The Footsteps in Footsteps Village

The Footsteps in Footsteps Village

Manga Chapter 10-5

TV Episode 58

Manga Chapter Summary:

The Conductor announces the 999’s next stop as “Footstep Village”, with a layover time of 48 hours. Maetel describes it as a dark and lonely place. As they descend to the planet, Tetsuro notices that it looks like Earth, but has more clouds. The planet carries a smell of grass leaves wet with rain dew. Maetel describes it as nostalgic. Tetsuro recalls how the smell of the grass stunk back on Earth. We hear footsteps walking up a path on a dark night, although no one is there. The 999 lands and Tetsuro and Maetel depart the station. Maetel mentions that the residents were against the Galaxy Express so they haven’t been able to build an up to date station and hotel here. They find no one out the streets.

Maetel explains how people lock themselves in after 6:00 PM. Tetsuro is able to hear the sounds of footsteps behind them. They enter the hotel, which Tetsuro says looks more like an old apparel shop than an inn or hotel. No person shows their face, but a voice over a speaking device on the wall welcomes them and tells them which room to head to. Tetsuro is pleased to see that meals have already been prepared for them within their room. Maetel encourages them to take a dip in the pool before eating, which they do. Tetsuro wonders if he’s been fooled into taking a bath. Tetsuro consumes a large meal then tries to go to sleep. Tetsuro can hear the footsteps approaching, and Maetel tells him to go to sleep.

Tetsuro looks outside and sees impressions in the ground, as if one was wearing wooden shoes. Scared, Tetsuro pulls out his gun. He opens the sliding door and looks out in the hall, but doesn’t see anyone. Tetsuro suddenly slips and sees water along the floor, as if someone with wet feet was walking by. He thinks someone may have come in from outside. Tetsuro heads back to their room and sees water around Maetel’s sleeping bag. Suddenly Maetel comes in, and she claims it must have been the rain and they should go to sleep. Tetsuro is still frightened and the noise starts getting louder and louder. It feels as if something is stepping on him.

Tetsuro gets out of his bed and wonders if whatever is here is lonely. He tells it that it can touch his hand and it is wet and cold. Tetsuro realizes they can’t talk to each other, but the water from the spirit starts forming words on the ground, telling him its name is Yayoi. They start talking to each other in this manner and the spirit convinces Tetsuro to leave the hotel. Maetel wakes up later, with the innkeeper telling her that Tetsuro went out. The spirit has Tetsuro follow it into the woods, where he eventually finds a hoe. Tetsuro digs into the ground, finding a package there.

Suddenly Maetel arrives, brandishing a gun. Tetsuro tries to convince Maetel that the spirit didn’t do anything bad and just wanted to show him something. Maetel says the spirits on this planet can become attached to someone until their death. Tetsuro tells her Yayoi was just lonely and came to him. Suddenly the water falls from Tetsuro’s hands, forms the word goodbye and we can hear the footsteps walking away. They return to the hotel, where the innkeeper is surprised to hear the spirit let Tetsuro come back without killing him. Tetsuro opens the package he dug up and finds its manga drawn by Yayoi. Tetsuro asks Maetel to bring the manga to a publisher somewhere and he’ll refrain from reading it until then. He feels that he’d start crying if he read it, like when he read Freya’s storyboards (in the previous chapter City of Fireflies). The 999 departs the planet although we continue to hear the footsteps.

TV Episode Summary:

In the TV episode, the initial scene where we hear the footsteps is cut, as is Tetsuro hearing footsteps as they head to the hotel/inn. The innkeeper actually shows her face early on in the episode when Tetsuro and Maetel arrive; she didn’t appear until much later in the manga. There is no meal waiting for Tetsuro and Maetel when they arrive, rather the innkeeper tells them to take a bath while she prepares them food. Tetsuro doesn’t want to take a bath so he opens the window; its then when he hears the footsteps and flees to the pool. Tetsuro starts hearing the footstep sounds while they are in the pool. They then eat, with the innkeeper present. Tetsuro starts hearing the footsteps while eating. Maetel brings up the rumors of the footsteps. The innkeeper tells of how something fell to Earth from the sky. The ground rumbled, knocking over many gravestones. She claims the spirits of dead people awoke because of that. New graves were built and ceremonies held, but she claims that didn’t do any good. They can still hear the spirits wander the village at nighttime. Tetsuro doesn’t feel that scared, but she says once a spirit possesses you, it doesn’t go away until you die. We see Tetsuro imagine a spirit possessing then killing someone. The innkeeper warns Tetsuro to not go outside.

That night Tetsuro is afraid of the footsteps he hears and has to pee. The segment with Tetsuro hearing footsteps, then heading out with his gun is cut, as is Tetsuro returning to the room and finding Maetel not there. Rather, Tetsuro heads out of the room in order to go to the bathroom and when he returns he notices the water on the ground which is revealed to be Yayoi’s spirit. The water forms shapes as if it is trying to communicate with him and he tells it to leave him alone. Tetsuro wonders if the water is something trying to communicate with him and thinks of his mother dying. Yayoi starts communicating with Tetsuro by changing her form to words in his hands rather than on the floor of the hotel room.

When Maetel gets up, the innkeeper is convinced Tetsuro is possessed. When Maetel confronts Tetsuro, we do temporarily see Yayoi appear in a humanoid spirit form behind Tetsuro. After returning to the inn, the innkeeper says she knew of Yayoi, who was an aspiring manga artist and would spend all night drawing. We see some flashbacks of her drawing. One day she got a letter from a large city publisher who wanted to see her manuscript and left on a train. The manga wasn’t accepted however. Yayoi’s body was later found floating in a marsh. No one had found her manga, and the innkeeper realizes now she had buried it nearby. Tetsuro shouts outside that Yayoi was a fool for dying and that without a body she’d no longer be able to make manga.

At the conclusion of the episode, Tetsuro says he’s going to take Yayoi’s manga to a publisher, rather than asking Maetel to do it as in the original manga chapter. The reference to Freya is cut.

TV Episode Cast:

Tetsuro Hoshino – Masako Nozawa

Maetel – Masako Ikeda

Conductor – Kaneta Kimotsuki

Old Lady – Taeko Nakanishi

Narrator – Hitoshi Takagi

Taeko Nakanishi previously played Hanako’s mother in episode 10, Egoterina in episode 24 and Valkyrie in episode 45.

Non-Spoiler Analysis:

It’s a rather quiet but touching story in this chapter. It reminds me of old ghost stories I used to hear about. Someone would encounter a ghost, and they’d somehow lead the person to some object, such as something that enabled the protagonist to catch the ghost’s killer, or perhaps just an old memento. Here Tetsuro encounters the spirit of a manga artist named Yayoi, who passed away, but is able to show him where to find where she had buried her manga. The TV adaption provides more background on Yayoi, and while not explicitly said, it is implied that she killed herself due to her failure to get her work published, which is quite sad and unfortunate. There are fears of being possessed on this planet although our only real interaction with one is Yayoi, who is friendly (and even cute at times, appearing in the form of some water). Although in the TV adaption we do briefly see Yayoi appear in spirit form when Maetel confronts Tetsuro with a gun, as if she was going to possess him.

Tetsuro encountering aspiring artists seems to be a running theme throughout Galaxy Express 999 as we’ve previously had Tetsuro encounter  Freya in City of the Fireflies (who is mentioned in the manga chapter) as well as Adachi from Illusion World of 4 ½ Mats. Overall it’s not the most interesting chapter, but I did kind of like the ghost story element.