Author’s note: I wrote this after watching the first 10 episodes of the show. If there is anything further on that contradicts this, I apologize. Galaxy Express 999 is filled with seeming ton…
In Search of Number Nine — An anime blog
Mar 3, 2021 • Subscribe
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Galaxy Express 999
By Helen McCarthy. Rintaro’s 1979 film Galaxy Express 999 travels a very considerable distance, goes faster than you might expect, but skips a number of stations. And the…
The space train of Winesburg: Galaxy Express 999 and grotesques
“Anderson evokes a depressed landscape in which lost souls wander about; they make their flitting appearances mostly in the darkness of night, these stumps and shades of humanity.”Irving…
The Odds and Ends of Galaxy Express 999 (part 2)
I’ve almost made it halfway to the Andromeda Galaxy with Maetel and Tetsuro, which means I’m just about ready for another odds and ends post. I did one…
Odds and Ends of Galaxy Express 999 (Part 1)
Normally, I do these odds and ends posts right before I do my wrap-up post for the series, but Galaxy Express 999 is different. This show is long.…
Dark Africa, colonizers and Galaxy Express 999
Back when I was a freshman in high school, we had what I expect is a right of passage for any high school student — the state history…
PODCAST: Galaxy Express 999 The Movie
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google Podcasts | RSS All aboard, anime fans! Join us as we punch our ticket to space adventure, science fantasy, and beautiful…
All aboard the Galaxy Express 999
I have a strange love for Leiji Matsumoto. What makes this strange is I’m not from the right generation to have watched Star Blazers as a teenager. Sure.…
Food zombies and wildflowers: Galaxy Express 999 and poverty
Growing up Leiji Matsumoto had an up-close relationship with poverty. His father was a former Japanese aviator who gave up piloting after the end of World War II.…
Skeletons, murder and tragedy? More Galaxy Express 999
Sometimes a show hits me with a conundrum that I don’t have an answer to. Typically, this comes when I’m hit with a concept or an execution that…
Science the destroyer in Galaxy Express 999
When I watch anime, I watch it from a Western viewpoint, or to be more accurate, a very American viewpoint. In a lot of ways, this is not…
The Mysterious Maetel in Galaxy Express 999
I’m going to get meta here for a second. As I’ve been writing about Galaxy Express 999, I’ve noticed lately that I tend to focus on a particular…
The Angriest Planet in Galaxy Express 999
I’ve been thinking a lot about subtlety and nuance lately. Yes, I know that isn’t the most exciting topic, but this is my blog, and I like to…
OtakuGeneration (Show #417) Galaxy Express 999
Shownotes :: (show 417) :: (website) :: (podcast feed) :: (direct download) :: (direct iTunes link) With Faith, recorded live June 2nd, 2013. This week we watched a movie…
Bleach, Galaxy Express 999, Gurren Lagann, Kill Me Baby, Phantom: Requiem for the Phantom
Love in the time of existentialism in Galaxy Express 999
No one really gets to live happily ever after in Galaxy Express 999. OK. That might not be entirely true. There are a handful of stories about people…
Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress: The Battle of Unato – The Steam Punk Zombies and Trains Are Back!
How like me is it to save an actual horror sort of movie thing for the day after Halloween. Kabaneri was never pure horror anyway, but I think…
Puritans, capitalism and hard work in Galaxy Express 999
(Note: I’m going to use U.S. and America interchangeably. I just want to say that I realize this is horribly unfair to our neighbors to the north and…
Galaxy Express 999: The Movie – Some Things Never Change
It’s Leijiverse Time Leiji Matsumoto was one of the most prominent and influential people in the anime industry. I say it was because Leiji Matsumoto died at the…
The Evil that Live After in Galaxy Express 999
So, it’s always felt that the Friends, Roman, Countrymen speech gets an unfair shake in popular culture. It’s never gets treated with the same gravity as the To…
Galaxy Express 999 Episode 5: Melancholy on Pluto
As Tetsuro and Maetal continue their journey, they reach the final destination of their home solar system, the frigid dwarf planet Pluto; Maetal provides some key information by…
The Myth of Japanese Indirectness and “Subtlety”
Stereotypes of Japan as a land of vague meaning and blunted expression are just straight up Orientalism that obscure a complex reality.
To push the rock or not in Galaxy Express 999
Sometimes it’s best to start at the beginning with one of these posts. I don’t really have a clever anecdote or a personal revelation to start this with.…
Reactionary Fandom And The Myth Of The Snyder Cut, Chapter 5: Zack Snyder, Destroyer Of Myth
“For me, for the filmmakers I came to love and respect, for my friends who started making movies around the same time that I did, cinema was about…
Getting rich on ecological disaster in Galaxy Express 999
(Note: I apologize ahead of time for any gross oversimplifications of history that are contained in this blog post.) When I was growing up, I remember seeing news…
Galaxy Express 999: Going off the Rails on a Mediocre Train
Greetings, fabulous people of the Internet! Hanime on Anime here and for any of those who remember the ASDF videos where that one kid says, “I like trains,”…
Is it better to kill the babies in Galaxy Express 999?
I’m fascinated by the number of plants, animals, and even microbes that have traveled with people as they’ve moved from place to place. Once I listened to a…
The myth of the jaded critic
"Become a critic and you'll never enjoy your hobby again!"
