Keiko of the Insect Planet

Keiko of the Insect Planet

TV Episode 93

TV Episode Summary:

The Conductor announces the 999’s next stop as “Insect Planet”, where they’ll be stopping for approximately 4 hours. The Conductor warns them to be careful as there have been some mysterious incidents there lately. He is unable to tell Tetsuro any more details than that and Tetsuro complains that he should try to find out more. Maetel claims the planet used to be famous for being filled with insects. Since humans have moved in, the insect’s numbers have decreased significantly. As they stop, the Conductor tells Maetel to bring a gun with them; people have been murdered at night lately by being pierced by sharp objects. Despite the danger, Maetel heads out and Tetsuro follows.

We see a drunk man walking down the street at night, carrying a small cage with some bugs in it. The man plans on eating the bugs. A woman, speaking in the darkness asks him to let the bugs go, but he refuses, saying they cost a lot of money. He tells her he is going to eat them, thinking they will extend his life by 1 year each. The woman approaches him, scaring him and we hear his screams. Maetel and Tetsuro hear his scream and rush to where he is. They find the man, pierced by a sharp object and the bug cage empty. Maetel tells Tetsuro to chase the figure they saw fleeing the scene. Tetsuro runs to a residential area, but can’t find the woman. A young man opens his window nearby and Tetsuro tells him what happened. He doesn’t have an explanation, and considers it a nuisance, getting frustrated as if Tetsuro is blaming him.

A woman watches from the room upstairs. The young man opens the door and shows them his family, then goes upstairs to get his older sister. Tetsuro and Maetel are about to leave. The young man, Futoshi, falls down the stairs, saying his sister Keiko slapped him when he tried to enter her room. The parents blame it on the recent murders, saying she’s being careful. Tetsuro tells them that they are travelers on the 999 and about his quest to get a free mechanical body. Keiko’s mother comes up to her room with some tea and tells her that she’ll be fine if she gets a mechanical body, mentioning what Tetsuro was just talking about. Tetsuro and Maetel show up at the hotel and go to their room. The phone rings and Tetsuro picks up. It is Keiko, who tells him she wants to see him the next morning and to show up at Bug Forest. Tetsuro doesn’t know who she is, but isn’t worried about meeting up with her.

The next morning, Tetsuro has already headed out by the time Maetel wakes up. Tetsuro shows up at the Bug Forest and calls out, and Keiko steps out in front of him. Keiko asks Tetsuro why he wants a mechanical body and he says in order to have eternal life; it is something he promised his mother. He tells her of how the poor live on Earth and how obtaining a mechanical body is a way out of that type of life. Maetel departs the hotel. Keiko asks Tetsuro for his help, saying this planet used to be a paradise for insects, but more and more of them have been dying out. We see a flashback of a forest being destroyed and insects fleeing. Keiko claims the life of the insects here is much like the life of those of the poor on Earth. She tells Tetsuro she wants him to become an insect like her. Suddenly a number of miniature insect people appear and also ask for Tetsuro’s help.

Keiko and the insect people continue to beg Tetsuro to help. Keiko grabs a hold of Tetsuro and starts bringing him with her until they run into Maetel. The insect people tell Keiko to run and they’ll take care of it. They tell Maetel they’ll kill Tetsuro if she comes forward. Maetel fires at the insect people with a laser shot out of her ring, killing them. Maetel tells Tetsuro she knows where Keiko went and they head to her home. They head inside and find Keiko’s mother, asking to see Keiko. Tetsuro tells Keiko’s parents about her trying to turn him into an insect. They say Keiko has been interested in insects since she was young, and that Tetsuro and Maetel should leave and not bother them. Maetel claims Keiko may be the one behind the recent incidents. Futoshi overhears this and heads into Keiko’s room. He sees her laying in her bed with her wrist attached to a wire that goes to the closet. There Futoshi finds a mechanical device and an insect person that attacks him.

