The Saintly Woman Who Devours Souls

The Saintly Woman Who Devours Souls

Manga Chapter 12-3

TV Episodes 77 - 78

Manga Chapter Summary:

As the chapter begins the narrator explains how Tetsuro hates rain and snow. Those who like them are those who live under a safe roof. The 999 makes its way onto a new planet, which is experiencing a down pour. Tetsuro doesn’t like it and wonders if they can just pass through. The Conductor announces the stop as the “Cistern of Rain” with a stop time of 64 hours. Tetsuro finds the station to be full of moss once they arrive and the Conductor says it is because it rains 99% of the time here.

Tetsuro and Maetel make their way out of the station, with Tetsuro frustrated over the weather. They make their way to the hotel, which is barely visible due to the storm and find inside that rain is dripping everywhere. Despite all the dripping, Maetel is told this is the room with the least amount of rain coming in! As they lay down to go to bed, Tetsuro looks at the ceiling and realizes the rain is getting even worse. The rain starts bursting through the roof and Tetsuro claims it would be better to stay in the train. They look outside and realize the water level has raised up to their room.

Tetsuro sees a young woman wearing a black rain coat paddle by in a boat. Tetsuro asks to board so they can go to the station and she asks how they will pay. The woman demands all of their luggage and clothing as payment. Tetsuro says she’s taking advantage of people’s weaknesses and she claims she has no usage for those who won’t pay, paddling away. The water continues to burst in, destroying the hotel. Tetsuro is separated from Maetel during the chaos and tries to make his way to higher ground. Tetsuro spots a tower off in the distance and desires to head there as it looks like a sturdy, dry building. A sensor watches him as he climbs towards it.

Tetsuro soon reaches the tower and wonders if it is a home. A large flame is lit at the top of the tower and hasn’t gone out, despite the storm. Tetsuro heads inside and says sorry for being a disturbance. He looks around but sees no sign of people. Suddenly a voice shouts out to take off his hat and directs him towards an escalator which brings him up to an elevator. Tetsuro heads in the elevator and it stops at the 13^th floor. When the door opens Tetsuro finds the young woman with the black raincoat standing there. The woman, named Ark, brings Tetsuro down a hallway, saying Tetsuro will meet the master of the home.

Ark brings Tetsuro to a large room and tells her master, Cueflame that she has brought a living human being. Tetsuro is led in front of a giant circle of flames. A beautiful woman sits in the middle of them, holding a cup that is burning itself. She tells him to come closer so she can see his face and hear his voice. Tetsuro is scared of touching the flames, but finds that they’re not hot. Cueflame starts drinking from the cup, surprising Tetsuro as she is literally drinking the flames from it. Cueflame claims it is the most delicious drink in the world, the flame of life. The drink contains the flame of the soul. Tetsuro seems confused.

Ark shows up, saying dinner has arrived and carries a large chalice with a large flame within it. Cueflame claims it is rare to find a soul flame so beautiful and soft to the touch. Ark asks Tetsuro if he wants to see the kind of body that this flame had lived in. Tetsuro is afraid, wondering if it’s the body of a dead person. Ark claims it is from the body she brought back. Ark brings him towards an operating room, claiming they can remove the soul from the body without harming it. Tetsuro is shocked to find it is Maetel lying on the operating table!

Realizing Cueflame is going to drink Maetel’s soul, Tetsuro rushes back towards her room but Ark shoots him in the back, claiming only this home’s inhabitants can move around freely. Ark tells him not to worry; she won’t kill him as his flame of life would no longer taste delicious. Tetsuro realizes that she wants to consume his life as well. Tetsuro struggles and Ark shoots him again, dragging off his knocked out body.

The massive storm continues outside and we see Tetsuro laying next to Maetel on the operating table. Ark starts using a device that emits some beams into Tetsuro. We see a flame grow within a circular container. Ark is happy with its warmth and how it burns and carries it off, saying it would be a waste not to eat it in combination with a fine nebula wine. We cut to a wine room where Ark searches amongst a variety of wine selections on the wall. She pours herself some and drinks it as she looks at the flame in front of her. Another one of Cueflame’s servants comes in, telling Ark that the flame has to be replaced. Cueflame has found Maetel’s flame too bright to eat and desires to replace it, with that of a young man, Tetsuro’s.

