The Motherly Figures in Galaxy Express 999

Set in a high-tech future in which humans learn to transfer their consciousness to mechanical bodies, Rintaro’s 1979 film, Galaxy Express 999, highlights Hoshino Tetsuro’s journey to obtain a mechanized body that will give him the ability to live forever.   His desire to obtain a mechanical body increases after he witnesses the mortality of life when Count Mecha and other trophy hunters murdered his mother.   Rintaro uses limited animation, especially still framing, pan shots, and zooms to help create a film that describes Tetsuro’s nostalgia and longing for his deceased mother as he develops a relationship with Maetel, a conniving but sympathetic robot who is a spitting image of his mother.   Employing these limited animation techniques also helps Rintaro in developing Tetsuro’s internal conflict between what it means to be human or a machine.   While the film depicts Tetsuro searching for and killing Count Mecha to avenge his mother’s death, it more importantly shows Tetsuro’s process in realizing how material wealth and immortality takes out the humanity and dignity in people.
The beginning of the film portrays Tetsuro attempting to get on Galaxy Express 999 in order to reach Planet Andromeda, where it is said mechanical bodies are handed out to humans who seek them.   After running away from the police for stealing a one-way train ticket, Tetsuro meets up with a beautiful woman, Maetel.   She probes into his recent memory with a “dream sensor” and uncover’s Testsuro’s yearning for a motherly figure through the tragic story of his mother’s death.   The audience is introduced to Testuro’s mother through various camera techniques that seem to accentuate the elegance and curvature of her body.   For example, when Count Mecha murders her, the wind blows her coat off-screen to reveal her long, brown hair and naked body.   The camera zooms out from an extreme high angle to picture her full body in the snow and then moves to a pan shot of the vast terrain.   These two camera...