(Possibly not for) Children's Classics: Night on the Galactic Railroad

A famous painting by the Swiss symbolist Arnold Böcklin depicts somewhere called the Isle of the Dead. At the turn of the 20th century, people (particularly Germans) were apparently obsessed with this dark riddle of an image and prints of it used to hang off walls in houses in that part of Europe. As much as it fascinates me, I really can't understand why someone would casually hang this freaky shit over their mantelpiece.
"So eh, nice new flooring you got put in there Friedrich - but what about that picture, the one beside the cuckoo clock?"
"Ahh that thing? Well, I don't know for sure - but when the kids are messing I tell them they'll get ferried over to that eternally still island by old chalky the boatman there. And chalky's boat doesn't come back, oh no. Works a treat."


This post is about a Japanese children's animation by Gisaburô Sugii called Night on the Galactic Railroad, which is based on a well known Japanese story of the same name. My waffling about the freaky Swiss painting is because I can't think of a better way to put the disquieting and very alien feelings evoked by this unique animation into context. The work, difficult to find here, was marketed as a children's film when it was released in 1985. I think the marketing was something along the lines of 'a little cat goes on a magical adventure through the milky way'. Err right.

On a superficial level I guess an antropomorphic cat does get on a train. And said vehicle travels through the cosmos. But the journey is as slow moving and obscure as treacle running thickly over a pane of glass, packed with more symbols than the rules of the road, and - here is the big thing...its main theme is death. Death dealt with in the same still, otherworldly manner as it is in the painting above. Now, I'm a firm believer that kids can get their heads around some fairly sophisticated shit but I doubt that even in Japan, the land of symbolism and ellipses, your average pokemon fan would have a fucking clue as to what this particular storyline is about. So lets keep the young 'uns away from this one and briefly look at it from an adult perspective. Because it really is something else.


The protagonist of the book the film is based on is a young boy called Giovanni. In the film, which begins at school, he is depicted as a cat. Indeed, all of the characters in the film (bar an inexplicable appearance by a human family at one point) are cats with variously coloured fur who walk around on oddly human back legs and wear clothes. These creatures instantly lend the film an unreal feel. Giovanni is bullied at school and only one other cat called Campenella will stick up for him (note the Italian names - some of the film seems to invoke Dante's Divine Comedy).

After a lesson about the milky way at school, the class disperse - excited to take part in a festival of stars later that night. Giovanni is ostracised at the festival and runs from his village into a corner of shadowy countryside under the stars. Lying in the night flowers above the village, he considers the milky way overhead and suddenly finds himself in the path of a giant steam train rattling dramatically from the centre of the sky.

Once he climbs aboard, he discovers his friend Campenello and the train takes them on a languid journey through the cosmos, past beautiful psychedelic sights which slowly reveal themselves to be manifestations of various versions of the afterlife. There is a glowing crucifix the size of a galaxy standing in a curved ocean of undulating neon. The Elysium fields of ancient mythology roll past and Giovanni wants to step outside the train to pick flowers. Stranger and stranger visions and characters soon join the young lads on the train, such as a grizzled old cat who catches magical herons on the outskirts of space and turns them into sweets. A blind telegraph operator appears and, like a metaphysical Wichita Lineman, hears crackly Christian hymns of heartbreak through his receiver. As the journey reaches its end, a swirling Buddhist void at the very edge of it all, the cats are beset by heartbreaking revelations.


Original trailer.

Animation-wise, the film is like little I've seen. It is drawn in a deceptively simple but expressive style that is unusual for Anime. The angles of the houses in the cats' village are skewed and defy perspective. They look Italian and glow with a burnished Mediterranean light. Space, on the other hand is full of flourescence, gliding geometric shapes and general incandescent trippiness. Think the mad shit at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey but with added felines. The overall slowness is unusual too. The frame often lingers for miniature eternities on Giovanni's saucer eyes. Indeed, I found a few of the slower bits trying.

A final word should be saved for the excellent music. It's composed by the electronic pioneer Haroumi Hosono and it mixes ominously structured synth composition with a Clockwork Orange style electro reworking of a few classical standards and hymns. It's suitable milky way music.

I'm not even going to try and conclude what the film ultimately means. It is very enigmatic. Yet there are clear messages about how to hang onto happiness through suffering, and stranger ones for us non-Buddhists about surrendering to death and the void. One thing is for sure..the misleading tagline about a young cat going on a magical journey has probably caused more punters to exclaim "what the fuck is this shit?" than the film deserves.