Maetel

The enigmatic woman who gives the young boy Tetsurou his ticket on the Galaxy Express 999. As beautiful as she is wise, Maetel provides constant support and guidance for Tetsurou throughout his travels.

Maetel is known for her calm and caring nature while also contrasting her mysterious motives and unhesitating towards anyone who would do her or anyone under her care harm. Maetel admires people of true courage and passion and dislikes the related emotions of bravado, arrogance, and anger seeing them as self-destructive means to an end. As such, Maetel is highly against anyone who would do any action merely on the act of self-preservation and implores people who have not fallen such as her escortee Tetsuro Hoshino to look at people's perspective from an insightful point of view.

When she was younger, Maetel still had her view on true strength, rejecting her mother's plan to convert every person on La Metal into androids. Yet she was rather naive and wanted to take any chance to reconnect with her mother in spite of Emeraldas' protests. Her numerous battles and encounters with Emeraldas, Captain Harlock, and Tochiro Oyama leads Maetel to become a hardened yet compassionate person who seeks to find the very best of people who can find an enlightenment beyond what has become established.

In Leiji Matsumoto's own words:

"[Maetel] is the woman who travels with an adolescent boy's dreams. She's traveled with millions, tens of millions of boys, so far. In fact, there are as many Maetels as there are boys. That's also how she can show up in any story. All boys have met Maetel in different forms of encounter. That goes for Antares or Emeraldas or Harlock, as well. They are all crossed over, and they can all be separate stories on their own. So if you change perspectives, you can make as many stories as you like. The characters of Shadow and Emeraldas, who were girls in their adolescence, have met someone called Maetel, in the heart, from their childhood, or during the time when they were full of dreams. It's a train ride through one's mind, or the train that travels along with one. And each person has a different journey...."

(Sources: Anime Interviews: The First Five Years of Animerica, Anime & Manga Monthly, First Printing in 1997. Toki No Wa Wiki)