The Planet of Illusive Love

The Planet of Illusive Love

TV Episode 85

TV Episode Summary:

Tetsuro smells something and claims it is putting pressure on his heart. Maetel claims those who come to this area start feeling affection. That Tetsuro felt it means he’s growing up. The Conductor says their next stop is the “Planet of Illusive Love”, where they will be stopping for approximately 38 hours. He claims it is painful for him to land on this planet as it makes him think of Marvelous. After the 999 arrives at the station, Tetsuro and Maetel head off. Tetsuro quickly finds himself separated from Maetel and runs into a woman wearing the same clothes as her by mistake. Tetsuro talks to a young woman resting up against a tree, telling her Maetel is his traveling companion, not his lover. She says her name is Naya and she is trying to sell poems. As she must stay here, Tetsuro says goodbye and heads off.

We see several shots of a naked blonde woman named Pheras posing for an artist named Lestel. After putting on her clothes, Pheras tells him the poet is still waiting for him but he doesn’t seem interested. Pheras doesn’t seem that interested in him either and leaves, saying she’s going to meet with someone. As she walks outside, Pheras pauses for a moment and looks at Naya. Naya rushes up to Lestel’s door and goes in his apartment, finding him resting on his bed. Lestel thinks to himself that this playboy Bina is coming onto Pheras at the restaurant she works at. Naya comes in and offers to clean Lestel’s room but he is angry and storms off. Naya looks at the painting of Pheras, claiming she’s beautiful and starts crying.

That night Tetsuro sits down on some stairs and wonders what Maetel thinks of him and why she left him alone here. He thinks of the good things she has done for him in the past and wonders why he feels longing for her all of a sudden. Naya walks by and asks him if he has run into Maetel and he says no. Naya asks Tetsuro if he loves her, and says he’ll wait for her if he does and never give up. Naya tells Tetsuro she knows everything about Lestel, including what he’s thinking and can read him like a book. Tetsuro thinks this is all the more reason to be with him and she says she’ll wait for him. Tetsuro says she lacks courage and asks what she’ll do if Pheras takes him away from her. He claims he’ll even go with her and help.

That night, Lestel waits angrily in an alley as he sees Bina bring Pheras into his fancy car. He asks her what she even sees in him (Lestel) and she says nostalgia. Bina tells her to stop leading him on and Lestel should learn one can’t live on dreams alone. Lestel angrily rushes out of the alley but it’s too late, Bina has driven off. Later, a man throws Lestel out of a restaurant, telling him not to bother the customers. Naya says they should go home but Lestel angrily tells her off. When Tetsuro yells at him over how much Naya cares about him Lestel gets even angrier. Lestel lunges towards Tetsuro and injures himself. Naya says things are fine and carries Lestel with her as they depart. Tetsuro realizes that Maetel is further down the alley.

Maetel and Tetsuro enjoy a dinner and he wonders why he feels so relaxed and at peace around her. He wonders what she’ll do if he gets his mechanical body. He wants to stay by her side forever and thinks of what Naya told him earlier about staying by the one you love. We realize this is just a dream as Tetsuro is talking in his sleep. Maetel tells Tetsuro he must have been exhausted from all the walking around yesterday. They go out on a balcony and look around. At his apartment, Lestel falls out of his bed, disappointed that he was dreaming. Pheras comes in and he tells her he has a headache and to leave him alone today. She leaves some food for him and leaves; this not fazing her. As she’s about to leave Lestel stops her, asking her to live with him. She says she can’t live with his dreams all her life. She comes here to model for him to kill time. She says goodbye and walks out. Lestel angrily trashes the food she brought.

Naya comes in and tries to stop Lestel from leaving, saying they should chase their dreams together. Lestel angrily shoves past her and runs outside. Noticing Naya shouting out for Lestel, Tetsuro runs up to his apartment. Naya finally told Lestel how she feels but she says it didn’t do any good. Tetsuro says it is good as she stopped waiting around doing nothing and took the first step towards her dream. Tetsuro says they should go after them as Naya cries. Lestel chases Pharas down, again begging her to come with him. She declines him again and gets in a car with Bina after he shows up. He tells Lestel dreams don’t last forever and drives off. Lestel grabs ahold of the car and Bina drives around as he holds it, greatly endangering him. Pheras tells Lestel to stop, but he doesn’t. Bina swerves, throwing Lestel off, but this moment of not paying attention causes his car to crash into a pole; he and Pheras go flying. Naya rushes up to Lestel. Tetsuro and Maetel approach the dead bodies of Bina and Pheras, realizing they were mechanical people.

Lestel, upset over Pheras’ death runs off angrily. We next see Lestel in a dark room with several men, telling him to think things over as the choice he’s about to make will cause him to be away for 3 years. Lestel signs it and we see that he has gone off to war. Later, Tetsuro and Maetel notice that Naya isn’t around. Maetel wonders if Naya is with Lestel. Tetsuro runs up to Lestel’s apartment to say goodbye to Naya. Naya tells him Lestel’s left and left his paint box behind. She claims she’ll still wait for him. Tetsuro pulls a towel off of Lestel’s painting of Pheras and sees a giant X has been marked on it. As he heads to the station with Maetel, Tetsuro wonders what became of Lestel. Maetel says she’s sure Lestel will come back someday. On the 999, Tetsuro thinks about dreams. Maetel thinks to herself if Tetsuro still wants to throw away his dreams and attain a mechanical body.