A broom falls over on the insect person and Keiko, now in insect form, reveals herself. Tetsuro comes up to the room and sees Keiko in this form. Keiko claims she couldn’t overlook those who were cruel to insects and its revenge for the threat on their lives. Tetsuro says the way she is going about this will only draw more hate from humans. Keiko says she’s an insect now and can only behave as an insect does. Keiko’s parents and Maetel come upstairs and see what Keiko has become. Keiko pushes a button on the machine and tells them all to flee as it will soon blow up. Keiko’s family reluctantly leaves the room. Maetel tells Tetsuro to leave and he does soon as well. Keiko closes the door and sits on her bed. Her room explodes shortly afterwards. We cut to the 999 departing the planet. Tetsuro says he feels bad for Keiko and understands how she felt as that’s how the poor were treated by the mechanical people on Earth. He thinks her position is right but the way she was going about it was wrong.

TV Episode Cast:

Tetsuro Hoshino – Masako Nozawa

Maetel – Masako Ikeda

Conductor – Kaneta Kimotsuki

Keiko – Minako Kotobuki

Futoshi – Hirotaka Suzuoki

Keiko’s Father – Reizou Nomoto

Keiko’s Mother – Kyouko Nagashima

Insect People – Isamu Tanonaka

Narrator – Hitoshi Takagi

Reizou Nomoto previously played the father in episode 86. Isamu Tanonaka has had numerous previous appearances including Hanako’s Father (episode 10), Subari (epiode 17), Delmukade (episode 38), Cook (episode 53) and Waterpress (episodes 75 – 76).

Non-Spoiler Analysis:

This is another episode that is based on a non-Galaxy Express 999 manga by Leiji Matsumoto, “Four Dimensional World”, which was previously used for the adaptions in episodes 82, 83, 85 and 88. This particular episode is based on the chapter “Green Insector”.

The Insect Planet is a planet that used to be dominated by insects, but as humans have settled on it, they have largely taken over, putting the insects in a bad position. When Maetel tells Tetsuro the planet used to be filled with insects, I thought to myself, how does that make it any different than Earth? I think even with 7+ billion humans, insects still outnumber us. For whatever reason that isn’t the case here.

The main character focused on in this episode is Keiko, a teenage girl who shares sympathy with the insects. This leads to a sequence where she confronts Tetsuro, along with numerous tiny insect people who try to force Tetsuro into becoming an insect himself! I suppose this is a new twist on the trend of stories where people tried to force Tetsuro into a mechanical body. Tetsuro feels some level of kinship with the insects, feeling that his time as a poor person on Earth makes their plight similar to his. But Keiko and the insects go about it in the totally wrong way, not really giving him a choice. As Tetsuro says, their goal is a good one, but their methods aren’t. This attempt results in Maetel killing all the insect people with them.

We get another twist as the episode approaches its end; Keiko has turned herself into an insect! When this took place isn’t clear. Given the murder of the man that occurs early in the episode, and his fright upon seeing his murderer, my theory is that Keiko had already changed her form to her insect hybrid type appearance, but was able to cover it up and look like a normal human the rest of the time. The other possibility is she transfers her body into that form just as her brother appears in the room, although that doesn’t make the fright of the murder victim make as much sense. In any case, Keiko, while human size, totally looks like an insect now, a rather frightening sight. Keiko’s final decision is an odd one. She warns her family, Tetsuro and Maetel to leave, pushes a button in her room and blows herself up. I suppose this happened because she was caught and figured she’d be turned in, but it was just her family, Tetsuro and Maetel who knew, and well, Tetsuro and Maetel have let people off the hook before. I think back to Horohoro back in chapter 5-4, who was a mass murderer, framed Tetsuro for murder, and Tetsuro still didn’t have a problem with it.  It is a rather sad ending for the Keiko character.

One oddity in the episode, which maybe was an error is the Conductor saying their layover is 4 hours, yet Tetsuro and Maetel clearly spend the night there and are on the planet closer to around a day.