I first learned about Captain Harlock sometime in the late 70s. Since finding concrete information about the character was next to impossible at that time in Longmont Colorado I naturally made up many of my own stories about him. This happened a lot with Japanese creations, as who knew there would be such easy access to them later on in life? It happened a lot. Harlock had such a great look to him that I also invented my own space opera about pirates and illustrated them, or at least large storyboards. It was fun and made me more creative overall.
Still, I really wanted to see the cartoons based on these images. He just looked so cool. Once I learned more about the story the desire to see the cartoon grew. This happened with a few other series- Cyborg 009, the Mazinga saga and Yuusha Raideen to name three others. As far as I knew it was only a pipe dream at that point.
This slowly brings us to this movie, which is pretty good, though why they couldn't have used real actors is beyond me. It's beautifully animated and looks great, though cg people never look right to me.
The story is... adequate. It's more like a middle story arc, as Harlock doesn't quite seem to be the main character in his own movie. I get what they were trying to do, but you'd think since he's the titular character it would be more about him. They rectify this somewhat halfway through the movie.
It's not overlong, which is good nor does it have excessive false endings, which are so overdone now as to be cliche. It's worth a view, though I don't feel the urge to own it. I think I'll watch the original series now though.
This slowly brings us to this movie, which is pretty good, though why they couldn't have used real actors is beyond me. It's beautifully animated and looks great, though cg people never look right to me.
The story is... adequate. It's more like a middle story arc, as Harlock doesn't quite seem to be the main character in his own movie. I get what they were trying to do, but you'd think since he's the titular character it would be more about him. They rectify this somewhat halfway through the movie.
It's not overlong, which is good nor does it have excessive false endings, which are so overdone now as to be cliche. It's worth a view, though I don't feel the urge to own it. I think I'll watch the original series now though.
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