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Captain Harlock
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:CreationDate: 2014-03-19 12:04:26
:Id: anime/review/captain-harlock
:tags: - anime
- review
:rating: 3
:original: http://www.easternkicks.com/reviews/space-pirate-captain-harlock
After "`Space Battleship Yamato <../yamato/>`_", another one of
MATSUMOTO Leiji's (松本零士) works gets a movie reboot: *the* space
pirate, Captain Harlock.
Harlock first appeared on television in 1978, saving the Earth of 2978
from invading aliens called Mazons. That Earth was dying, its
resources long depleted, dependent on imports of food and materials
from other colonised planets; all work was done by machines, and the
population was kept docile through subliminal messages in every
entertainment broadcast. Harlock had rebelled against the world's
governments, and had taken to the skies to live free, with a small
crew, on the Arcadia. He and all his shipmates had been branded as
traitors and criminals, but they still fought against the invaders,
because they still loved Earth and cared for its people.
This movie opens with a voice-over that sets a different premise: in
an unspecified far future, humanity left Earth, but they ended up with
stagnating and dying societies spread over the Galaxy. They tried
going back to Earth, but there were too many people, and a war
ensued. To end the war, Earth was declared an untouchable sanctuary,
nobody was allowed to go back on it, and all the various colonies were
essentially left to wither and die. Harlock fights the sort-of
government in charge of keeping people out of Earth, because he has a
plan to allow everyone to go back. His whole motivation is a bit
unclear, and this Harlock is not the same one we see in the various
animated series and movies: I'm not going into details, because I
don't want to spoil the only interesting plot twist, but let's just
say that he's not the paladin of justice and freedom he'd like to
appear. I'm not sure if Matsumoto had any part in this change, but it
felt like an unneeded dirtying of the character.
What's more upsetting, though, is that Harlock is not even the
protagonist of the movie: it's Yama, a new character, who drives the
story and through whose eyes we get to know all the other
characters. And with Yama rests my biggest complaint: he's the most
blatant `Mary Sue </mary-sue/>`_ I've ever seen on film. He manages to
get accepted on board by uttering a single word; as soon as he mans
the guns everybody notices how good he is; he saves the Arcadia from
destruction *twice*; the resolution of the whole plot is in his
hands. I mean, I understand the viewer's need for a character to
identify with, but this is a bit extreme. Yama has one big redeeming
feature, though: he is able to change his opinion in the face of
updated information; when he realises that the beliefs that informed
his previous actions did not match reality, he uses the new
information to take different actions. Too often I see character who
keep doing the same things even when it doesn't make sense anymore!
Another, minor but not small, problem I have with this film is the
excessive use of off-screen commentary (I can't really call it
"narration", apart from the first few minutes when it establishes the
setting), of long expositions by the various characters, and of
useless technobabble. On this last point, I want to underscore that
Matsumoto very rarely seemed to care about how his science-fictional
creations worked: they just did, in the exact way that served the
story; he didn't need to dazzle the audience with random big words.
On the plus side, the film is visually quite good, with very good use
of 3D, spectacular battles, and well detailed faces and costumes
(let's ignore the way the characters move, animated as they are
without motion capture…).
If you can track down the first TV series, I suggest you watch at
least the first and the last episode, to get a feel of Harlock as he
was conceived. If you want something more recent, try Cosmo Warrior
Zero. If instead you like your heroes very, very flawed, and you can
ignore some shaky characterisation, or maybe you're looking mostly for
engaging space battles, you'll appreciate this movie much more than
I did.
