ayase
State Alchemist
Galaxy Express 999, Episodes 36-48
"Tetsuro, come over to the window. I want you to get a good look as that nice old man we just met commits suicide by pressing the self destruct button on his own space colony. See, what I didn't tell you was that long ago he killed everyone else on board by failing to seal a drive plate properly before repopulating the place with his own clones. Oh, and here's his diary containing all his darkest thoughts, I want you to read it cover to cover and then destroy itso there's no evidence of the mental scarring I'm inflicting upon you."
Also, Tetsuro, quick! Come look at these corpses I found under the floorboards!
The therapist Tetsuro Hoshino will no doubt require in a few years time is going to struggle to believe any of this. He's already suffering from wild mood swings, beating the crap out of people and aiming deadly firearms at them with only the slightest provocation one minute and consoling and crying over them the next. No doubt some of this is down to Maetel's influence, discouraging him from violence and telling him to let things go with roughly the same regularity that she's tearing people limb from limb with her magic ring in ways Captain Planet surely never intended.
For the love of God Maetel, please say this isn't going in the Pet Sematary direction I think it's going.
This time our stops include actual space North Korea, the planet of #EndlessWars (which gave me particularly strong Kino's Journey vibes) and uh, Animal Heaven. Hey, I don't make the rules here. We meet Tetsuro's doppelganger, find out the Conductor has (or at least had, if I've learned one thing on my journey through the stars it's to never expect a happy ending) a life outside of work and Tetsuro is involved in at least three attempted coups. Oh, and we're treated to a slow-motion sequence of Tetsuro falling over backwards after being shot. While he's in the nude, with nothing left to the imagination.
My comments in this thread might make it seem like I'm not very appreciative of GE999, but that's not really so. It's actually a surprisingly deep show for its time (and intended audience) and I'm sure to a kid growing up in the late '70s and watching it on TV weekly, it would have seemed like a fantastic and exciting journey. But to my 21st Century adult eyes as I marathon a dozen episodes at a time, it does seem rather repetitive. Surely there's only so many times Tetsuro can learn that all life is suffering? That, and I get the distinct feeling Leiji Matsumoto probably has/had some fairly deep-seated mother issues. But despite my amusement at its unrelenting miserabilism, it's still a well-meaning show that doesn't sugarcoat difficult moral issues. I'm still planning on riding to the end of the line.
"Tetsuro, come over to the window. I want you to get a good look as that nice old man we just met commits suicide by pressing the self destruct button on his own space colony. See, what I didn't tell you was that long ago he killed everyone else on board by failing to seal a drive plate properly before repopulating the place with his own clones. Oh, and here's his diary containing all his darkest thoughts, I want you to read it cover to cover and then destroy it
Also, Tetsuro, quick! Come look at these corpses I found under the floorboards!
The therapist Tetsuro Hoshino will no doubt require in a few years time is going to struggle to believe any of this. He's already suffering from wild mood swings, beating the crap out of people and aiming deadly firearms at them with only the slightest provocation one minute and consoling and crying over them the next. No doubt some of this is down to Maetel's influence, discouraging him from violence and telling him to let things go with roughly the same regularity that she's tearing people limb from limb with her magic ring in ways Captain Planet surely never intended.
For the love of God Maetel, please say this isn't going in the Pet Sematary direction I think it's going.
This time our stops include actual space North Korea, the planet of #EndlessWars (which gave me particularly strong Kino's Journey vibes) and uh, Animal Heaven. Hey, I don't make the rules here. We meet Tetsuro's doppelganger, find out the Conductor has (or at least had, if I've learned one thing on my journey through the stars it's to never expect a happy ending) a life outside of work and Tetsuro is involved in at least three attempted coups. Oh, and we're treated to a slow-motion sequence of Tetsuro falling over backwards after being shot. While he's in the nude, with nothing left to the imagination.
My comments in this thread might make it seem like I'm not very appreciative of GE999, but that's not really so. It's actually a surprisingly deep show for its time (and intended audience) and I'm sure to a kid growing up in the late '70s and watching it on TV weekly, it would have seemed like a fantastic and exciting journey. But to my 21st Century adult eyes as I marathon a dozen episodes at a time, it does seem rather repetitive. Surely there's only so many times Tetsuro can learn that all life is suffering? That, and I get the distinct feeling Leiji Matsumoto probably has/had some fairly deep-seated mother issues. But despite my amusement at its unrelenting miserabilism, it's still a well-meaning show that doesn't sugarcoat difficult moral issues. I'm still planning on riding to the end of the line.
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