Hello everyone and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. With the summer anime season coming to an end and my Galaxy Express 999 journey finally coming to an end, I’m eager to catch up on what seems to be the strongest anime season in years. At first glance, I definitely need to see The Mongolian Witch, Goodbye Laura, Ghost in the Shell, and Sparks of Tomorrow, and make time to watch great films like Kaguya, Ribbon Hero, and The Last Flower. Between them all, The Witcher Hatters and The Witch Diaries, it’s proven to be a pretty ridiculous year for high-end productions, but overall it’s also an encouraging sign of the strength and diversity of the medium. I’ll be sure to check back as I chew through the highlights of the season, but for now, let’s review this week’s movies!
First up this week is when worlds collideThe ’51 sci-fi feature stars Richard Derr as pilot David Randall, who is tasked with transporting top-secret documents from South Africa to the United States. The documents conclusively confirm the scientific community’s worst fears: A rogue star is on a collision course with Earth, and some fragments of humanity might survive only by recolonizing the star’s own orbiting planets. And so begins a desperate and painful quest by our greatest minds as they must build and choose who will inhabit the arc that will carry humanity’s future.
As my summary shows, When Worlds Collide effectively builds around its cataclysmic ending in its first act, giving us ample opportunity to feel a kinship with its uninitiated protagonist. This choice perfectly leads us to consider the rest of the film’s fundamental question: Who decides who lives and who dies when only a few have a chance of escaping a catastrophe?
Solid acting comprehensively showcases the various incarnations of human nature, both good and evil, while the escalating crisis and arc-building process provide a satisfying visual and dramatic payoff in the film’s second half. Furthermore, the film is one of the rare 1950s science fiction films whose central love story is both necessary and convincing, consistent with the film’s general emphasis on contrasting human characters rather than on serious, scientific discussions of big ideas. Through this, the film is actually more stylistically current than many of its contemporaries, making it a solid recommendation for those who want to give this enjoyable genre a try, but feel they might be put off by the general focus on boardroom chatter and less-than-convincing monster models.
Then I filtered loveris a short film recently produced by a group of talented animation students. The film centers on Sara, a college student who returns to her family’s sushi restaurant after the sudden death of her father. She is tasked with killing the Kraken and preparing for the coming events, but she finds herself fascinated by the creature and desperate to escape her bloody responsibility.
The film is a scrappy, heartfelt love story filled with rich moment-to-moment aesthetic flourishes, perfectly suited to the passion product of a young and fast-growing team. At fifteen minutes long, the film doesn’t allow enough time to fully explain Sarah’s family relationships, but it still does a great job of picking out specific emotional touchstones that hint at unspoken sentiments. On the other hand, the central relationship between Sarah and the Siren is conveyed in glorious, intimate detail through glances, changes in tone, and thrilling moments of physical contact.
Frankly, I wish the film had had time to further explore its thematic reflections on love and consumption; this concept is largely contained in the film’s central dream sequence, and the connection between Sarah’s fatalism about her own life and her submission to the sirens is sadly underexplored. “I love you so much I want to eat you” is clearly a resonant concept that actually forms the basis of vampire and werewolf narratives, and I wish there had been more thought given to the subject (and the delightfully grim visual imagery that accompanies them). But the real complaint here is to criticize something the film never really set out to do; “Lovers” is a gentler story than this, focusing primarily on the kindness shared by two displaced souls, and the warmth that can be found in even the coldest of places. It’s directed with confidence and background, and is a testament to next-generation animation technology and passion.
Then we checked space truckerIt is a science fiction adventure film shot by B-movie master Stuart Gordon in 1996. Dennis Hopper stars as John Canyon, one of the last independent space truckers in an era where most businesses are consolidated under one large corporation. After accepting a dubious request to transport sex dolls to Earth, Canning and company soon discover that they are actually carrying a platoon of killer robots and must fight to overcome their own bloodthirsty cargo.
Space Truckers was an unexpectedly extravagant affair for Gordon, costing about $25 million and not surprisingly bringing in 5% of the profit. While the world may not be ready for a wide release of Gordon’s feature film, I did have a great time with this grimy sci-fi adventure, which is decorated with convincingly dated sets and features an impressive cast of characters. Dennis Hopper and Charles Dance clearly spent their lives here, chewing the scenery, waving glowing baubles, and generally enjoying the opportunity to perform in a venue that was less conspicuous than their usual counterparts. The plot is thin and wanders, and the tone tends to lean toward the teens, but if you set your expectations accordingly, you’re unlikely to be bored.
In addition to our film screenings, I also completed this week’s huge and majestic Galaxy Railway 999. Adapted from the manga by Reiji Matsumoto, the series tells the story of a little boy Tetsurou who hopes to make up for the early death of his parents by obtaining an eternal mechanical body. He is joined by the mysterious woman Maetel, who offers him a premium ticket on the Galaxy Express, whose tracks lead to a place where such bodies are provided for free. Along the way, the two stop at a host of unique planets, each bringing strange new dangers and prompting reflections on Tetsurou’s quest.
Imbued with an inherent sense of mystery and grandeur, the play expands the central magical image of Night on the Galactic Railroad into a series of wandering vignettes while maintaining the fantastical unreality of a dream journey, like those moments driving home as a child, half-awake to the blur of sounds outside and the flickering of distant lights. Even after watching over a hundred episodes, it always feels like a relief to return to 999, to fly off into the universe as some new disaster wraps up below. Even if our passengers are changed by their experiences, that comforting green booth and bumbling conductor will forever greet their return as the universe continues on in its unthinking, impersonal way beyond the glass.
In addition to having such a fantastic aesthetic and tone, the show also delights with its variety of episodic narratives, with Tetsurou embroiled in crises ranging from Wild West adventures to star-crossed lovers to ecological disasters, each of which takes place in its own unique world. Various recurring themes and templates pop up, but even this repetition feels like a reflection of humanity’s inevitable nature, while the overall variety of worlds and conflicts seems like an impossible achievement on a weekly release schedule. Wandering through these stories feels like being immersed in the endless creation of One Thousand and One Nights, an anthology that Matsumoto himself used for a two-part drama involving a duel between a bandit lord and a giant man-eating bird.
Throughout all of these adventures, Matsumoto’s philosophy of life is illuminated in bright colors and stark outlines: his contrasting reverence for hard work and disgust for exploitation, his love of the natural world, his unwavering belief in the pursuit of one’s dreams, and his acknowledgment of the brevity of life and ultimately what gives it meaning. Tetsuro either learns or embodies these lessons through stories that often end in tearful tragedies; we are often unable to escape the circumstances into which we are born, capitalism and social pressures can make slaves of us all, and the dreams we aspire to are often either unattainable or false idols, beautiful fantasies whose realization only proves another prison. Death is the norm, but immortality even more so; and it’s only through repeated lessons that Tetsuro realizes that eternity is something we build together, contributing in our own way before passing the torch.
Sometimes silly, sometimes dark, but always evocative and funny, Galaxy 999 is a rich treasure trove of fantasy worlds and moral fables, a show that embodies longing in every frame. I was deeply saddened when I saw Tetsuro pull up to his final stop, but I was still grateful to the show for being so generous and aware that an eternal 999 would be contrary to the show’s most basic values. Watching Galaxy Express feels like going through a second puberty, with worn knees and solemn lessons in emerging self-awareness mutated by all the wonders of the universe. This is undoubtedly one of the great treasures of this medium and a journey I recommend to all dreamers.