TV Episode Cast:

Tetsuro Hoshino – Masako Nozawa

Maetel – Masako Ikeda

Conductor – Kaneta Kimotsuki

Naya – Keiko Yokozawa

Lestel – Toshio Furukawa

Pheras – Masako Ebisu

Bina – Kaneto Shiozawa

Soldier – Banjou Ginga

Narrator – Hitoshi Takagi

Keiko Yokozawa previously appeared as Hanako in episodes 60 – 61. Toshio Furukawa previously appeared as Ikari in episode 74 and the Handsome Man in episode 6. Kaneto Shiozawa previously appeared as Sirius in episode 47 and Takeshi in episode 53. Banjou Ginga has voiced a variety of minor characters throughout the show and also portrays the Mysterious Voice.

Non-Spoiler Analysis:

This episode of Galaxy Express 999 is all about love and relationships. The 999 comes to a planet where people’s feeling of affection is amplified somehow. The Conductor longingly thinks of Marvelous (seen in episode 42), while Tetsuro questions his feelings towards Maetel. Tetsuro loves Maetel regardless of how this planet works, I think that is clear, but it is a motherly love; she is for all intents and purposes a surrogate of his mother. And yet in this episode he starts to think of if it’s even more than that, including a brief dream of them having dinner together.

The main focus of this episode is on several of the planet’s inhabitants and the relationships involving them. We’ve got Naya, the poet, who is in love with Lestel, the artist. Lestel though is in love with Pheras, the model for his paintings and waitress at a local restaurant. And Pheras instead has feelings for the playboy Bina. Naya and Lestel both have great longings for someone who unfortunately doesn’t reciprocate their feelings. I can understand in a way Lestel’s feelings for Pheras, she is very attractive and has been the model for his paintings, but he seems to just be dreaming of what he’ll do rather than doing it and she’d rather be with Bina instead, who seems rather successful although we don’t know what he does for a living. Lestel does eventually share his feelings with Pheras and gets rejected by her. Rather than taking it for what it is, he begs for her to be with him again, getting rejected again. It is rather depressing for someone like Lestel, but he should have just taken the original answer he got. She wasn’t going to change her mind in mere minutes. More so than that, she certainly wasn’t going to change her mind with the way he wouldn’t take no for an answer and was begging for her to be with him. This leads to a sequence where Lestel gets rather humiliated as Pheras gets together with Bina right in front of him. At first Bina didn’t seem that rude to Lestel, but when Lestel idiotically grabs a hold of Bina’s car, he nearly kills him. All I can think of in watching this sequence is that Lestel really has to accept no for an answer.

Naya has her own issues. She greatly longs for Lestel, but because he desires Pheras so much he doesn’t really notice her or her feelings and similarly rejects any attempts by Naya for them to be together. I view Naya’s mentality as just as bad as Lestel’s even though I think we are meant to view her as the sympathetic protagonist of the episode. Naya’s mentality is that she is going to keep trying to be with Lestel even if he doesn’t notice her or say no, hoping that eventually he will change his mind. It’s really the Lestel – Pheras dynamic all over again. I think it’s a mentality that is just ripe for misery. Naya may be waiting for years to get Lestel to reciprocate her feelings and never get it. She may waste her youth, or her entire life on it, passing by chances of happiness with someone else. She is essentially treating Lestel like her soul mate, which is something I think does not exist. Soul mates are things for fairy tales and Disney movies, not reality. It’s also a bad position to take because she’s putting Lestel on a pedestal he doesn’t deserve. It is unfortunate Lestel doesn’t notice her; yeah, she’s not as beautiful as Pheras but she’s still very cute. Once Pheras is killed Lestel still acts like Naya isn’t there and heads off to be in the military, something which just totally comes out of nowhere.

When we first see Pheras, she is completely naked and in some very sexy, provocative poses. I’ve often commented on my blog how much women in this show look like Maetel and, as Pheras is also a young woman with long blonde hair, I really thought that was Maetel at first! While Maetel has been naked in the manga/show before, it is always done in a very tasteful way so this sequence just really seemed off to me. The scene comes off to me as the most sexually provocative in the entire show. Even when we realize it’s not really Maetel, I gotta admit to being quite surprised at the level of nudity and the poses we saw from her. Wasn’t this a kid’s show? Granted this is a show with numerous deaths, suicide, etc… so maybe I shouldn’t be that surprised by it. Nonetheless, this sequence does come off as quite an outlier.

Lastly we have the revelation that at the very least, Pheras and Bina were mechanical people. We don’t know whether Lestel and/or Naya are. I thought through the entire episode that they were humans, not really expecting mechanical people to have those same feelings of love that a real human would. I didn’t see the surprise coming for Pheras and Bina, but in hindsight it does make more sense as they did seem more cold hearted than the other two. The show has several times gone to the well of “Surprise! They were mechanical people!” and this was one time where I thought it was an effective twist.

This episode was the third to be adapted from Leiji Matsumoto’s manga “Four Dimensional World”, specifically the chapter “Illusion of Young Love”.