I Boarded the Galaxy Express with a British Friend and Ended Up Debating the Soul of Leiji Matsumoto world.

I watched it on TV first, I think, and I also read the manga. I don’t think I saw the film in the cinema back then, though I’ve seen it several times since.

It was on TV every week, airing at night once a week. And little by little, the characters would travel from one star to another, all sorts of different planets one after another. It took about a year on TV, and I really felt like I was traveling along with them.

That kind of experience really belonged to an era when TV was the only option, and you’d look forward to it every week and at the same time feel like you had to keep watching it. It’s probably an experience you can’t have nowadays.

It was around seven in the evening. So it might have been while we were having dinner in the living room, or maybe right after, but in any case we were just glued to the screen.

I remember trying to record the title song onto a cassette. I’d bring a cassette recorder in front of the TV, press the button to start recording with that little “clunk,” and capture the sound coming out of the speakers straight onto the recorder. I’d hold my breath and keep absolutely quiet during the recording. I have those memories of doing that kind of “aircheck.”

I think we were all watching together—my two older sisters and my parents.

My father’s name was actually Tetsuro, like the boy in the series.

Exactly. the boy in the TV version had this sort of potato-like face, so my dad used to complain about that. But when it came to the movie version, he looked cooler, so I guess that kind of made up for it.

And my father was satisfied with his new appearance.

No, that is not Japanese name.

In an interview, the film’s director Rintaro mentioned that Tetsuro’s age was set a little older than in the original manga and the TV anime. That made him look cooler, and I think children at the time accepted it quite naturally.

I think there was probably a news program around 6 p.m. in the evening. And then from about 7 o’clock, there would be some kind of variety show, or maybe a special documentary-type program, or a music show. So I remember that from about 7 to around 9 p.m., each TV station generally aired entertainment shows. And I remember that airing anime was just one part of that whole lineup.

I think it might have been a weekday, but I’ve forgotten.

Yeah, it happened, but I didn’t really mind at all. I mean, it was on for a whole year, so missing an episode or two didn’t bother me at all. Back in the day, TV series were long. Nowadays if you miss a single episode, there are lots of anime where you can’t follow the story anymore, but back then it was no big deal.

The art style is different — it’s not the same as modern manga, so it might feel a bit harder to get into at first. But Galaxy Express 999 is definitely the kind of work that makes you feel like you want to stay in its world forever. Maybe it’s similar to what Star Wars fans feel — they love that universe, and that makes them want to remain there. I think 999 gives you that kind of experience.

You ride the train and feel like you’re traveling endlessly. In each episode, you arrive at a planet, something happens there, you face an accident or event, solve it, and then, just in time, you get back to the train. That moment of relief — “ah, I made it back” — repeats again and again. While I was watching, I really wished the journey would never end. For people who get hooked, I think it’s that kind of experience.

I went on a bit—since I love it, I kept talking.

It’s a standard choice, but I’d go with Yamato.

You know, when I think about it now, Yamato is such an extremely Japanese kind of story. It feels a bit strange in that sense. I wonder how people overseas think about it when they see it, since even the name “Battleship Yamato” comes directly from a Japanese battleship.

It’s something military otaku know.

Star Blazers… Strange name.

One aspect of Yamato that I thought of as quite “local” is the mentality of the crew. Since it was a work from the 1970s, you had older generations who still remembered the war, and younger generations whose parents had lived through it. So that mindset—things like self-sacrifice, the idea of risking oneself for the sake of all humanity—feels like it reflects a kind of wartime spirit.

And I think there’s a very Japanese sense of values embedded in that, especially in the early trilogy. So I’m honestly curious how that kind of mindset is received by people overseas.

I have seen a little of the original 1960s Star Trek, but I only know about the BL relationship between Kirk and Spock.

Yes, exactly, the new Godzilla took a different approach compared to the older stories. And in Yamato, they really did depict a lot of self-sacrifice, and in those early series, people just kept dying one after another. It really had that wartime kind of feeling where characters would die off, something that’s harder to imagine in the same way nowadays.

The new Godzilla took a different approach. Early Yamato felt like wartime drama where people died one after another; hard to imagine nowadays.

But then again, there are also characters who come back, like Captain Okita. I mean, at the end of the first movie, “you clearly died, right?
“
—that’s confusing.

In Matsumoto’s works, consistency often doesn’t line up between series.

I guess it felt like it was exactly what I expected. Like, “Ah, so this is the kind of person Leiji Matsumoto is,” and it matched what I had in mind. Maybe that just means the exhibition was really well put together.

It really made me realize that there are still so many of his manga works I don’t know yet—just seeing the covers made that clear. And yeah, it’s true that some of his most famous works stand out so much that they kind of overshadow the rest.

Were the Daft Punk videos also made into a movie?

When I first saw it, I wondered why Leiji Matsumoto’s art style was in a Daft Punk work. I think many people just thought, ‘Oh, it’s like a Leiji Matsumoto manga,’ without thinking much about it.

When Matsumoto was alive, I used to feel uneasy whenever a new 999 came out, not knowing where the story might go. But now that I realize there will never be a new one again, I feel an even deeper sense of sadness.

That’s an interesting question. I mean, for example, Gundam has been written by various creators, right? But somehow I feel like Leiji Matsumoto’s works just aren’t like that, and I’m not really sure why.

It worries me a bit.

If the protagonist is mentally troubled and on a battleship, that’s concerning from a civilian perspective. And the captain is authoritarian, yelling ‘Launch the ship, anyway!’ right?

And “If you’re not going to launch it, then get off the ship!” or something along those lines, right?

In that case, he has basically already done it.
That’s a fair point—precisely why we’d love to see something that goes beyond what we’ve seen before and surprises us.

Like, they go to “Iscandar” and never come back.

We also had the ‘999 meat’ – a meal that the characters eat in one scene – at a restaurant.
Sometimes the food in anime looks really delicious, you know? Like Heidi’s cheese or the big cartoon meat in Gon, the Stone-Age Boy (はじめ人間ギャートルズ Hajime Ningen Giatrus).

It felt like two boys from different planets looking out at Tokyo from the window of the 999 Express.

But why wasn’t the companion a beautiful woman?