Albator '84: L'Atlantis de ma jeunesse

The second movie for the festival is another anime, albeit an older one, belonging to the 80s. I vaguely remember watching the series on television as I recall the familiarity of the pirate motif spaceship. But maybe I remembered wrong, as there are plenty of such space aged cartoons in those days, like Macross, Gundam, and the likes.

The introduction already put me off, with a really repetitive Phantom Harlock flying his red biplane and monotonous introduction of his name, over and over again. The plot takes some getting used to, with the bombastic names as we follow this rogue pilot/pirate in his quest to duel with Commander Zeda of the Illmidus alien race.

Watching this early 80s animation brings about the obvious comparisons and observation of how advanced animated movies have become. It's obviously 2-D drawings here, and plenty of details which were not possible to be included. Things like background characters having continuity presence issues (varying numbers amongst a crowd in a constant setting), and objects appearing and disappearing for the same reason that drawing by hand, takes up time, and yet draws attention to themselves. And having to draw many, well, sometimes animators do become lazy. This is most unlike today's computer generated graphics where crowd and objects are rendered with a click of the button, and possibly given some artificial intelligence along the way so that they can seem to "act" independently.

Space battles have become a dime a dozen, and watching this film today, sadly, the battles are not as exciting as it should have been, with its numerous laser cannon scenes. Some scenes were repeated by showing stock clips over and over again, and brings back fond memories of how, as a kid, you tend to see past these shortcomings, and enjoy the animation for what it is. In today's standards, this will be judged more like stemming from the indifference from the animators, and the lack of pride and professionalism.

The characters here are typical of Japanese anime, with weird coloured hairdos, and quite surprisingly, this movie loads up on the melodramatics and exaggerated dialogue. Compared with anime of today, there has been vast improvement in story pacing, setting, and character design.

While there were families and kids watching Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, and this one, it wasn't unexpected that this anime too had its fair share of walk outs, probably because of the hard-to-grasp storyline for toddlers, or the insane need to read subtitles and then explaining to the kids what some of the imaginary words meant.

P.S. somehow the screening was marred by the speakers set to maximum volume. The dialogue and musical fanfare just got drilled through your ears into your head and probably gave everyone a splitting headache watching it. The first boo-boo for the festival, and I really hope it's the last.

I had this movie on video tape years ago in Japanese with subtitles and I loved it. It's a modern epic. I recently it saw it dubbed in English and the voice acting was some of the worse I've ever heard, plus the wonderful music was mixed so low it was barely there. I will add this to my collection, but only if I can find the original Japanese with subtitles and the original sound mix.

As a big fan of the original Harlock television series I got this film with big expectations. It's good, dark anime that has a few confusing moments. My real problem is the departure from the storyline established in the series. It makes the film a little incoherent if you remember the show.

The world and character building is beautiful. You can see the thought put into the uniforms, the ship designs, and the factions at play. Technologies and natural wonders have rules around their interaction, and they are never broken.

Even characters you don't suspect have unique moral values, and they all scheme and act upon those values. I can trace the through-lines of the protagonists and the antagonists, and that's the mark of a well-rounded script.

However, I must contrast this with the goofy moments, for example action scenes that are prolonged solely for melodrama. I watched this with my father, and he regarded it as one of the worst films he'd ever seen. I don't blame him. Anime from my experience seems allergic to subtlety and nuance. This film, at least in its cinematography, is hardly an exception. From characters stating what they feel at any given moment to its obnoxiously blatant WWII motifs, you might tune out if you take it scene by scene.

However, as a whole, especially if you appreciate older animation, I recommend this as a well woven tapestry of storytelling.

First of all it has to be said that i saw the movie in Italian language, so maybe the translation didn't help.

The movie jumps from a scene to another without any sense, the "deus ex machina" director solves EVERY problem the characters may have: they must find someone? next scene somehow they meet him/her/them.

They look for someone in a planet and magically they land right next to them. And this happens for EVERYTHING and anyone looking for someone/something.

The story itself has many holes, some of them very disappointing, the dialogs are sometimes absurd: "it's impossible to find any weapons!" (said by the captain 20 seconds after punching an enemy soldier and taking his rifle). The characters are absolutely flat and do not evolve : the story adds nothing to the characters development: they start and end exactly the same characters like nothing happened.

The appearing of Mr Bird is somehow ridiculous. This is a sad stain on my memory of the Captain.