Shaking Station

Shaking Station

Manga Chapters 15-6 and 16-1

Manga Chapter Summary:

The chapter begins with us being told that Tetsuro had a dream. It was a dream of Maetel going on a journey alone. We see Tetsuro standing on an asteroid asking Maetel where she is going. Maetel is on another asteroid, with her back turned to him as he calls out to her. Tetsuro wakes up and realizes it was a dream. He’s still laying in the 999 train car, but doesn’t see Maetel anywhere. Tetsuro spots another train off in the distance with his binoculars; it is a train heading to another branch line. Tetsuro is shocked to see Maetel sitting on it! Tetsuro asks why Maetel is on another train and the Conductor tells him she changed at a station they were at while Tetsuro was sleeping. Tetsuro sees the other train heading off in another direction. The Conductor says it is going to “Queen of the Lake”, a legendary place where monsters and ghosts are said to live.

Tetsuro asks why Maetel is going there and the Conductor says he doesn’t know; that’s her problem. Before leaving the Conductor says their next stop is the “Shaking Planet” with a layover time of 68 hours. He says it is an unpleasant planet that shakes all year round. Tetsuro wonders why Maetel left on her own and if she’ll come back. He thinks of the promise she had him make that they would travel together. Tetsuro talks to himself about how he doesn’t mind the train being empty as long as he’s with Maetel and he’s afraid about traveling alone. Tetsuro smells something nice from the dining car and heads over there. Tetsuro finds an elaborate meal laid out in the dining car. The Conductor tells him it is a New Year’s feast and these are authentic dishes. Tetsuro thinks Maetel would have been happy to see this, but the Conductor joins him to eat instead.

A woman sitting at the table across the aisle from them tells them to be quiet. She says they should be thinking about how they are inconveniencing others and they should be polite as they eat. She questions if Tetsuro has ever been disciplined or raised by a parent. When Tetsuro doesn’t respond she asks if he’s heard her and Tetsuro collapses, choking on something he ate. The woman claims she wouldn’t mind it if he died as the Conductor tends to him. The Conductor brings Tetsuro back to the train car where he recovers. Tetsuro complains about the woman and the Conductor says she ruined the food. He says she got on the train with a ticket rather than a pass and he doesn’t know her name. As it was a ticket just to the next station he’s a bit more comfortable with it.

The woman comes into the train car, seeing that Tetsuro has survived. She says they better get along well as she’ll be riding on the train until the end point, upsetting both Tetsuro and the Conductor. She pulls out her ticket to the end which the Conductor looks at. It says the woman, named Metalmena, has passed the waitress qualification tests for the Galaxy Express and can board any train she desires as a regular crew member. She says she will be taking that role on the 999. Later, we see the 999 approaching the planet, which is shown to have a lot of cracks in it. The 999 heads into one of the cracks, where we see a city. Tetsuro and Metalmena head towards the hotel, talking about the planet’s shaking. The streets are silent, although it is midnight. They make their way towards the hotel. Metalmena says she’ll be riding the 999 for the rest of her life, which Tetsuro finds annoying. Tetsuro is shocked to find that Metalmena is staying in the same hotel room as him. She tells him machine people don’t eat humans and he doesn’t have to worry.

That night, Tetsuro can’t sleep due to Metalmena’s loud snoring. He heads out into the hallway and is suddenly struck in the head. Tetsuro wakes up on the surface of the planet, a square shaped area surrounded by cracks in the ground. Tetsuro wonders why he’s in a place like this and sees the city below him. He is told he was banished. Standing before him is a machine woman with no head! She asks him if he went out during the quiet hours while the earthquakes had stopped and he says yes. The woman says her name is Resist and that she had also gone out during that time period and is an exile. She says this planet considers it peaceful when it is trembling and an emergency when it is calm. Those who wander outside during that time violate martial law and are banished to the surface. She asks Tetsuro if he is a real human and he says yes. She says as she has a mechanical body, she doesn’t need a head. Her brain has been placed next to her artificial heart. She doesn’t care how long she stays here and says this area doesn’t have any real humans.

Resist tells Tetsuro to look around and he sees the skeletons of various bodies. She tells him she’s been here 198 years! Once one is banished here, it is impossible to leave again as there is no transportation. Tetsuro tells her he’s a 999 passenger and she says she’s been trapped here long before he was born. She says not to worry; she will make a grave for him. The ground starts shaking and the area they are on splits into many different parts. Tetsuro wonders what to do and Resist says there’s nothing they can do; there’s no way out of here. Tetsuro gets frustrated, knowing that he’s going to miss the 999 being in a place like this. A train arrives from overhead and Resist says it is from a branch line. Tetsuro wonders how he could make it to the city below. Tetsuro takes off his cloak and uses it to shade himself from the sun.

Suddenly a spear shoots up and attaches itself to the land mass Tetsuro is on. Attached to it is a rope. Tetsuro wonders who sent it. Resist tells him the gravity here is half of Earth’s and he should be okay going down it. An opportunity like this rarely comes along. Tetsuro decides to do it and starts climbing down. Resist says goodbye to Tetsuro. Tetsuro says if this works he will come to help someday. Resist tells him not to make promises he isn’t certain of being able to fulfill, although she thanks him nonetheless. Tetsuro’s hands start feeling numb as he makes his way down but he eventually makes it to the bottom. When he makes it there he finds Maetel waiting for him! Maetel says she worried he was banished. She has come here via regular train, the one Tetsuro recently saw come in and they head down to the station where the 999 is.

