simply following the Queen’s orders, despite the fact that it has no meaning any longer since she is dead. Maetel shows Tetsuro a vat of boiling liquid where methane gas is seeping out. She claims this is where those things brought to the Queen are brought. She says even with the Queen’s death she wanted to rule this planet. The two of them return to the 999 and depart the planet, talking about the Queen’s terrible heart.

TV Episode Summary:

At the start of the episode the Conductor (who has a rare total absence from the manga chapter) announces their stop as the Witch’s Harp Planet with a layover of around 11 hours. As the 999 descends we see that some areas of the planet do look beautiful, a start contrast to the chapter. Tetsuro departs the 999 eating popcorn and the Conductor and Maetel both push him to put it away and not eat outside on this planet. Tetsuro hides it in his cloak and a thief immediately steals it when he takes it out to eat. The thief is revealed to be a boy around his age and he bites Tetsuro and runs away. The two are shot as in the manga, but we hear the mysterious voice state that he won’t let either of them die. At the hotel, Maetel explains to Tetsuro that they were shot by a sensor and it’s because of him having food on him.

Despite its bad shape, Maetel says this is the number one deluxe hotel on the planet and Tetsuro partially falls through one of the steps. When his food deflates, Tetsuro throws the food to the floor and the thief from earlier picks it up, being revealed to be the waitress’ brother, Nicolai. She drags him outside and says seizing people’s thrown away food is the worst thing he can do. The two also quarrel over their mother and tell Tetsuro and Maetel she is bedridden due to malnutrition. Tetsuro is surprised at the lack of food on this planet, as they had seen fruit and fish as they made their way here. Tetsuro calls the music from the harp beautiful, getting Nicolai more upset at him. Tetsuro says they should rebel against the Queen, and the waitress says people tried that, were seen by the sensors and killed.

When the trucks with food start driving by, Nicolai chases after them and eventually climbs his way up the track, grabbing at an apple. The sensors detect this and shoot him. Tetsuro blasts the sensors as he approaches Nicolai so they don’t shoot him too. Nicolai asks his sister if their mother will like the apple and dies.

As Tetsuro and Maetel head to the Queen’s island, Maetel says she is of rarified beauty and we see a shot of Metalmelina on her thrown, wearing a lot of jewelry. Once on the island Maetel describes a bird, which had also appeared in the manga, as a guard of the island and that they must stay quiet around it. When they reach the Queen’s chambers, Tetsuro claims he is going to kill her and pulls out his gun, climbing the steps to her throne. Armed sensors come out but Maetel destroys them with blasts from her ring. Maetel also destroys the talking part of the throne after revealing it is what was talking. Maetel has more dialogue that was not in the manga about how the vain Queen hid herself away here because she didn’t want people to see her aging body. When she was about to die, she had all her vassals killed. Tetsuro also destroys the harp with his gun and the Queen’s entire throne bursts aflame. We see the waitress and her mother watch from afar as the island blows up.

Cut from the episode is the sequence where a poor mother tries to take off her clothes to give to Tetsuro in exchange for giving her son some food. Also cut is the sequence where we see a vat where the food and clothes brought to the island are destroyed.

TV Episode Cast:

Tetsuro Hoshino – Masako Nozawa

Maetel – Masako Ikeda

Conductor – Kaneta Kimotsuki

Nicolai – Hiroko Maruyama

Eruza – Kazuko Sugiyama

Mysterious Voice – Banjou Ginga

Queen – Michiko Aoi

Narrator – Hitoshi Takagi

I assume Eruza is the Waitress, who is unnamed in the manga and episode. Her voice actress, Kazuko Sugiyama, previously played Flame in episode 2. Hiroko Maruyama previously played Tiny in episodes 56 – 57.

Non-Spoiler Analysis:

This is one of the manga’s lengthier chapters and one of my favorite. The 999 comes across a planet where the people there are quite poor, starving for food or proper clothing. We soon find that those things exist on this planet, but are gathered up and provided to an unseen Queen that lives on a far off island. Every day a harp plays from her island, demanding that things be brought to her. Tetsuro knows what it is like to be poor from his time growing up on Earth and feels a lot of sympathy for the people living here. This early part of the chapter provides a humorous sequence where Tetsuro eagerly starts eating a large piece of food only to realize it is fake and full of air.

Tetsuro and Maetel decide to head to the Queen’s island to investigate what is going on. This part of the chapter I particularly enjoy. It is a drawn out sequence that does a great job building up the atmosphere and providing us one of the scariest settings in the manga. The sense of dread builds up as Tetsuro and Maetel make their way to the island despite being attacked, find a giant pit and travel down it via a skeleton-filled elevator and then head through a dark tunnel to make their way to the Queen. In a twist, it has been revealed that the Queen has been dead for hundreds of years, and it was simply the machinery she left behind that was demanding everything. And unfortunately for those that live here all the food and clothing was simply destroyed instead of being put to any actual use. The manga chapter ends pretty abruptly after this, but I hope that Tetsuro and Maetel were able to tell people of the truth such that everyone didn’t have to live such a poor and destitute life any longer.

Despite a length (64 pages) that is usually spread out across 2 episodes for chapters of similar length, the adaption is kept at just 1 episode and as such goes along at a fairly brisk pace. The biggest change is the expansion of the Waitress’s family including her mother, and little brother, who is tragically killed over trying to steal a single apple.