Ghost people don’t get free will in Galaxy Express 999
Galaxy Express 999 has a strange relationship with self-determination. I took a week off of writing about Galaxy Express 999, and I’ve hit a pocket of exciting episodes…
Dying free or living a slave in Galaxy Express 999
Though it’s only half a month away, the media’s goneAn entertaining scandal broke today, but I can’t move onI’m haunted by a story and I do my best…
Adieu Galaxy Express 999 – It’s Not Over Until It’s Over
The End of Galaxy Express 999: The Movie To discuss this film, I do need to actually reveal the ending of the first movie. So, if you haven’t…
Galaxy Express 999: The Movie 4K Remaster Review — Scotland Loves Anime 2023
Galaxy Express 999 would have been 10-year-old me’s absolute favourite movie ever, if I’d had the chance as a kid to see it. As a UK-based…
Eating Among the Trains
Continuing my visit to train and train-adjacent locales in Japan, here are my thoughts on two eateries in and around Tokyo: Platinum Fish Cafe and Curry Niagara. Platinum…
Take a Ride on the Galaxy Express, And Learn a Thing Or Two About The Working Class
Simply put, Galaxy Express 999 avoids the most common pitfall of socially conscious science fiction by not trying to disguise the point it is trying to make in…
The Little Prince, A Little Princess, Fairytales, and The Galaxy Express is here too – Thoughts on “Ranking of Kings” and Some Other Things.
I wouldn’t blame anyone for thinking “depressing fantasy series about how life is terrible for marginalised people in typical fantasy world” or “dark fairytale about how monsters aren’t…
The Otakusphere: Speculation, space trains and fezes are cool
Here we are again at the end of the latest week of coronavirus craziness. We should coin the term coronavirus cabin fever because alliteration is awesome. Or cool…
The Confidence Man JP: Episode of the Hero, Galaxy Express 999, Popran, The World for the Two of Us, Japanese Film Trailers
The Confidence Man JP: Episode of the Hero, Galaxy Express 999, Popran, The World for the Two of Us Japanese Film Trailers
BNA: Brand New Animal, Assimilationism, and the Myth of the Model Minority
There are anime where, if you really sit down and try to read deep underneath the surface for messages, you’ll find some surprisingly political messages. Then there’s BNA:…
Mama Is a 5th Grader???: Galaxy Express 999’s Maetel in Shinkalion Z
I don’t necessarily feel obligated to write about every crossover character in the Shinkalion franchise, but when she’s a rendition of one of my favorite heroines from one…
Galaxy Express 999, Shinkansen Henkei Robo Shinkalion, Shinkansen Henkei Robo Shinkalion Z
Protected: The Golden Gateway: Aboard Japan’s Magnificent and Diverse Trains
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
The Tatami Galaxy
By Tomihiko Morimi and Yusuke Nakamura. Released in Japan as “Yojōhan Shinwa Taikei” by Ohta Shuppan. Released in North America by HarperVia. Translated by Emily Balistrieri. I was…
Good Soil Makes a Good Crop: The Story of Saiunkoku and the myth of meritocracy
Despite its fantastical shoujo setting, The Story of Saiunkoku is no traditional fairy tale, and the sexist hurdles Shurei faces to achieve her dream of becoming a civil…
The Tatami Galaxy Before and After College
Obviously 2020 was one fuck of a year for everyone except for a handful of billionaires. Everyone’s coping mechanisms vary, but returning to old media is a classic.…
Galaxy Express 999 – final episode (Betamax rip with subtitled commercials) [Be Forever, Leiji Matsumoto!]
Here’s a release in honor of the late, great Leiji Matsumoto (January 25, 1938-February 13, 2023). Thanks to Dougo13 for providing the rare old recording from his collection.…
Myth and History: Jujutsu Kaisen's Ryomen Sukuna
For all Ryomen Sukuna's magnificent devilry, the ancient figure whom he's named after is shrouded in a lot of mystery, with some legends even treating this mythical Sukuna…
Spy x Family: Disarming the Myth of the Nuclear Family
Hannah Collins examines Spy x Family and the ways the manga, in presenting the Forgers as a fake nuclear family, dismantles its very mythology
Debunking the Myth of Naoko Takeuchi having "no friends".
A popular “wholesome meme” that has been periodically making the rounds over the last few years is a screenshot image of the text “Let's cel...
Let’s Talk About “Us”: The Myth of a Unified Front and the Sliding Scale of Solidarity
The greatest moment of Left unity in decades happened on April 8th, 2020, the day Bernie Sanders officially announced he was suspending his campaign to become the Democratic…
Reactionary Fandom And The Myth Of The Snyder Cut, Chapter 1: The Nerd Cultural Revolution
It’s not easy being a movie critic these days. Critics who truly understand the purpose of art criticism, or even what criticism is, are a dying species. More…
Walking Among Youkai — Of the Red, the Light, and the Ayakashi on Steam
After almost a full decade since its English release in Light Novel form, it's finally here!
Narration in Anime: The Tatami Galaxy and Beyond
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The Tatami Galaxy, Arakawa Under the Bridge, Baccano!, His and Her Circumstances, Kino's Journey
Brief Thoughts On: The Dark Myth
"Show, Don't Tell" is a concept utterly foreign to The Dark Myth. A shame, because its animation is quite alright.