Captain Harlock

Matsumoto's future is dominated by an earth-based starfaring civilization that is slowly but steadily succumbing to ennui; against the general apathy rises Captain Harlock, a scarred, moody space pirate leading the misfit crew (which includes an alcohol imbibing alien, Meet, a robot and a drunken doctor) of the cyborg starship Alkadia in a number of Robin Hood-esque assaults on Earth ships. But soon more urgent matters are at hand - a huge black metal sphere impacts the Earth capital city and ancient Mayan legends appear to be walking the Earth again.

In fact, Earth is now in the sights of the Mazonese, a race of vegetal-based, Modigliani-necked women that explored our world in the mythic past and are now back to grab it. Only Harlock and his mismatched crew have the know-how and the spark to face the enemy.

Matsumoto is at his best when dealing with the vastness of space and the darkness of the human heart, and Captain Harlock provides him with plenty opportunities to ply his art. The episodes features some astute directing stunts (split-screen, flashbacks) and are excellently served by a symphonic score executed by the Tokyo Philharmonic. For all its pulpy space-opera feeling and its action, the series raises a number of issues - from the importance of challenges in the life of men to the limits of violence as a solution to both small- and large-scale problems. The outcast Harlock is well aware of the plight of the Mazonese, a refugee people fleeing a dying planet, and finds neither pleasure nor vindication in his battles nor in his final, melancholic victory. Some of the mechanical design on the series is strongly reminiscent of the first Star Wars film, even if the original Harlock manga predates the American movie. As a result, a heated debate about "who stole what" is still raging among the fans.

In 1982 the character was reprised in the animated feature film My Youth in Arkadia, designed as a prequel to the 1979 series. The movie was followed by 22 episodes of the SSX series, again set before the original 1979 storyline and describing the events leading to Harlock's exile from Earth. Both film and second series feature a newly designed starship and lack most of the original crew, but are noteworthy for the presence of Queen Emeraldas, a female counterpart to Harlock originally appearing in a series of Matsumoto-penned graphic novels (manga).

In the 1990s, Matsumoto also released a short series variously known as Harlock Saga or as The Ring of the Nibelung. Set to the music of Richard Wagner and following the Siegfried legend, the story is once again set in Harlock's earlier days, and pits him against a race of "gods" set on redesigning the universe to their liking. The series' foremost point of interest is the deployment of the whole Matsumoto cast of characters (from all his series) in various roles. Gun Frontier was a 13 episode series from 2001. As a change of pace, it was a mostly comedy adventure series which featured period versions of Harlock and Tochiro as they bumbled their way through the wild west 1880s in search of a lost tribe of Japanese immigrants. Cosmo Warrior Zero: Warrius Zero, a veteran of the Earth/Mechanized war, is hired by the Earth Government to hunt down Space Pirate Harlock. This series focuses on Zero and his misfit crew as they take on their hopeless mission. Harlock, Tochiro and Emeraldas put in mostly supporting guest appearances. Most notable is the return of the ship in the original Blue Arcadia Design (not seen since the original tv series) but green and named Deathshadow.

Similarly, Captain Harlock appears in "unbilled cameos" in Galaxy Express 999 and Queen Millennia. In 2002, a 13 episode tv series was produced, Captain Harlock:Endless Odyssey. At times, it appears to serve as both a sequel and a remake of the original 1978 Captain Harlock tv series. While it seems that the crew is reuniting years after the end of events depicted in the original, some characters are actually re-introduced and/or updated. As with most of Leiji Matsumoto's works, continuity is not a crucial issue and many of the stories featuring Harlock don't seem as though they could occur in a single timeline. For example, the origin story given in My Youth in Arcadia contradict for the most part, the origins given in flashback episodes of the original Captain Harlock series. There are also at least three conflicting accounts of the death of one of the major characters in the Leijiverse. It would seem that the only two Harlock works that chronologically fit together seamlessly are My Youth in Arcadia and Endless Orbit SSX.

Captain Harlock was originally intended to appear in Space Battle Ship Yamato during their return voyage from Iscandar. The idea was dropped for a number of reasons which probably included the fact that the rights to Yamato were at the time owned by executive producer Yoshinobu Nishizaki. This idea evolved into simply finding Mamoru Kodai (Alex Wildstar) alive on Iscandar. The idea was still used later in a Yamato manga by Matsumoto where Yamato later encounter's Mamoru who assumed the false identity of Captain Harlock (as revealed when hero Susumu Kodai finds a copy of a Captain Harlock manga among his supposedly dead brother's belongings). Character prototypes for Captain Harlock go back as early as 1953 when Leiji Matsumoto, as a teenager, drew his first acclaimed manga "Adventures of a Honeybee". The character was originally called Captain Kingston and over the years underwent slight revisions until around 1966 when he emerged as the Heidelberg-scarred, one eyed, cloaked pirate with which he is mostly associated.

Now twenty-five years old and showing it in many respects, the original Captain Harlock series remains probably the highest point in adventure-oriented space opera to come out of Japan.

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