Bottomless Swamp in Sargasso

Bottomless Swamp in Sargasso

Manga Chapter 15-5

Manga Chapter Summary:

The 999 enters an area that the Conductor describes as Neptune swamp. Tetsuro says the stars in this area look like stripes of running water. He says it doesn’t look like a swamp or Neptune and Maetel says while Andromeda has some areas similar to their galaxy, this is an area that is not similar. The 999 enters an area where things are completely black and Tetsuro and Maetel sense that something is wrong as noises start screeching out. The Conductor says they’re in Sargasso.

The 999 passes through an area where small plant like feelers stretch out from below, as if they are in a swamp. The 999 eventually gets stuck on them! Maetel talks about how there were stories back on Earth about a ghost ship in the sea. Tetsuro imagines a ghost train, with Maetel and him riding, as skeletons! The Conductor heads to the Locomotive who says the adhesive strength of what is grabbing them is strong and the 999 can’t move. Its shield is also broken and the train is sinking.

There’s more noise, and Maetel says the window glass of the train has been torn. With the pitch blackness around them, Tetsuro wonders if the blackness will flow in. Maetel says it’s not that which has come into the train, but rather a creature. Something approaches the door from the other train car and we see a black shape through the window. The door opens and a humanoid shape, that is entirely black and looks like it is dripping an oily-type substance comes in. The entity says bonjour, greeting them in French!

Maetel says 100 years ago a Frenchman, Monsieur de Longa came here and tried to develop the area. The entity says it has come here as a special envoy for the Neptune trip and won’t do them any harm. It will get off at the next station. We see another similar entity behind it. The entity says that is its daughter, Doa Pourada who will be going as special envoy. The Conductor mentions there’s no ticket, and Maetel says she’ll accept responsibility.

The 999 continues to sink and Tetsuro worries if they are in a bottomless swamp. They soon approach the remains of a spaceship, which Maetel says has been permanently captured in this bottomless swamp. Tetsuro feels like they are sinking even further. Suddenly the 999 exits the pitch black part of space, into a region that has stars again. Tetsuro laughs and realizes in a sea of stars there is no actual bottom. They’ve somehow made it out on the other side. They look in the other car where the two entities are and find that they are gone, with just a trace of fog there left in their place.

Maetel says that when an organism of the Sargasso exits it, it evaporates. The Sargasso will never let its inhabitants go. Doa would be unable to be a special envoy, even if she wanted to escape. Tetsuro feels sorry for them. The narrator says that Tetsuro is from Earth, an area where he was able to escape from, and he sees the world here different, like it were a prison.

Non-Spoiler Analysis:

Despite occurring so late in the manga’s run, this is actually the shortest stand-alone chapter in the entire manga, at a mere 16 pages. This chapter reminds me of the “Graveyard at the Bottom of Gravity”, all the way back in chapters 3-8 and 3-9 (episodes 7/8). The 999 here descends into what seems like a bottomless pitch dark swamp area of space. Quite scary stuff! This is one of the more effective chapters in the manga at establishing a scary atmosphere. We eventually find that there are living being here, two of which come onto the 999 and seek to travel elsewhere as a special envoy. Continuing with the chapter’s scary setting they appear like you’d expect swamp-like beings to be, completely black and as if they are dripping with oil. Yet as we’ve seen in previous chapters, things don’t go as planned as the 999 departs as they are unable to withstand a different part of space.

I think to previous storylines like “Mists of the Fog Capital”, chapter 8-1, or “Cheyenne, the Nation of Water”, 12-2 where inhabitants of the visited planets tried to escape on the 999 only to immediately die. Here the beings that come on board the 999 completely evaporate! The ending where the 999 makes it out of the Sargasso by dropping out of the bottom of it, back into regular space was a nice twist. Overall though this chapter feels like it is drawing too heavily on things that have been done before; several times before in fact. By my count this is the 79^th unique storyline from the manga. At least for this chapter, it seems like we’ve clearly hit a point where Matsumoto is starting to run out of ideas, or forgets he’s done something before, resulting in a chapter that while handling its atmosphere quite well seems a bit repetitive.