Flying Kuro

Flying Kuro

Manga Chapter 13-4 and 14-1

TV Episodes 96-97

Manga Chapter Summary:

The Conductor announces the next stop as “Quima”, a planet with a lot of good food shops and a stop time of 22 hours. It is especially helpful now as the dining car is closed and Tetsuro is starving. Tetsuro is ecstatic to see all the different food options as the 999 approaches its landing. We cut to the hotel where Tetsuro has a stuffed belly having eaten, as Maetel puts it, “3 months worth of railroad payments”. Maetel puts some of the remaining takoyaki by the open window sill. Tetsuro snoozes for a bit while Maetel heads to the bath. Suddenly the arm of a cat appears and the takoyaki is gone, with cat prints all around. Tetsuro decides to wait for the cat to return; putting a sausage on the window sill and waiting with a mallet. Tetsuro wonders how the cat made it up here to a high floor. Suddenly Tetsuro sees a black cat, with 4 kittens walking behind it, walking in the air a distance away. Maetel claims it is Flying Kuro, a famous flying black cat.

Flying Kuro comes into their hotel room and walks around a bit. Maetel realizes it likely wasn’t Flying Kuro who took the takoyaki as there is just one set of cat prints. Flying Kuro heads back out the window. The military police see this from the ground and quickly run up to the hotel room, blowing it open when Tetsuro and Maetel don’t immediately open the door. We cut to the police station. The police go through Tetsuro’s suitcase and don’t see anything of note. The commander, Silverlock Handa, demands to look inside Maetel’s suitcase. She says there is no point in doing so, but gives him the passcode to unlock it. Tetsuro thinks of how he’s never looked inside her suitcase. Handa is shocked into silence when he opens the suitcase and looks inside. He is totally silent, and Tetsuro and Maetel are let free. Suddenly there is a shot heard from the building behind them and Maetel says he committed suicide.

Maetel asks Tetsuro if he wants to see what’s in her suitcase. Tetsuro says he’s traveling with her to get a machine body, that’s all. Maetel tells Tetsuro that she’ll show him someday, when they part ways. Maetel spots the shadow of a new cat coming. The cat, a mechanical one, swiftly jumps down and scratches Tetsuro in the face. Maetel tells Tetsuro not to touch it and says they need to catch its owner. The cat flees from them and they make their way through some alleys. Maetel thinks the cat is happy for them to follow it. Some shots blast out and strike the two of them. We see the legs of a woman appear, who tells the cat, Meow, to stop it. Tetsuro wakes up in the home of Nekoa, a blonde haired mechanical woman who claims she’s the owner of Meow. Nekoa claims she sent Maetel to the police with her message. She claims she and Meow don’t view Tetsuro or Maetel as their enemies. She sent Maetel with the message of there being a Catroid rebellion.

At that moment we see numerous cats flying over the city. Maetel is reporting the Catroid rebellion to the police. We see Flying Kuro in the sky with its kittens at the cats approach. The cats decide to go in the other direction, away from it. The police soon blast their way into Nekoa’s home and reveal that all the cats are now dead or dying, laying on the ground after having been seized with a radiation net. Nekoa runs outside to where the dead or dying cats are and hugs Meow. Even Meow was a Catroid, made using the brain of the kind hearted cat she owned. Maetel claims this happened due to Flying Kuro. The Catroids had copies of Meow’s brain and felt the same way as Meow about not wanting to endanger Flying Kuro. The head police man says they are going to replace Nekoa’s brain with one that is completely mechanical, removing any remaining humanity she has.

The head police man taunts Tetsuro, telling him only those with beautiful faces and bodies and excellent intelligence get eternal life here and he isn’t qualified for it. Suddenly there is an explosion by the police’s cars. Nekoa has a gun and claims she doesn’t want to be fully mechanized. The head policeman shoots her dead. He is happy as Flying Kuro enabled him to annihilate the cat rebellion. Maetel asks who owns Flying Kuro and he says no one; she’s a stray cat, who has a habit of going to those humans who like clever and friendly cats. She enables them to find the right people to execute. Suddenly Flying Kuro appears, angry! Tetsuro angrily shouts out that Flying Kuro is just protecting her kids and doesn’t want them to become mechanized. The head police man doesn’t care and shoots her anyway. Maetel shoots off his hat and says she won’t’ let him go any further with this. Maetel says Flying Kuro needs to protect her kittens and she will head somewhere else, not trusting humans here anymore. Flying Kuro heads further up into the air; Tetsuro wonders if she will be leaving the planet.

TV Episode Summary:

These chapters are adapted across two episodes. In the first episode we see Flying Kuro and its kittens immediately after the 999 makes it to the planet rather than waiting until Tetsuro and Maetel are in the hotel. We also see a military police car driving underneath them. Tetsuro happily seeing all the restaurants is moved from happening right on the 999 to when he and Maetel exit the station. Maetel tells Tetsuro to not eat at the restaurants here; they can eat at the hotel. We see a woman exit a ramen restaurant and head into the alley, expressing happiness over the food she ate. Suddenly Flying Kuro appears with its kittens. She kneels down to pet them and the military police surround her. They declare they are bringing her to a factory to make her a mechanized human. Suddenly Meow the Catroid arrives and scratches the commander, enabling the woman to escape.

We are able to see the variety of indoor restaurants within the hotel, as well as Tetsuro and Maetel eating within one. In the hotel room Tetsuro comments on how odd it is that they were the only people in the restaurant. Afterwards we see Meow lead the military police car into crashing into a pile of boxes. Meow flies to the windowsill and knocks the Takoyaki off. Once they are seized by the police, Handa provides more of an explanation to Tetsuro and Maetel than in the manga on why they’ve been captured, because Flying Kuro and Meow have been connected to rebels in the area and they spotted them with them.