Ark wonders what will be done with Maetel’s flame and the servant says she wishes Ark could eat instead. Ark pauses, then tells the servant she will change the plate as what she had served was rude towards Cueflame. Ark walks out, carrying Tetsuro’s flame with her. We cut to later. The servant returns to Cueflame’s room, carrying a glass with a flame in it. Cueflame is inpatient, wondering what Ark was doing. She claims it’s a beautiful flame. Cueflame drinks the flame and then starts choking, claiming it isn’t Tetsuro’s life. It is in fact the life of one with a mechanical body. We cut to the operating room where we see Ark’s body on the operating table instead of Tetsuro/Maetel.

Tetsuro wakes up on the 999 with Maetel in front of him. Maetel tells Tetsuro that Cueflame is dead, having consumed the life of a mechanical human, Ark. Tetsuro asks why Ark didn’t feed his flame to Cueflame. Maetel claims that when she saw the fire of Tetsuro’s life, she must have remembered her time with her own body. His was a powerful burning hot flame of someone young.

TV Episode Summary:

The TV adaption, taking place across episodes 77 and 78, maintains the overall storyline but adds a lot of content including new characters and more explanations/motivations. Within the first episode, we find that the name of the planet is changed to Rainy Pond. Upon finding out that Tetsuro doesn’t like the rain, the Conductor sings about it, claiming it is romantic. Tetsuro says he is sad because of his time on the Capital of Rain, the planet where he had met Mud Maetel and we see a brief flashback to that episode. One of the other passengers, a wealthy middle aged man, pushes off another passenger, an older man, from the train. The old man claims he is going on a pilgrimage of 88 sacred grounds. The pilgrim had asked the Conductor to reduce its time on this planet but had been denied.

While in the hotel room, Tetsuro asks Maetel what she thinks the pilgrim is afraid of. We see him praying in his room. The wealthy man comes in and tells him to keep it down; he wants to sleep. Tetsuro arrives and starts arguing with him, then yet another man, a younger one named Columbus stops by and says he also is trying to sleep. Tetsuro asks the pilgrim what he is praying about and is afraid of. The pilgrim claims he heard a story about a witch who devours human souls on a planet of rain. He says he’d have no regrets as he’s lived a long life, but he worries for those who are younger. This is why he wanted the 999 to depart early.

A young woman, Poem, comes in and tells Columbus she’s scared. Columbus says it isn’t real, but Maetel comes in and claims she’s also heard that story. The wealthy man says he’s not worried, saying he has some money and can buy himself out of it. Columbus punches him upon hearing the man say he got rich selling agricultural chemicals. Columbus claims those chemicals killed all the crops on their planet and they had to emigrate elsewhere. Columbus grabs at the man when the hotel starts shaking. They soon realize the hotel is starting to flood.  The wealthy man is especially afraid since he can’t swim. We get a shot of the station and the 999 being flooded and the 999 takes off into the air to escape the water.

When Ark shows up at the hotel, she claims she charges 100 gold coins for a ride rather than all of their clothes and luggage. Ark shoots at Columbus when he complains and when the wealthy man tries to get on, Columbus instead grabs the money and throws him in the water, causing him to float away. He then uses the man’s money to buy himself and Poem passage on the boat. Poem is hesitant but Columbus pushes her to get on with him. Tetsuro and Maetel refuse passage and the pilgrim doesn’t have any money to pay for it. Tetsuro angrily shouts at them as Ark paddles away.

The hotel is destroyed just after as in the manga. Tetsuro spots the pilgrim in the water as they float away and the pilgrim warns him of the witch and says to get to the 999. He is soon pushed away by the current. Rather than see Tetsuro climb to higher ground, we simply see him wake up on the shore. The elevator brings Tetsuro to the 150^th floor rather than 13^th. Cueflame calls herself the queen of this planet. It is Cueflame that shows Tetsuro the operating room rather than Ark, and all three of Maetel, Columbus and Poem are shown. The first episode ends here.

As the second episode begins, Cueflame tells Tetsuro she is going to consume Maetel’s soul, causing him to realize what the Pilgrim said was true. Cueflame planned on consuming the souls of the two others first, but says that she will consume Maetel first so she can become even more beautiful. Her goal is to be the most beautiful woman in the universe and for her beauty to last for eternity. To accomplish this she consumes the souls of young and beautiful people. Tetsuro realizes the flames in her chamber are souls of those on this planet and she says the souls on this planet aren’t good enough anymore, so she’s now taking the lives of the 999 passengers.

