The Snow Woman of Andromeda

The Snow Woman of Andromeda

Manga Chapter 13-2

TV Episodes 90 - 91

Manga Chapter Summary:

The 999 has finally reached the Andromeda galaxy. Maetel tells Tetsuro that the next planet they head to acts like a gate for the galaxy. It is planet “Snowinca”, and is a planet with a snow woman. Maetel hands Tetsuro a pair of sunglasses and tells him that those who see the snow woman die. As the 999 heads down to the snowy planet, we see a long haired woman, the snow woman, watching.

The next several pages of the manga chapter are quite unique in that we have an external song sequence for the first and only time in the manga. The song appears inspired by a track that plays early on in the Galaxy Express 999 movie, when the 999 takes off from Earth. We then cut to Tetsuro and Maetel eating ramen at a restaurant on the planet. Maetel tells him no place in the Andromeda galaxy has better ramen than here. Tetsuro is also quite pleased that the ramen and the egg served with it are real rather than being synthetic. Maetel claims a great master of ramen had come to this planet and died in the snow. There are a lot of people outside, but all mechanized. Tetsuro finds it hard to forgive the fact that mechanized people don’t like ramen.

They depart the restaurant and head to a snow covered hotel. Tetsuro lies down on his bed, thinking of the snow woman, while Maetel heads to take a bath. Tetsuro falls asleep and when he wakes up finds a note from Maetel saying she’s off on business and will be back in the morning. Tetsuro tries to order ramen via room service but is told they don’t permit that here. Tetsuro heads outside into the snow; it is now night time. As he walks he starts thinking of the snow woman again, but his weakness, his appetite, spurns him to go on. He finds that the ramen restaurant is still open and heads inside to order even more. The owner tells him he was told by the great ramen maker to keep his restaurant open at night time. The owner brings Tetsuro several more bowls of ramen. Outside, we see the snow woman walking through the snow, with several skulls around the ground.

Maetel returns to the hotel room and finds Tetsuro gone, having left a note for her. Maetel tells herself that Tetsuro doesn’t know what the snow woman is like and he can’t help it. She equips a gun and departs the hotel. Maetel ignores the advice of the hotel staff in the lobby and heads outside. At the restaurant, the owner comments on how lonely it is that a real human eating these days can make himself feel sick, as Tetsuro is quite stuffed. Tetsuro says despite having 3 bowls of ramen he’s feeling quite cold. Suddenly the door opens and snow starts coming in. The owner turns his head and tells Tetsuro to not look. A soft voice echoes out, asking for ramen. It is the snow woman. Meanwhile, Maetel walks through the snow. The snow woman asks for some ramen.

Tetsuro realizes he’s looked at the snow woman and how Maetel told him how those that look at her won’t live. The snow woman claims it’s too late. The owner brings over some ramen, being sure to cover up his eyes. When Tetsuro and the snow women try to eat the ramen, it completely freezes over! They tell the owner and he makes two more bowls, but the same thing happens again! The snow woman tells Tetsuro she has wanted to eat warm ramen, at least once. The scene cuts to later, with Maetel coming by the ramen restaurant. Tetsuro and the snow women are gone and the owner claims Tetsuro went with her to her home. He says it’s weird, as he should have died when seeing her, but he is okay.

We cut to Tetsuro and the snow woman walking through the snow. The snow woman brings Tetsuro towards a summit where she claims her home is. Tetsuro notices various skeletons in the snowy ground and she claims these are the human bodies left behind of those who became mechanized. She tells Tetsuro he can get a free mechanical body here. Maetel continues on as well and eventually finds Tetsuro’s hat in the snow. With it frozen, she realizes it must have been here a long time. A man appears behind her in the snow named Snowlock. He tells her that one can get a free machine body at the snow woman’s home and calls himself a broker of machine bodies. He senses that Maetel is a bit strange and activates a device in his hands that causes her to fall into a chasm.