It is explained that the cats tend to flock to people with different hearts than they, those with mechanical bodies have. After Maetel tells Tetsuro that he can see inside her suitcase when they part ways we see a brief imaginary sequence where Maetel says goodbye to Tetsuro and walks off into some fog. Tetsuro chases after her but she’s gone. Shortly after this scene Flying Kuro and its kittens appear again, with Meow attacking them just after this. We see Meow and one of Flying Kuro’s kittens growling at each other and Meow tosses it aside. Meow grabs Tetsuro’s 999 pass and flees, which is what spurs them on to chase it. The first episode ends at this point.

In the second episode, Meow leads Tetsuro and Maetel to an underground shopping center where all the lights are out. They are shot here instead of an alley as in the manga. When Tetsuro first talks with Nekoa in her home we see a flashback sequence showing a marching band play as all the restaurants in the city are opened. Nekoa along with many other people happily go in them, but the police quickly come in and force everyone to obtain mechanical bodies. We see the police and catroids fighting each other directly, before Flying Kuro appears. Meow helps it depart. We also see the police trying to seize Flying Kuro. 

The police take Flying Kuro and its kittens hostage and demand the catroids stop their rebellion. Nekoa watches the rebellion from her home and tells Meow to continue the rebellion, even if Flying Kuro has to die. Tetsuro pulls his gun on her and she agrees to stop the rebellion. We see the police spraying out radioactive gas, killing the Catroids. Flying Kuro heads towards Nekoa’s home which is what enables the police to find their way there. Tetsuro gets upset upon seeing the dead Catroids, thinking it’s his fault. Maetel throws one of her earrings into the air, which temporarily blinds everyone, as a result Flying Kuro doesn’t get shot as she does in the manga.

TV Episode Cast:

Tetsuro Hoshino – Masako Nozawa

Maetel – Masako Ikeda

Conductor – Kaneta Kimotsuki

Captain – Yasuo Tanaka (episode 96 only)

Police (A) – Kouji Yada (credited as just Police in episode 97)

Police B – Seiji Sato (episode 96 only)

Girl – Michiko Nomura (episode 96 only)

Handa – Sanji Hase (episode 96 only)

Commander – Takeshi Aono (episode 97 only)

Nekoa – Eiko Masuyama (episode 97 only)

Narrator – Hitoshi Takagi

Yasuo Tanaka previously played the mayor in episode 89. Kouji Yada and Seiji Sato have played a variety of minor characters throughout the show. Michiko Nomura played Lady in episodes 56 – 57, Mia in episode 87 and Naminami in episode 87. Sanji Hase played a doctor back in episode 6. Takeshi Aono played Edmond in episode 32. Eiko Masayama played Sylvia in episode 64 and the Snow Woman in episodes 90 – 91.

Non-Spoiler Analysis:

These chapters/episodes are a combination of both cuteness and tragedy. The chapter starts off in a rather funny way as Tetsuro, plagued by the fact that the 999’s dining car is shut down, arrives at a planet with numerous restaurants! We soon meet Flying Kuro, a black cat with 4 kittens that is able to fly. The episode also quickly introduces us to Meow, who gets more of a proper introduction later. The cats in these chapters/episodes are quite cute, especially Flying Kuro and its kittens, and it is pretty fun to see a cat rebellion with so many of them. Unfortunately the rebellion ends in a total failure. This is a planet where people and even their cats are forced to become mechanized. This is expanded on a bit in the episode where we find that the various restaurants are actually traps and people, including Nekoa, get seized from them and forced to become mechanized. Nekoa fighting back against this, using an army of mechanized cats, is a pretty fun concept and it was sad to see it fail so quickly!

The latter part of the chapter is filled with tragedy; the catroid rebellion fails, Meow dies, Nekoa is captured then dies, and even Flying Kuro gets shot, although it appears to survive (in the episode it doesn’t get shot at all). While Flying Kuro had been a friendly cat that went to humans with kind hearts, the experience causes it to forget about humans entirely and leave the area. The naming for Flying Kuro comes from the Japanese word for black, Kuro(i), surely named that way as it is a black cat.

The concept of animals and mechanization is something that came up all the way back in chapter 7-6, “The Empire of the Cowardly Emperor” although more as some throw away dialogue; here we see that at least on this planet they actually can mechanize cats, which I thought was an interesting concept. Although it seems like similar to humans, it is against their wills. While Tetsuro wants to attain a mechanical body, it is a goal that not everyone wants, but on this planet people are forced into becoming mechanized against their will, although we don’t get an explanation for why. Perhaps to be able to control them better.

This is another storyline where the mystery of what is in Maetel’s suitcase comes up. This time we have the local authorities looking into it, and when Handa looks inside, he is so shocked he can’t say anything then kills himself! Just what in the world could be in that suitcase? Tetsuro references never having looked closely inside of it, but let us not forget the chapter “Witch of Plated City” where it was at least partially open and the mysterious voice we have so often heard came out of it. So whatever that voice is, it surely has some sort of connection with this.

Another notable thing about the episode (it is kind of glossed over in the manga) is Maetel referencing that they will have to part ways at some point. We’re now around 90 chapters into the manga and are at nearly episode 100 of the TV show; we’re a very good amount of the way there and it is time to start realizing that this journey won’t last forever. Tetsuro seems to hope that Maetel and him will not part, but it will happen someday from what she says. I hope he savors the time he has left with her!