Tetsuro gets angry and pulls out his gun but Ark shoots it out of his hand. Cueflame tells Ark that Tetsuro is still too young for her to consume his life so she can let him live for now, and to prepare Maetel’s soul for her. After Cueflame leaves the old innkeeper Boron comes in, revealing she also is also a servant for Cueflame. She starts the soul extracting procedure and we see Maetel’s soul extracted. Ark explains that Maetel’s body is in suspended animation but she will die once Cueflame drinks her soul. Tetsuro fakes an injury enabling him to kick Boron in the face and knock her out.

Tetsuro finds Ark in the hallway and demands she return Maetel’s soul. Tetsuro and her fight each other and Tetsuro gets back Maetel’s flame, and also cuts Ark’s coat, causing him to realize she’s a mechanical human. We later see Columbus wake up in the operating room and he wakes up Poem. Poem wants them to check on Maetel, but Columbus is in a rush to go. As they open the door, Cueflame is standing there. Ark and Tetsuro talk about his desire to get a mechanical body. She claims she wanted her youth and beauty to last for eternity which is why she became mechanical, but she misses her flesh and blood body. It would take a lot of money to return to her human body, so she traveled to other planets and eventually became servant here.

Tetsuro asks Ark why Cueflame didn’t consume her soul and Ark claims that her body would reject a mechanical person’s flame. Cueflame told Ark she’d destroy her body if she didn’t work for her. Tetsuro flashes back to when he first met Ark. Tetsuro realizes this is why she was demanding money to board her boat. Tetsuro says she doesn’t care about anyone but herself. Ark raises her knife and tells Tetsuro to shoot her; she considers herself a waste of a human being. Tetsuro refuses and says he pities her. Boron shows up behind Tetsuro and shoots at him, causing him to flee.

Tetsuro makes his way to the elevator and heads down.  We have a scene where the 999 returns to the ground and the Conductor worries for Tetsuro and Maetel. Cueflame gets upset when her underlings report to her and is especially disappointed at losing the chance to consume Maetel’s soul. Columbus volunteers to find Tetsuro and get back Maetel’s flame in exchange for Cueflame letting him and Poem live and consume souls as well. Poem is hesitant but Columbus pushes her to do so. Poem refuses, saying human life shouldn’t be eternal. Cueflame laughs and agrees that she’ll let Columbus consume the flame of life.

Columbus heads down the outside of the tower on a rope. Cueflame stares at Poem and whispers an order to Boron. Tetsuro thinks of how he must get this flame back to Maetel. Columbus quickly finds him and knocks him out, bringing him and the flame back to Cueflame. Cueflame tells him Poem is in another room and tells Boron to immediately bring Columbus a flame to consume. Tetsuro tries to convince Columbus not to do it, but Columbus ignores him and consumes the flame. Cueflame immediately starts laughing, asking Columbus how the taste was. Columbus says it had no taste, and Cueflame claims it should have tasted and smelled like his lover! Columbus realizes and Cueflame reveals that he just drank Poem’s soul! Columbus runs off, screaming in horror. He throws himself out a window to his death.

Cueflame knocks out the angry Tetsuro and orders Ark to extract Tetsuro’s soul. Boron hands Cueflame Maetel’s soul, but she finds it too bright to drink as she had in the manga. Ark thinks of what Tetsuro told her as she lays him down in the operating room. We later cut to Boron finding the flame and bringing it to Cueflame. Cueflame immediately realizes its Ark’s flame when she drinks it and she blames Boron and starts strangling her. Maetel wakes up Tetsuro, as the entire tower starts shaking. Tetsuro sees Ark’s body next to them in the operating room. As they flee, Tetsuro and Maetel encounter Cueflame in the hall, who has aged considerably. She demands Maetel’s flame but the ceiling falls on her and they escape. The entire tower collapses soon after. Tetsuro and Maetel make it back to the 999, which takes off. The entire planet blows up after the 999 escapes from it.

The scene in the manga where Ark is in the wine room is cut. From a design standpoint, Cueflame has a blue flame as part of her body (as if she was on fire), a feature I didn’t notice in the manga chapter.

TV Episode Cast:

Tetsuro Hoshino – Masako Nozawa

Maetel – Masako Ikeda

Conductor – Kaneta Kimotsuki

Old Person – Jouji Yanami (Episode 77 only)

Middle Aged Man – Seiji Sato (Episode 77 only)

Boron – Nobuyo Tsuda

Columbus – Shigeru Chiba

Ark – Seiko Nakano

Poem – Kazuko Matsuzawa

Cueflame – Miyuki Ichijou

Narrator – Hitoshi Takagi

Jouji Yanami has had many previous appearances including the Dark Knight (episode 15), Father (episode 31), Inn Owner (episode 49), Bobambo (episodes 56 – 57) and Ramen Shopkeep (episodes 60 – 61). Seiji Sato has appeared as many minor characters. Nobuyo previously appeared as the hallucination demon in episode 3. Shigeru Chiba previously appeared as Adachi (episodes 60 – 61), Headquarters Member (episodes 51 – 52) and Ghost Hopper C (episodes 72 – 73). Seiko Nakano previously appeared as a baby in episode 55 and child in episode 6. Kazuko Matsuzawa previously appeared as minor characters in episodes 51 and 66.