Maetel senses something wrong and Tetsuro says someone who shouldn’t be forgotten is trapped above. He says one experiencing that who cannot die has it harder than a human with a limited life. Maetel tells Tetsuro when the time comes she’ll tell him of her journey to the other planet. The 999 departs, with Resist watching. Tetsuro is shocked to find that it wasn’t Maetel who launched up the rope, it was in fact Metalmena! Metalmena is now wearing her formal waitress uniform and tells Tetsuro he doesn’t have to feel indebted to her. Tetsuro says that while her snoring was terrifying, she’s not a bad person. Maetel says she is masking herself and the Conductor thinks she has a purpose beyond just being a waitress. Tetsuro thinks of Resist and feels sad. The narrator explains that those who live forever may be able to conquer infinity, but may also fall into eternal hell and suffer forever.

Non-Spoiler Analysis:

We have a fairly strong storyline this time. We begin with a rarity, a dream sequence! While dream sequences weren’t that uncommon in the TV adaption, I don’t recall them coming up much within the manga, so it was interesting to see, even if only for a few pages. Tetsuro wakes up and is shocked to find that Maetel has departed the 999 and is on another train! Why Maetel has left isn’t explained, but she is back by the end of the chapter so it wasn’t a long term choice. Nonetheless, I was happy to see the mix-up and for Tetsuro to have to fend for himself for once without Maetel being there to save him.

We are soon introduced to a new crewmember on the 999, Metalmena, who has boarded to take the waitress position long abandoned by Claire. Considering Claire died all the way back in chapter 1-3, it’s surprising that it has taken this long for a replacement to arrive! And Metalmena got on via her own will, so it may have gone even longer if not for her. Metalmena is introduced as a rather annoying character to Tetsuro and the Conductor right off the bat, yelling at them for not being quiet enough while eating. This causes Tetsuro to choke on his food and nearly die! Not a good start for the 999’s new waitress! Her line of dialogue made me think back to chapter 5-3, “The Planet of Dimensional Voyage” where Tetsuro’s sloppy manners got him in big trouble. Tetsuro is far more toned down here, yet gets in trouble nonetheless! Often displaying a big grin on her face, Metalmena’s design makes me think of the Joker.

This time the 999 arrives at the Shaking Planet, a planet that is constantly undergoing an earthquake. In fact, as we eventually find out, the planet shaking is actually the norm for this planet. When it isn’t shaking people find it unusual! They have even declared martial law and punished/exiled people who don’t stay inside when it is quiet. All Tetsuro has to do is go out into the hallway, disturbed by Metalmena’s snoring, and he gets in big trouble. It was quite interesting to see Tetsuro make his travels onto the planet without Maetel, and this may be the only time it ever happens across the entire Galaxy Express 999 storyline.

Things continue to get flipped on their heads as we realize the punishment for going outside when it’s quiet is for Tetsuro to be put on the surface of the planet. You’d typically expect a pit or prison or something like that, but Tetsuro is actually placed far above where the city is for his punishment, on an area of land that keeps him there since the ground all around it has cracked up. It eventually becomes a far smaller mass of land too after another big earthquake. Up there Tetsuro encounters Resist, a machine woman with no head! This is another interesting development; after all this time we still mostly see mechanical people who mimic the standard human form. Getting one without a head was quite the unique sight. And as she says, a machine woman doesn’t really need a head; they can place their brain someplace else in their body.  Tetsuro is eventually able to be saved (surprisingly enough by Metalmena!) but Resist is forced to stay up there where she is. She’s been there nearly 200 years, which is quite a long time to suffer. Part of me wonders why she doesn’t just throw herself off. Suicide is not a route one would want to go down, but then, after 200 years of it, is there any point to living any longer? As the narrator puts it at the end of the chapter, having eternal life isn’t all great things. If you are suffering, you can suffer forever.

Spoiler Analysis:

One of my biggest surprises going through this manga for the first time was realizing that the character of Metalmena appears in the manga. The character appears in the movie Adieu Galaxy Express 999, which is largely an original story not based on the manga or TV show, but rather acts as a sequel to the first Galaxy Express 999 movie. In that movie Metalmena serves the same role as here, the 999’s waitress. She has a drastically different appearance. Within the manga, Metalmena has short blonde hair and is very human looking; you wouldn’t know she was mechanical absent her mentioning it. Movie version of Metalmena has longer, darker hair (granted hair that is still quite short for a Matsumoto female), and very obviously comes off as having a mechanical body.

While manga Metalmena comes off as very over the top annoying to Tetsuro and the Conductor, movie Metalmena is much calmer, although she also has a rather arrogant bent to her, looking down on Tetsuro and those who don’t have machine bodies. She considers the organic food Tetsuro eats to be unseemly, preferring the “clean capsule energy” that machine people consume instead. We eventually find that Metalmena’s motive is to seize the body of Maetel, whom she considers to have the most beautiful body in the entire universe. Metalmena eventually changes her tune on the planet Great Andromeda after the revelation that the capsules are actually derived from draining the life out of humans. When Maetel makes a comment that Metalmena has no friends who would shed a tear for her if she died, Metalmena decides to sacrifice herself to prevent Tetsuro and the others from being arrested. Although she survives the encounter, she is greatly injured, and then later decides to depart the 999 as an entity called “Siren the Witch” is drawing all machine energy into itself.

Manga Metalmena was released to the public first, with these manga chapters first coming out in January 1981, and Adieu Galaxy Express being released in August 1981. That said, I’m sure the movie had been in production for quite a while, so it is possible that she was thought of as a movie character first, then put into the manga. It wouldn’t be the first time that the manga drew inspiration from the movie rather than the other way around. That said I do wonder why we have the drastically different character designs. For whatever reason, manga Metalmena wasn’t kept around that long, just appearing in three chapters, two of which were covered by this entry.