It’s Unstreamable! Where Jas Keimig and Chase Burns recommend movies and TV shows you can't watch on major streaming services in the United States. We post on Wednesdays unless we’re tired or busy 😊
CHASE: ICYMI: We’re screening Rintaro’s Metropolis (2001) early next month at Northwest Film Forum. It’s Unstreamable! It’s great! And leading up to it, we’re doing ALL ANIME all month for the column. This week, I’m starting with Galaxy Express 999 (1979), another Rintaro-directed movie about cyborgs and AI.
JAS: And I keep finding spiders all over my house, so why not watch a movie where bugs have mercilessly taken over the planet?
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Japan, 1979, 128 minutes, Dir. Rintarô
It's a cosmic journey on a space-train. There are no space-railway tracks. The train just sorta worms its way around the stars.
Created by manga artist Leiji Matsumoto in the late '70s, Galaxy Express 999 is a space opera with hippie-modern style. It's a blend of old-world nostalgia and futuristic fantasy, pulling together elements of traditional steam locomotives with the infinite cosmos. It rotates around a young boy, Tetsuro, who goes on an interstellar quest for a mechanical body—because in this galaxy, robots can live forever, at least that's what he’s told, and his mother's death really traumatized him, so he'd prefer to just be a robot.
The first Galaxy Express 999 film, released in the middle of its manga's run, is mostly a recap of its TV series and manga. Because of that, it's a little bloated and slow—but its century-mixing style, full of '70s quirks, keeps it chugging. It also helped make its director Rintaro famous. He started his career directing Astro Boy episodes and is probably most known for directing Metropolis, and you can see all those vibes whirling here. CHASE BURNS
PS: I think Martha Stewart would like this movie! She's currently working on an AI version of herself so she can give people housekeeping advice eternally and always. AI Martha would totally serve in Galaxy Express 999.
Find it in the Animation Room in the Anime/Manga section.
Japan, 2002, 99 minutes, Dir. Koichi Ohata
The future is full of bugs. At least, in the future of the world in Blue Gender: The Warrior. This mecha is centered around Yuji, a young dude with a terminal disease who was put into cryogenic sleep in the early 2000s and awoke 30 years later to a changed planet. Giant bugs with labial mouths called Blues have taken over Earth and become top of the food chain. An elite team of ruthless mech pilots are tasked with exterminating this deadly infestation, and Yuji ends up joining alongside the quiet-yet-brutally-focused Marlene. There’s guts, tons of blood, an Earth Two, and a lil romance.
Because Blue Gender: The Warrior is a condensed cut of the 26-episode anime series Blue Gender, this 99-minute movie moves at a breakneck pace that’s a little hard to follow. Yuji and Marlene bounce from place to place, going through trials and tribulations at an almost comically fast pace. While it boasts some new animation and scenes, the ending differs wildly from the original series because of how much plot they had to squeeze in—and critics didn’t love it. Regardless, it’s a beautifully composed and grisly movie with big Starship Trooper vibes. JAS KEIMIG
Find it in the Animation Room in the Anime/Manga section.
Looking for more? Browse our big list of 350+ hard-to-find movies over on The Stranger.
*The fine print: Unstreamable means we couldn’t find it on Netflix, Hulu, Shudder, Disney+, or any of the other hundreds of streaming services available in the United States. We also couldn’t find it available for rent or purchase through platforms like Prime Video or iTunes. Yes, we know you can find many things online illegally, but we don’t consider user-generated videos, like unauthorized YouTube uploads, to be streamable.
