Alternative TitlesEnglish: Space Pirate Captain Harlock Synonyms: Harlock TV, Albator 78 Japanese: 宇宙海賊・キャプテンハーロック
Information
Type: TV
Episodes: 42
Status: Finished Airing
Aired: Mar 14, 1978 to Feb 13, 1979
Duration:
25 min. per episode Rating:
PG-13 - Teens 13 or older
L represents licensing company
StatisticsScore: 7.891 (scored by 1790 users)
Ranked: #6092
Popularity: #2034
Members: 5,503
Favorites: 72 1 indicates a weighted score
My Info
Popular Tags
action sci-fi |
SynopsisThe year is 2977. Mankind has become complacent and stagnant. All work is done by machines, while humans spend all their time on entertainment. But when a mysterious invader from the stars catches Earth unawares, only the legendary space pirate Captain Harlock and the crew of the Arcadia have the will to stand against them.
(Source: ANN) |
Related AnimeAdaptation: Uchuu Kaizoku Captain Harlock
Side story: Space Pirate Captain Herlock: Outside Legend - The Endless Odyssey, Cosmo Warrior Zero, Uchuu Kaizoku Captain Harlock: Arcadia-gou no Nazo
Prequel: Ginga Tetsudou 999 (Movie)
Sequel: Harlock Saga: Niibarungu no Yubiwa
Alternative version: Waga Seishun no Arcadia, Waga Seishun no Arcadia: Mugen Kidou SSX, Uchuu Kaizoku Captain Harlock (Movie)
Characters & Voice Actors
Staff
Reviews
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Merridian
55 of 63 people found this review helpful
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42 of 42 episodes seen
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| Overall |
9 |
| Story |
9 |
| Animation |
8 |
| Sound |
10 |
| Character |
10 |
| Enjoyment |
10 |
There is a reason this is considered to be one of the greatest anime series ever made. Take a healthy dose of outlaw vigilantism from the wild west, combine it with all your favorite pirate fantasy escapades, put it on a vaguely WWII-era stylized battleship, and set it in space. If you replace the six-shooter revolvers with plasma lasers that can double as rapiers, replace the battleship guns with ultra-powerful “pulsar cannons”, and replace the high seas and prevailing winds with gravitational anomalies and solar radiation, what will remain is about what you’ve got with Space Pirate Captain Harlock. Add one of the most endearing and enduring characters anime ever produced, and this is the series you’ll end up with. It even comes complete with a seemingly-unstoppable alien invasion, a lush back story to fill out the appropriate pacing measures, and a gunfight/dogfight/fistfight in nearly every episode!
The animation is surprisingly good for its time. You can certainly expect reuse of footage, along with sometimes-choppy transitions or movements, but it holds up fine today provided you’ve got an appreciation for older animation. There are some slight errors in how the cells are layered (one of which includes lights illogically going through Harlock’s slightly-transparent chest, for instance), but all of them are minor, brief, and they don’t interrupt the flow/continuity at all.
The story is classic. Perhaps typical of Leiji Matsumoto, the story is a hardcore adventure tale, taking all the aesthetics & themes of the wild west, high seas, and last frontier and blending them together into a wonderful story of loss, vengeance, desperation, and hope.
The directing is well-done for its time as well, though in some ways this shouldn’t be TOO much of a surprise (considering it was directed by none other than Rin Taro, who also directed another one of Matsumoto’s big-titles, the Galaxy Express 999 movie, among others). Framing techniques, contrast, use of forced perspective, and generally well-placed shots are used to wonderful affect; add to the table his proficient editing and it isn’t hard to see why he receives praise.
The soundtrack is easily one of the most memorable to date, bringing the atmosphere, writing, and directing into a cohesive whole with its western-style instrumentation and tone. It uses music to blend together the themes of hopelessness and despair with the constant heroism, lonesomeness, and melancholy that exemplify the tone of the series, as well as the crew of the Arcadia and the oppressors they fight against.
So… why a 9 instead of a 10? To be honest, it was a tough call to make. In fairness, I believe that it deserves the 10 for its time, however, even by today’s somewhat retro-standards, I think there were a few things that it “could have done better”. The characters, while perfectly suited to their setting, atmosphere, and interactions, will fail to live up to many audiences’ ‘modern’ standards of development. The story may come off as contrived to some, possibly two-dimensional with only a few remarkable plot twists to others. The way the narrative takes its time fleshing out its history may cause some to complain about its pace. And of course there are the rather dated issues of character models, backgrounds, and general animation quality. I personally believe that these things are not “faults” or “failings” of the show at all; rather, I think they simply serve to highlight how well the show sculpted an epic narrative out of the varying resources, tools, and ideals it had at its disposal.
