starring Makio Inoue, Kei Tomiyama
directed by Tomoharu Katsumata
130 minutes
in Japanese with English subtitles
Harlock returns to Earth which is now occupied by an army of aliens. Some humans continue to resist the aliens, others are working with them. Halock goes looking for an old friend, Maya. Harlock finds a new friend, Tochiro, before he finds Maya. Harlock and Tochiro are captured Zoll, a man from the planet Tokarga. He uses a piece to technology to reveal to them that their ancestors were once friends.
Harlock goes looking for Maya once again. This time he finds her but they get separated after they are attacked by the aliens. Tochiro meets Emereldas, the captain of a pirate ship that just crashed on Earth. Tochiro helps to repair her ship.
La Mime overhears that the aliens have plans to destroy Tokarga. Zoll and some others from Tokarga team up with Harlock, Tochiro, La Mime and Emereldas. Zoll, Esmereldas, and Maya stay on Earth. Harlock, Tochiro, and La Mime take off in the Arcadia, a ship that Tochiro built, for Tokarga.
Maya and Emereldas are captured and almost executed. Zoll and an uprising of humans and soldiers from Tokarga rescue the pair. Zoll is killed by the Prime Minister of Earth during the rescue mission.
The Arcadia arrives on Tokarga only to find that it has already been devastated. The aliens blow up the planet as the Arcadia is leaving. The Arcadia returns to Earth where it has to deal with the alien occupation force.
Thoughts
Tomoharu Katsumata was (according to IMDb) the chief director of UFO Robo Grendizer.
I watched this movie on Crunchyroll. It can be found for free on more than one streaming service but those versions are all dubbed in English. The dubbing is atrocious. I watched the first 40 minutes of the movie dubbed before seeking out the subbed version. I signed up for a free trial of Crunchy Roll so that I could watch the subtitled version of this movie.
This movie has lots of little moments that don't exactly add up. I've done my best to summarize the movie but honestly it doesn't make much sense to me. There was way too much story here. I think that what happened is that they wrote a bunch of 25 minute episodes and then smashed them together into a movie. If I were to break this into individual episodes then this is how I would probably do it.
- Episode 1: Harlock returns to Earth and meets Zoll; La Mime and the aliens are introduced
- Episode 2: Harlock and Tochiro meet for the first time and learn about their ancestors shared past
- Episode 3: Harlock finds Maya; Tochiro meets Emereldas for the first time
- Episode 4: La Mime informs Zoll about the plan to destroy Tokarga; Harlock, Tochiro, and La Mime depart for Tokarga; the aliens capture and almost execute Maya and Emereldas; Zoll is killed
- Episode 5: Harlock and the others arrive at Tokarga only to discover that it has already been devastated; they just barely avoid getting killed when the planet is destroyed
- Episode 6: Harlock and the other return to Earth and deal with the aliens
I can see how elements in this movie resemble elements from the 1978 Captain Harlock TV show but it doesn't feel like a continuation of the story as much as it does an alternated reality version of the story. I would have gotten considerably less from this movie if I had not seen the 1978 show.
The animation is much better than in the 1978 TV show. I was thinking of watching the Endless Orbit SSX series after watching this movie. The SSX series is a follow on of sorts to this movie, as I understand it, but now I'm thinking maybe I should just stop here and move on to something else in terms of anime.
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