La regina dei mille anni

This is an anime that brings "Star Wars" to shame. It has flaws in animation, logic and character development, but its written and directed with such a bravura that you just have to be fascinated. What is "Queen Millenia" about? Here's a plot summary of the complex story;

Tokyo, 1999. Profesor Hajime has from his observatory discovered the 10th planet of our Solar system, La Metall. But La Metall has a VERY eccentric orbit and as he emerges behind the distant Pluto it is headed right towards Earth. By calculations it will come to the Earth the nearest on 9th September 1999, at 9 o'clock, 9 minutes and 9 seconds (I know how naive that sounds). La Metall is gigantic and cowered with ice, so there for it won't be damaged too much, but the Earth seems doomed because it will be shaken by Metall's gravitational pull! La Metall is also inhabited by a strange (human like) civilisation situated under its surface and ruled by a queen. She plans to kidnap a large number of humans from Earth and use them as slaves. On Earth, the queen's daughter Yukino has been "ruling" the man kind in order to create a colony for La Metall. But Yukino has started regarding her false human parents as friends and the rest of humanity as well. She is working for Profesor Amamori and offers to help him to somehow save the Earth. Amamori's nephew Hajime, a young boy who's parents have been killed because they had plans for building a space ship that could help humans, is trying to help too. Complicating matters are some sort of generals from La Metall that are trying to sabotage everything on Earth. As La Metall comes closer Yukino finds out a black hole is to blame for its orbit. The only way to destroy the black hole and bring La Metall from its curse is a drastic measure...

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Even this small summary is complicated, but this sci-fi TV show really is pure gold. I almost didn't want to bother with it because of the weird animation of Hajime and Amamori. They are drawn somewhat like Homer Simpson, with gigantic mouth and small eyes! Which is weird since all other characters are drawn normally. I hate this animation trademark from Leiji Matsumoto, but once you get use to it everything becomes brilliant. Some scenes are pure genius (La Metall coming so close to Earth it is visible in the sky) and the story is full of messages about how stronger societies shouldn't take advantage of the weaker ones.

Its touching, easy to follow and full of exciting moments, but has almost no humor. Still, an excellent nostalgic anime- maybe even one of the best ones out there- and an awful shame because its still nowhere available on DVD. That's why only Brian Camp and me have written a comment. With an anime of such legendary reputation, this must get a royal treatment someday, even on TV! The last time it was aired in Germany, for example, was way back in 1991. Too bad. This one is a keeper.

Grade: 8/10

"Queen Millennia" (1981), a Japanese animated TV series, told essentially the same story presented in the feature film spin-off (QUEEN MILLENNIA, 1982) of the impending disaster awaiting Earth as a rival planet, La Metalle, approaches it. The title character, who has reigned on Earth for a thousand years, finds to her dismay that the people of La Metalle, her home planet, have sinister designs on Earth, so she resolves to fight back and defend her adopted planet.

Because it had 42 half-hour episodes in which to tell the story, the TV series was able to take its time, build the story, introduce the characters gradually and give the viewers a chance to get to know them, starting with young Hajime, an amateur astronomer, whose uncle, Professor Amamori, runs the observatory on Mt. Tsukuba. When his parents are killed in a suspicious blast at their home, Hajime goes to live at the observatory and is taken under the wing of Amamori's secretary, Yukino Yayoi, a pretty blonde who also works part-time at her parents' noodle shop in an outlying district of Tokyo. Unbeknownst to Hajime (and to the viewers for quite a few episodes), Yukino is actually Queen Millennia and it will be her job to confront the opposing planet when it gets near.

Although the series is set in 1999, it avoids the futuristic trappings of the movie version. Instead, the animators take great pains to present a more realistic, everyday Tokyo, with its noodle shops, elementary school activities, parkland, and sprawling waterfront. The backgrounds are beautifully painted and laden with evocative details. The series gives its characters lots of quiet, reflective moments and suitable spaces in which to indulge them. Hajime frequently flashes back to his home life, his parents and his old room. The animators convey his emotional state with an artistry clearly keyed to balancing the needs of the characters with the demands of the complex science fiction storyline. Overall, the series is filled with the kind of artistic touches that were common in Japanese animated series in the pre-digital era, particularly that golden period of the 1980s.

The series was created by Leiji Matsumoto, the pioneering manga artist/anime creator best known for "Galaxy Express 999" and "Captain Harlock" and their numerous movie/TV spin-offs. (He also designed "Space Battleship Yamato.") Interestingly, the "Queen Millennia" TV series is seemingly the most realistic production he's been involved in, at least in terms of surface details. Please note that the striped cat which appears in many Matsumoto works belongs to Yukino here and is called "Leiji."