The 10 it deserves implies that nearly everyone will enjoy this title, which sadly isn’t true. It’s dated qualities will no doubt turn many away, and it’s superficially two-dimensional story may ward off those unwilling to see some of the more subtle things going on under the surface. It has aged surprisingly well in spite of this, however, or perhaps because of it—Captain Harlock’s determined, stoic, resourceful, courageous, and only slightly brooding character has been impersonated, regurgitated, and repeated many times at this point, but even when this archetype is reiterated well, it always fails to live up to the original. Harlock is one of a kind, and Space Pirate Captain Harlock is similarly one of a kind. read more
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roriconfan
30 of 79 people found this review helpful
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42 of 42 episodes seen
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| Overall |
7 |
| Story |
5 |
| Animation |
7 |
| Sound |
8 |
| Character |
8 |
| Enjoyment |
5 |
ANIME NOSTALGIA SERIES
Full list of the review series can be found on this page, 3rd post from bottom:
http://anidb.net/perl-bin/animedb.pl?uid=251338&show=userpage&do=blog&blogid=29009&page=0
TEASER: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ih8Szk75HA&NR=1
Spaceship Yamato, season 4 … aka Captain Harlock. Leiji Matsumoto’s most famous work is basically him improving his Yamato formula even further, which is a nice thing. Yamato itself was improving in each season but the problem was I didn’t care at all about its heroes as much as I did for Dessler the recurring villain, and the comic relief robot Analyzer, who got shelved after the first season. Simply said, the protagonists were too goody and perfect for the average viewer to identify with for long, while the setting itself was too simplistic to care. So ok, bad aliens attack good Earth, perfect Yamato crew goes to fetch some super weapon by some far away planet to fight back… three times. Although the cast was getting greyer and livelier as the seasons went by, the story never had much variation so you ended up bored after awhile.
So here comes Harlock to boost the interest again by making Earth a place full of lazy, selfish, bored, gutless, bureaucratic capitalists, rotting away in the hollow pleasures of technology, without ever having improved their manners or mentality to hate, mock, and be afraid of anything different. The protagonist is in fact a space pirate, who pretty much got fed up with all this pointless conformitism, boards his most awesome scull themed spaceship and goes to live free as a bird in the vast regions of space.
At this point one already feels a much more exciting setting and characters than in Yamato. Or hell, than any other anime that preceded Harlock. For the first time in a mainstream series, Earth is not presented as an earthly paradise, full of perfect people, endless green forests and ecology friendly advanced cities. It is in fact presented as this shithole, full of idiots, living like ants in industrialized cities full of smog and grey colors. And the protagonist is finally not some who tries to protect the status quo from aliens who want to take over Earth and turn it to some hellish place. Because, duh, it already is.
Not that there aren’t any aliens in the series. Hell no, they keep invading Earth and every time they conquer it quite easily because the Earth military is useless. I mean, they always were useless in all anime but here you actually get to see them snoring, yawning, eating sausages and running around like scared chickens. Also, some of the aliens are actually somewhat sympathetic and even excuse their invasion to Earth as “we want to protect nature before you ruin everything” or something as understandable as “hey, you are a bunch of gutless idiots and we have superior technology so we have all the reason to conquer you.”
So here comes the familiar part where Harlock comes to the rescue and shows what a complicating figure he is. On one hand he despises the modern way of life on his planet and keeps looting cargo ships. On the other hand he protects the Earth because he knows there are lots of good people amongst those idiots; some of which are even family. Down to it, he does what pleases him and not because he simply has the duty to protect his planet from aliens and make no questions about it. Which is very cool.
I must point out that Harlock is not the first “liberal” character in anime, whose only goal is living the way he likes. Many years prior to him there already was Lupin the Third, featuring a thief after lots of money and pretty women, while making an ass out of the useless police. The main difference is that anime was a superficial comedic adventure while this is a dramatic space opera, aiming to transmit moral messages and question your own beliefs in the comforts of modern lifestyle. In a way, it is still a hot topic even today. Which quality wise, it makes it better. And this is practically why I never reviewed Lupin; it’s nothing else but the first show with a liberal character and zany adventure and with zero overall plot or further analysis. I wouldn’t have anything to write about other than that; unlike of Harlock, with its multi-façade of situations.
As my next point in the analysis, I would like to address how technology ends up playing too much of an important role, which kinda overshadows any attempt at social criticism. I mean, the aliens have better technology and thus take over Earth and Harlock wins because his guns are bigger than the aliens. Plus his spaceship is made from a metal stronger than half a meter of reinforced Adamantium +5, which makes all battles one sided and thus boring. Jeez, this part is as stupid as in Yamato; it was also a ship that could never be destroyed. So yeah, they had animation restrictions and in order to reuse the same footage over and over they had to keep the spaceships look intact all the time. That still makes you feel like the battles are unfair. Hell, Harlock pretty much owns more dues ex hidden super attacks that his ship is simply not able to store them all.
