Space Pirate Captain Harlock

Saw this around 1980 when the local Spanish UHF station was taken over by Nippon TV every Saturday night. I count my blessings that it was subtitled and not the hideous US dubbed version that turns up in closeout bins.

Great stories, great voices and great music. Animation quality went in and out but the overall design of the show was exceptional. This was the place that the famed anime director Rin Taro got his start.

Without going into a detailed description, I'll just say the the next anime that inspired me so completely has been Cowboy Bebop. Extremely hard to find now even in Japan, I'll forever curse my cheapness and not taping every episode. VHS tapes were about $20 a piece back then, I was working as a bike messenger and the SLP recording speed didn't exist yet.

As a correction to another post; there was absolutely no "sex" in this show, although some brief nudity when the evil aliens got blown up!

This series is my favorite of all Japanese anime. It is an epic tale of freedom. Young Daiba Tadashi loses his scientist father to a mysterious assassin and winds up joining Captain Harlock and crew in there fight to protect Earth from the Mazone, a species of women bent on destroying humanity. Earth society has become corrupt and apathetic and does not see the threat it faces... so why would Captain Harlock care about Earth who has declared him an outlaw? He has promised to protect the young daughter of his best friend who died before the series begins so she can have a world to grow up in.

Like many Japanese anime TV shows this one is full of human drama, characters who face inner conflicts, adventure that spans the galaxy, and stories that entertain with each episode.

I first watched this series in the late 70s when I live in Hawaii on the local independent TV station that was mostly Japanese programming, KIKU-TV. I think another TV station, maybe the one in San Francisco did the original subtitling.

This TV animation series was huge in the French speaking world and ALL my friends would sit together in front of the TV after school (at my friends house of course, and watch, mesmerised, at the beauty of the space travel, the silvidres, Albator himself was so gorgeous! And that song, my neighbour had it on 45" but my family never spent money on such trivial things (late 70s, that's how my parents were). There was a usually a lot of gohrish violence and death, but also lot's of drama, I especially remember Albator's Sadness at being far from his daughter, and that beautiful haunting little tune she played on her eucarina, he saw so little of her and feared for her security and happiness. I've heard many complaints about the English dubbing, but in my memory, the french dubbing was fine, but I was very young back then, and had not much concepts of dubbing, or foreign cultures! I wish I could see it again! If you get a chance don't miss it. One thing though, I think to truly appreciate it, you need to see the whole series, chronologically.

No plot, no character development, subpar animation, dated ubergigamegahyper sexism, I don't care if this series was influential in its days nor if it gets better on the longer run, not gonna bother anymore. Maybe the following series with the same characters were good, but this one is not. The music, on the other hand, is well done, hence the two instead of one star only. NEXT!

Here is another "retro" anime series from Toei that I automatically loved after watching it on DVD. The box set just caught my eye, and as a fan of Toei Animation, I had to buy it.

This series is based on a manga that became wildly successful after the series, movies, and OVAs (original video animation) were made. The story is set in the year 2977, when, despite advances in technology and space colonialism, Earth is in a semi-dystopian state where everybody lazily goes about their entertainment, like greyhound or horse races that the planet's inept government takes part in. But there is one man who strongly disapproves of what goes on: Captain Harlock, who had become a space pirate fighting against the government along with his crew on the spaceship Arcadia. But when plant-based aliens known as the Mazone plan to invade Earth, Harlock and his crew are now the planet's only hope.

I love little Mayu Oyama. I thought she was a cute kid. For pairings, I shipped Kei Yuki and the newest member of the Arcadia, Tadashi Daiba, and I don't mean boats. I also ship Zorba the Tokargan and Lucia the Mazone nurse from episode twenty-four. So overall, I really love this series for its superb animation and sci-fi action.