The Planet of the Queen's Rebellion

The Planet of the Queen’s Rebellion

TV Episode 102

TV Episode Summary:

The Conductor announces their next stop as the “Planet of the Queen’s Rebellion”, with a layover of approximately 18 hours. Tetsuro says it sounds like a dangerous place, but the Conductor says everyone is used to it. Maetel says the planet has ancient traditions of behavior and there’s sometimes civil war. The planet used to be occupied by bees and more than one queen couldn’t exist so there would be wars. Even now, with them having evolved into humans, that hasn’t changed. Now the Queen of the Bees, Miets, and the Queen of the Hornets, Karel, are violently opposed to each other. As Tetsuro and Maetel leave the station, the Conductor says the situation here is odd and to be careful. Tetsuro isn’t concerned, holding his gun and says he won’t get involved, but the Conductor is hesitant about if this will really be the case.

Tetsuro notices a bunch of different people with various styles. Maetel points out those with good styles as being from the Honeybee Clan and those looking fierce from the Hornet clan. Those poor looking ones are from the Digger Wasp clan. The Honeybees and Hornets are the ones primarily in charge. We see two from opposite sides cross each other and draw their swords to get in a fight. One of the Digger Wasps, a young man named Damu, tries to get them to stop, as they are fighting over something trivial. He is told he wouldn’t know pride and gets tossed to the ground. The two fight each other and more fights between Honeybees and Hornets break out. Damu pulls out a camera and starts recording the fighting. Damu then tells Tetsuro and Maetel to come with him to his home. At Damu’s home Tetsuro is excited upon realizing he’s a cameraman. Damu claims he wants to show this footage to people from the future, as a documentary.

A Honeybee woman soon arrives and enters, confronting Damu, asking about someone named Maya. Tetsuro gets frustrated at her and is about to pull out his gun when Maetel warns him not to. The woman claims they need people and Maya has been lazy lately. Damu says there’s more to life than work, but she puts him down, asking what he, a Digger Wasp would know. Damu asks why making records is considered playing around. She tells him he shouldn’t associate with Maya and that Honeybees and Digger Wasps shouldn’t associate with each other. Maetel and Damu are worried there will soon be a war. Damu says they don’t care about the Digger Wasps, but thinks of Maya, a childhood friend, who is a Honeybee helping him with his movie. Maya suddenly shows up and hugs him. He tells her that Supervisor Kil has been looking for her. She claims they won’t see each other once the war begins. Maetel tells Tetsuro they should head to the hotel.

Upon going outside, Tetsuro is surprised to find the street empty. Maetel says it’s a sign war will start soon. While they look like humans, those here still live as if they were bees, following the laws of nature. Maetel tries to hold Tetsuro back, who says he doesn’t want to see them suffer. At the palace of the Honeybees Tetsuro is brought before the Queen and asks the Queen to stop the war. She is puzzled why he’s here, wondering if the Hornets sent him here. The Queen says this is the destiny of those descended from bees; the same as the Hornets. Tetsuro gets her to agree to stop the war if the Queen of the Hornets agrees to the same thing, but she says he only has until dawn. Tetsuro flees and we see the Queen laughing, calling Tetsuro a fool.

That night, Maya shows up at Damu’s home and tells him the war will start in the morning. She tells him of Tetsuro’s attempt to stop things and Damu says he’ll search for him at dawn. Maya says she can’t betray her colleagues. Damu says his film is almost done, but it’s not going to do any use. Maya feels pressured to follow the rules of their society. Damu says he’ll continue to make this film and show it for future generations. We next see the palace of the Hornets, where the Queen orders her soldiers to attack and they head out on flying crafts. Damu watches and gets into the palace, finding Tetsuro locked up in an underground cell. Tetsuro says the Queen wouldn’t even try to listen to him. Damu says the Queen of the Honeybees felt the same way and wasn’t really negotiating in good faith. Tetsuro points out his gun, laying nearby and asks Damu to shoot the bars of the cell. Damu nervously grips the gun and fires, knocking over the entire cell.

