Captain Herlock

An extravagant show-piece of 3D rendering technology that's unfortunately bogged down by a needlessly convoluted plot, filled with TV-soap drama and characters who didn't know what they were doing.

If you don't care about making head or tails of a story, and only want the first 5 minutes of space carnage in Revenge of the Sith filling an entire feature film, this is your jam - Harlock repeatedly rams a cheat-enabled auto-healing battleship head-first into swarms of pleasingly weighty metal behemoths, crunching, crushing huge complex components amidst a light show of ray weaponry triggering chain explosions. Releasing endorphins in a primal part of our brains that ... finds a pleasing satisfaction in breaking up and disintegrating objects. The film brings TWO mega space weapons to boot, which is a bit of a missed opportunity when Arcadia didn't explode them as well.

If only the film just focused on being an unapologetic orgy of explosions a la Michael Bay, instead, it succumbed to that most common of afflictions in Japanese 3D animation - melodrama. Three of four recruits were killed in the beginning, why? So Harlock can look like an angsty hard-ass. There's an entire subplot of sibling rivalry, why? Because the glasses-wearing douche needed an excuse to be all cold and aloof. Why does he hate him? Because the younger idiot randomly opened a valve that caused an explosion. Why did he open that valve? Because he was angry! WHY?!?!?!? If you want melodrama, at least establish a clear root cause! Or else you're just brooding for the sake of brooding!

And what was the point of the subplot melodrama? What did the brooding bros do except creating unnecessary conflict out of nothing and dragging countless lives with them? What was the point of making the alien the last of her race? Just to make it depressing or is her backstory integral to the central tenet of the story? In which case WHY did she become the last of her race? Either TELL us, or don't include these half-baked headless characters that don't MEAN anything!

Even the namesake of the film, Harlock himself, is apparently a complete idiot with NO idea of what he's doing! He unleashed dark matter to "protect" Earth only to ravage it, then to... "make up" for his own colossal f***-up, he decides, on behalf of 500 billion lives, to end the universe and start anew?! HE'S THE REASON IT'S SCREWED UP IN THE FIRST PLACE!!!

To explain a bit of the film's background, the Harlock of the original series was an archetypical ROMANTIC hero - a lone voice of hope against alien tyranny, like a Rebel leader of the original trilogy. He was NOT a nihilistic, emo kid that succumbed to a hopelessness of HIS OWN FAULT, and decided to end everything with himself! And this selfish **** is the HERO of this film?!?!? Shouldn't he be the villain and root cause of all these problems?!?!

Leiji Matsumoto revolutionised manga into a more mature, "realist" direction, his Space Battleship Yamato is a case study of tackling suffocating nihilism right. As far as I'm concerned this film remake neither inherited the true romantic spirit of the real Harlock, nor did it successfully bring in the nihilism of Matsumoto's other works. All of the problems the characters face are of THEIR OWN MAKING - they're not heroes, they're not anti-heroes, they're just brooding teens in their puberties throwing a tantrum from breaking their own playstation. It speaks volumes when the only tolerable characters are an emotionless, backstory-less alien and a catatonic woman.

I really wish some screenwriters would mature out of their brooding bros, whether it be Cloud, Noctis, or these insufferable "hero" villains.

p.s. minus points for that one weird gratuitous zero-grav shower scene, for god's sake some Japanese animation, GROW UP!

this one is a struggle, the animation is surprisingly good. aside from that the issue with the story is that there is none, it's a mess with no real chance to connect with any character.

however, if you want a nice movie to look at and are able to get distracted by the pretty visuals of the battle even though you have no idea why it happened, consider this a recommendation. I know I liked it in the "so bad it's good" way (and I found it completely for free on youtube so it was a winning situation)

the characters don't seem to be anything ... like the 70s anime, but perhaps they are so bland that you can project the personality you want them to have easily. the female characters in the show also have typical "you have a great personality" body types and the whole aesthetic resembles final fantasy cutscenes of around the same era.