Maetel wakes up in a room filled with various machine bodies. Snowlock tells her he specializes in machine bodies, although unlike the snow woman, he doesn’t provide them for free. He claims he even forcibly requires people to attain mechanical bodies. We cut to the snow woman’s house. Tetsuro cries out as inside she has strapped him to an operating table and is trying to give him a mechanical body. Meanwhile, Maetel opens up her coat, revealing herself to Snowlock. We next see him leaving the exit of his home, completely shocked by it. Maetel tells him to sell in moderation and departs. Maetel makes her way up the cliff to the snow woman’s house and finds her home to be that of a more modern technology, one used when immigrants came to this planet. She exits into a room where she finds Tetsuro chowing down on ramen! Tetsuro doesn’t want to become mechanized at this time, so he can continue to eat ramen. Maetel realizes he made it himself, as there are a lot of ingredients around them.

In another room nearby we see the snow woman tearing up, as she peers over a bowl of warm ramen. She claims she feels like she is near her father. She starts crying and the room starts steaming up. One it disperses we see that she has melted; all we see left of the snow woman is a small mechanical body part on the ground that keeps saying “father”. Back on the 999, Maetel tells Tetsuro that the snow woman was the daughter of a great man who brought ramen to this planet. When her body became frozen it started to freeze up any warm food she tried to eat. Tetsuro wonders why her body became frozen and if it’s because of rebelling against her father. He wonders why the ramen he made for her didn’t freeze and Maetel speculates it is because of his heart.

TV Episode Summary:

This chapter is adapted across two episodes. In the first episode our first difference is a new scene where the Conductor announces their stop as Snowinca. Once they’re at the hotel we see a dream of Tetsuro acting as a ramen cart salesman. The snow woman asks him for some ramen then threatens to take off his sunglasses so he can see her. As she starts eating the ramen though, Tetsuro gets a peek at her. She eats the ramen, thanks him for being able to eat something warm and vanishes. Tetsuro is happy that looking at her didn’t kill him. In another new scene, we see where Maetel has gone while she’s “away on business”. She is in a giant computer room, asking the mysterious voice we have frequently heard from to relieve her from this mission, but he refuses.

The ramen owner, Tsuru, tells Tetsuro his sad backstory. We flashback to a massive line outside of his shop and see him inside as a younger man, with the then owner of the ramen restaurant. Tsuru is told his ramen is not good enough by the owner. A woman comes in, Yuki, the daughter of the owner and says the planet’s populace is mostly being mechanized. She doesn’t want to run a ramen shop anymore and wants to become mechanized. She proposes they leave the store to her father and become mechanized. We return to the present and realize that Yuki left, but Tsuru stayed behind. Tsuru claims he thought Tetsuro and Maetel were a couple and could have taken over the restaurant someday! Tetsuro reveals he’s looking to get a mechanical body himself, and the two of them get a bit depressed as it means no more ramen.  The snow woman then arrives as in the manga.

When Tetsuro has some ramen with the snow woman, his bowl doesn’t freeze like hers does, although he does complain about it having a bad portion of salt. Tetsuro tells the snow woman of his goal to have a machine body while still at the restaurant. As they walk towards her home there is more dialogue between Tetsuro and her about ramen and the restaurant owner.

In the second episode, we see via a flashback that Snowlock is the one responsible for the snow woman’s bad reputation. We see him driving around in a vehicle talking on a loud speaker about it. Tetsuro realizes her providing free mechanical bodies ruins his business. We see the snow woman forcibly bringing Tetsuro into the room where she plans on giving him a mechanical body. Snowlock tries to shoot Maetel after she leaves his home but she fires back and his home blows up, taking him with it. Meanwhile the snow woman tells Tetsuro she wants to make him mechanized so she can take his body and be able to eat ramen. She reveals the bodies outside are actually those who Snowlock changed into mechanized people. Tetsuro offers to make ramen for the snow woman

Maetel finds Tetsuro while he’s still making ramen. We see the snow woman inside waiting for the ramen from him. In a flashback we see Yuki getting on a space train saying goodbye to Tsuru, being angry that he is dedicated to the ramen so much and won’t change. Back in the present she cries over Tsuru. Maetel asks her why she is so obsessed with ramen. Tetsuro comes in with a bowl of ramen but when she tries to eat it, it freezes. Maetel says she has an idea and tells Tetsuro to buy time until she returns. We cut to Maetel taking Tsuru out of his restaurant, with him hesitant to go and make food for the snow woman. They make it there and Maetel insists that only his ramen will be enough for the snow woman, and that he should know the reason why. Tetsuro helps him make some ramen. When the snow woman is able to eat the ramen, Tsuru realizes it is Yuki. She collapses just after and starts melting as she had in the manga. She tells him that abandoning him, becoming a snow woman suited her. She’s happy she was able to eat his ramen, then completely melts. On the 999 the Conductor still speaks of the now proven false rumor of the snow woman. We see a final shot of Tsuru looking into the sky after the 999 takes off, holding what’s left of Yuki’s body in his hands.