Non-Spoiler Analysis:

One of my favorite storylines in the show, this is also one of its darkest. The 999 comes across a planet that is constantly having a downpour of rain. My thoughts immediately went to the Mud Maetel chapter/episode, and the TV adapters clearly had the same thought as they flash back to it during the episode. Tetsuro is quite miserable, especially when he sees the bad state the hotel is in, but even a dripping roof is luxury compared to what eventually happens as the entire hotel is destroyed. The TV episode adds a couple of characters to this segment, an old pilgrim and a wealthy middle-aged man who comes off as quite the jerk. Presumably neither make it out of this alive (we don’t know for sure with the wealthy man, but he claims he couldn’t swim and is carried away by the water, so I doubt he made it out okay).

Tetsuro is able to make it out of the storm okay, and soon finds himself before a giant tower. Heading in, he is quickly found by Ark, the young woman who offered a boat ride earlier for money. Ark brings him to a giant room where we meet the story’s primary antagonist, Cueflame. The sheer concept of her drinking a flame is quite out there, and we soon find that she is literally drinking people’s souls. The manga chapter never explains why, making one wonder if it is simply because she likes the taste, or she is just that evil. The episode helps make better sense of this by explaining that consuming the souls of young, beautiful people will make her even more beautiful than she already is and give her eternal beauty.

The TV episode adds some more characters which leads to arguably the most morbid storyline in all of Galaxy Express 999; or at least the one that is most memorable to me with Columbus and Poem. You initially think that the two of them may be sympathetic guest characters, and Poem at least is. But Columbus comes off as a bit of a selfish jerk. We first see this when he pushes the wealthy man into the water and steals his money, which surely results in the man’s death. Later when they are captured, Columbus seeks to flee with Poem and won’t even bother checking to see if Maetel is okay. Discovering the benefits of drinking human souls, Columbus desires to do the same as Cueflame and makes a deal with her to be provided with them for recovering Maetel’s soul. He quickly is able to do so, but Cueflame tricks him into drinking Poem’s soul! Columbus is so horrified that he promptly jumps out of a window and kills himself.

Beyond this, the TV episode also considerably improves upon the manga in regards to Ark. In the manga, Ark’s saving of Tetsuro/Maetel and sacrifice of herself doesn’t feel earned. Maetel explains it is because of her time with Tetsuro reminding her for her time as a human. The episode gives us more interaction with Tetsuro and Ark and also provides us with Ark’s backstory. Like some other characters we’ve met (ex. Claire, Shadow), Ark regrets getting a mechanical body and wants to return to being human. Her guilt over being ordered to end Tetsuro’s life causes her to rescue the two of them and give up her own soul. That ends up giving us two characters committing suicide in a single episode! While in the manga we cut away as Cueflame starts choking, the episode shows us that merely drinking the soul of one mechanical person has undone the benefit of all the souls she’s consumed and ages her considerably. A rather convenient collapsing ceiling takes her out, but I doubt she’d have been much of a threat any longer anyway.

The chapter/episode contains a lot of imagery I like including the designs of Ark and Cueflame, as well as the tower and the giant room of flames. For those familiar with old school video games, Cueflame’s room of flames reminds me of Magus’ room in his lair in Chrono Trigger where you have a boss fight with him. The episode also adds a nifty looking triangular beam hallway. A few bloopers or oddities I noticed in the TV adaption was Maetel telling Tetsuro he only has to handle a damp hotel room for one night (yet they are there the equivalent of 3 Earth days) and Columbus climbing down the tower with a rope instead of using the elevator.

Spoiler Analysis:

The concept of the “flames of life” will be revisited in the Adieu Galaxy Express 999 movie. In that movie, those with mechanical bodies are shown to consume small capsules which are their equivalent of food. It is later revealed that the capsules are in fact created by extracting the life out of living humans via a giant factory on the planet Great Andromeda. This appears to be a concept solely used for this movie, as it never comes up in the manga or TV show as something used for these purposes, nor the first Galaxy Express 999 movie.