And sure, the same thing can be said about any other sci-fi or mecha show as well; the good robots or spaceships would only shake with a hundred nukes while enemy ships would blow up with a single energy beam. But as I said in an earlier review, the more complicating a story is, the more justification it needs in order to be excused. There was no internal struggle in classical mecha shows like Mazinger or Getta Robo. The heroes were right, the villains were wrong; the outcome was clear. It didn’t have to go further than that but in the case of Harlock’s greyer world, this is actually a point of notice.
What I mean is that although on paper the ideology of the series is very intriguing, especially at the time it was made, it still lacks complete realism and practical justification. Harlock is not right because his anarchic way of life is better than Earth’s or the aliens’. He just has infinite hit points and lands critical hits with 99% probability. Thank you very much; we should be glad he doesn’t feel like raping women or blowing up planets for fun.
Another thing that is constant in all of Leiji’s works is the grim atmosphere of the world. Everything looks so dark and dead and hopeless, but the heroes keep fighting for a better future, which is also the main grip of his works. I on the other hand was never fond of all this depressing, gloomy, tearful settings, despite the fact I admit they are more interesting than the average retro mecha. It just feels like I’m supposed to feel bad about my style of life, when in fact I was just 12 the first time I watched the series and my world was still full of joy and rainbows. But I understand that the worldview of the series is a lot closer to the Japanese people, whose country was devastated during WW2 and their way of life was drastically changed from traditional agriculture to this grim capitalistic industry of today. So ok, I guess it appeals a lot more to them than to me, who found the whole fuss back then to be too melodramatic for no reason. I was just expecting for some good action to come along and all I got was these one-sided skirmishes. So yeah, of course I didn’t like it when I was just 12.
My image of Leiji’s works has improved now but that still does not excuse those dreadful character designs of his. I mean why does he always draw old people and cats so horribly bad? Are they supposed to be comical or sympathetic this way? I hated them! I couldn’t even stare at them! Harlock and his personal harem look great with those eye patches and war scars and funky hairstyles. And then next to him come these lame simplistic caricatures and make you wonder if they even belong to the same species. I have read how this is an optical trick to point out how strong his importance and ideals are, while all the rest are just pointless extra meant to fade by comparison. Well ok, I still don’t like it.
Overall, this is a great improvement over Yamato and any other setting in anime up to then but it still has lots of things to facepalm at. The battles are still not exciting since the ships are indestructible and the overall story despite its more complicating nature is not really worth so many episodes per season. There was still room for improvement…
BTW, the current holder of this sort of story is One Piece. It also has pirates who also want to live a free life, also fight against the authorities, and always end up protecting the world from megalomaniacs. Plus, old people and cats don’t look horrible and the setting is not making you all emo inside. read more
Recommendations
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Space battles in massive ships. Space Pirate Captain Harlock is one of the many sources of TTGL and Simon's design in the final part is actually inspired directly by Harlock. It is a lot of fun and great to watch and note the similarities with today's animes. Harlock was (and still is) a very influential anime.
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Harlock and his crew are practically banned from Earth while they fight to protect it from an alien race called the Mazone, which resemble beautiful women in appearance. In Ideon the group who discover the "Solo Ship" and the Ideon end up being pushed away from their homeworld as well, with nowhere to run while being chased by the mysterious Buff Clan that resemble humans themselves. In both shows, the casts home is ... their spaceship, with nowhere else to go.
If you can appreciate old art and animation it's easy to say both shows still look great to this day, with the exception of Ideon's recurring stock footage here and there. The Harlock series has better pacing and a much more likeable and developed cast all around, while Ideon is strikingly a bit more darker in tone and very desperate in nature. Both have incredibly impressive soundtracks, orchestrated and all. By the end of these two shows you yourself might be out of breath, as you'll feel like you went through these huge adventures personally. Typical of Tomino stuff Ideon is a little quirkier at times and has mecha, but overall the show is far more space drama than some of his other works. Overall, both have a lot of similar themes and ideas, with very different styles and executions in terms of writing/directing. But in the end these are two amazing, action packed, and adventure filled classic space dramas.
And please note: Be Invoked IS the ending to Ideon. Episode 39 is just a sampler.
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Opening Theme"Albator, Le Corsair de L'Espace" by Eric Charden
"Captain Harlock" by Ichiro Mizuki
"Take to the Sky" by Mark Mercury
Ending Theme"We're Going On A Journey" by Ichirou Mizuki
Fansubbing Groups
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Related ClubsOld School Anime - Brasil , The Endless Odyssey, Harlock_Albator FC, Anime History Association, Fan Parody Panic, Space Opera Fan Club, The Real Man Club, Anfiniti Network, This Is The True Spirit of Men!, Space Opera Fans, Anime Punch, Leijiverse, Actores y actrices de doblaje de Latinoamérica / Latin spanish seiyuu, Old School Anime Club, MAL: The Later Years, Anime Blue
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