Back at Damu’s home, Tetsuro is still intent on getting them to stop the war. Damu tells him to look outside where we see explosions going off. Tetsuro swears he’ll continue to try. He pushes Damu to act, and says if he doesn’t film the war, nothing will come of it. Damu thinks of how it’s his destiny to film the war. The battle between the two sides continues. The hornets storm the Honeybee palace and Kil is killed. Damu rushes his way towards the palace where both sides are fighting each other, hoping that Maya is safe. In the throne room, the two Queens fight each other and Tetsuro rushes up to them but they won’t listen. Tetsuro is thrown down the stairs and Maetel comes in, saying it’s too late.

Damu comes across Maya fighting a Hornet soldier. She tells him to film their fight. Maya is able to slay the Hornet. She tells Damu to continue to film this senseless war and that he’s doing an important valuable job for this planet. She feels she must obey the laws of her people and protect the Queen, heading there and slaying several hornets along the way as Damu films. Maya is shot through the chest soon after and takes many shots from Hornets. She tells Damu to continue fighting. She takes another shot and dies. Damu tosses aside his camera and rushes to her and takes a shot to the chest as well. He reaches for her hand but dies just before reaching it. Maetel points out the camera to Tetsuro and he feels it is like their heart. Tetsuro picks up the camera and films the battle occurring around him. The narrator explains that the pointless war had finished with the Hornets winning, but wonders how long the peace would last. On the 999, Tetsuro says he couldn’t do anything useful. Maetel says he did do something good, finishing the filming and that someday it will do some good.

TV Episode Cast:

Tetsuro Hoshino – Masako Nozawa

Maetel – Masako Ikeda

Conductor – Kaneta Kimotsuki

Damu – Toshio Furukawa

Maya – Mami Koyama

Miets – Yumi Nakatani

Karel – Chiyoko Kawashima

Kil – Ai Sakuma

Narrator – Hitoshi Takagi

Toshio Furukawa previously appeared as Handsome Man (episode 6), Ikari (episode 74), Lestel (episode 85), Wester (episode 89) and Hanza (episode 98). Mami Koyama previously appeared as Spiral (episode 33) and Nami (episode 49). Yumi Nakatani previously appeared as Dentist (episode 67), Merusa (episode 84) and Handmaiden (episodes 94 – 95). Chiyoko Kawashima has had numerous previous appearances including Claire (episode 3), Chromeria (episode 25), Santana (episodes 47 – 48), Maria (episode 67), Rei (episode 83) and Aya (episode 88).

Non-Spoiler Analysis:

This episode is once again an adaption of the Leiji Matusmoto manga, Four Dimensional World, in particular the chapter “Maya of the Green Country”. The episode I feel is a bit similar to some previous ones we’ve gotten, at least in some ways. Damu’s desire to film what is going on reminds me much of the storyline in “The One Book Left in the Universe” which we just watched 4 episodes ago. The people of the planet being evolved from bees reminds me of both “A Tale of Endless Summer” as well as “Keiko of the Insect Planet” which also was a fairly recent episode. The net result for me was that I was somewhat disappointed that we didn’t go in enough of a new direction. Especially with these episodes that aren’t directly based on the Galaxy Express 999 manga, I feel like there’s some freedom to go in some unique directions, and while they often have, we didn’t get that in this episode.

This episode seems all about futility to me. This is a planet where based on their very nature, the planet will have warring factions battling each other until one side wins and there is only one Queen remaining. The fact that a battle is going to happen seems inevitable, and gets spurned by simply two men from opposite sides walking past each other on the street. The relationship between Damu and Maya also seems a bit futile as they aren’t from the same group, and Maya is a soldier, forced to fight. I figured one of them would die before episode’s end, but was surprised to see them both die. This show just doesn’t pull punches when it comes to killing off episodic characters. Most of all, Tetsuro’s attempts to stop the fighting seemed totally futile. Tetsuro has too big of a heart at times and overestimates his own power. Here he is trying to stop a war between the two sides simply all by himself. It just never was going to happen and you’d think by now that Tetsuro may not be as naïve as he came off here, but he was.