TV Episode Cast:

Tetsuro Hoshino – Masako Nozawa

Maetel – Masako Ikeda

Conductor – Kaneta Kimotsuki

Tsuru – Ichirou Nagai

Snow Woman – Eiko Masayama

Mysterious Voice – Banjou Ginga (episode 90 only)

Front Man on Duty – Shingo Hiromori (episode 90 only)

Snowlock – Keiichi Noda (episode 91 only)

Narrator – Hitoshi Takagi

Ichirou Nagai previously appeared as Tetsugoro in episodes 40 – 41 and the governor in episode 64. Eiko Masayama previously appeared as Sylvia in episode 64. Keiichi Noda previously appeared as Yosaku in episode 71. Beyond his role as the Mysterious Voice, Banjou Ginga has appeared as various minor characters as well.

Non-Spoiler Analysis:

Tetsuro’s love of ramen has been a big part of his character from very early on and here’s a storyline where it really takes center stage. As I’ve mentioned in the past, I’m a big fan of ramen myself, so it’s always something I’ve liked a lot about Tetsuro and Galaxy Express 999. This storyline surrounds a snow woman who desperately wants to be able to eat ramen, but sadly is unable to because it always freezes when she tries! As with many episodes, the TV adaption provides some additional material than what is in the original manga and I think it helps a bit here. We get more back story explaining that not only is the snow woman the daughter of the “ramen master” on this planet (which was also the case in the manga) but also she was in a relationship with Tsuru, the current ramen restaurant owner. Tsuru ultimately chose ramen over her, causing them to split up as she obtained a mechanical body and eventually became the legendary snow woman. Tsuru meanwhile continued to make ramen, although with dwindling results as more and more of the populace became mechanized on this planet and no longer ate it.

Another aspect of the chapter is the legend of the snow woman, that anyone who looks at her will die! It is essentially like this is Galaxy Express 999’s version of Medusa. And yet as we quickly find out, Tetsuro is able to look at her and nothing happens. We get a rather interesting inversion as the snow woman actually is not that bad a person. She and Tetsuro’s love for ramen cause them to become quick friends. That said, she does have somewhat of an ulterior motive in that she desires to provide Tetsuro a mechanized body. We don’t really get an explanation in the manga, but in the TV episode it is so she can be a human again and eat ramen. The storyline of someone mechanized trying to take Tetsuro’s body has happened many times by this point, but I’m glad in this situation we get a good reason for it. The TV adaption also helps explain why the snow woman has this reputation; it has actually come from a competitor, Snowlock, a man who sells mechanized bodies and is mad that the snow woman makes them available for free! The sight of various skulls outside in the snow is rather frightening, but we eventually realize that Snowlock is responsible for them, not the snow woman. Seeing those bodies also kind of reminded me of the bodies we saw under the ice back on Pluto. Although in that case it was the person’s full, intact body. Here it is just partial remains. Another thing I was reminded of by the episode, from a design standpoint, was the snow woman looking like Meemay from Captain Harlock.

This chapter/episode returns to a sequence with Maetel we’ve seen before, her revealing herself to a character by taking off her coat, and them being completely shocked by it. In particular this had happened back in “The Mirage Planet’s Scribe” chapter/episode. We still don’t know what it is about her that is so shocking to them, but it sure is effective. In a scene added for the TV episode we also have Maetel speaking to the mysterious voice yet again, really trying to get out of her journey with Maetel but being refused it.

For the TV episodes, this storyline is a return to normal of sorts, the first TV episodes to be adapted from a Galaxy Express 999 manga chapter since the three part “Pirate’s Time Castle” story (episodes 79 – 81). We will still have some more episodes sprinkled in that are either adaptations of other Matsumoto works or are original stories, but from here on out we return to a trend of most episodes being adaptations of the Galaxy Express 999 manga.