Harlock Saga

Title:Harlock Saga
Overall:Watch
Keywords: ,
Notables: Music - WADA Kaoru
Original Concept - MATSUMOTO Leiji
R1 License - Central Park Media(Defunct)
SEKI Toshihiko
YAMADERA Kouichi
A killer has stolen a legendary treasure, magical gold! Now, as the universe spirals into chaos, the gods have awakened to avenge this theft. Noble space pirate Captain Harlock must restore the gold to its rightful heirs before humanity is caught in the Crossfire!
[OVA, 1999, 6 episodes, 25 min]
[edit] The ↗Captain Harlock franchise:
  • (1982) Arcadia of My Youth (Movie, alternate retelling)
  • (1982) _ Arcadia of My Youth: Endless Orbit SSX (TV) (sequel, 22 TV episodes)
OverallArtAnimationCharacter Design MusicSeries StoryEpisode StoryReviewer
Avoid 6 6 5 10 5 5 Ggultra2764 [series:334#1552]
Guess I'm agreeing with Forbin over how shoddy this OAV series is, though this is actually my first exposure to the Captain Harlock saga. The only thing I can really give praise to with Harlock Saga is the epic soundtrack with enough classical musical pieces to build up intensity with the scenes of the show as I got some glee out of listening to Ride of the Valkyries during a couple of the battle scenes. Beyond that, there are enough issues I can raise with the OAV.

The animation style was quite inconsistent at points throughout the show. The first episode, the Arcadia was rendered in some mediocre looking CG-rendered animation and then the next, it went back to hand-drawn animation. The character designs were given an old-school style rendering yet they stick out like a sore thumb with the late 1990s style drawings of scenery and spaceship designs. I also could have swore that there was some laziness on creating the character designs at points considering the two giants plus Freya and Meeme looked designed exactly the same with the exception of different colors to make them appear different.

I normally don't go criticizing the voice work of the Japanese version of anime titles I have watched. But Harlock Saga has the most deadpan acting I've heard from seiyuu out of any anime I've watched in my eight years of fandom. Many of the seiyuu displayed little to no emotion when voicing their characters making it seem like they were just reading from the script without even trying to emote with their character. This had me caring less when characters were supposed to be concerned for events taking place yet were not doing much in the way of emoting.

In terms of plotting, Forbin pretty much unveiled the major issues of the plot's consistency. In addition, the plot is left open-ended as events that unfold following Harlock's adventure leave him pressing onto his next adventure.

I have heard enough of how Captain Harlock is one of the original classic characters of anime that older fans took interest in. Maybe this wasn't the right anime for me to start off with or even watch as the presentation and plotting to it are quite a mess. I doubt that I will be hopping back to this anime again.

Last updated Sunday, February 27 2011. Created Sunday, February 27 2011.
Avoid Forbin [series:334#1573]
Hmm...an old review from 3 years ago says this is a buy.
Lets see...reused animation, complete disregard of the Harlock universe. Blow up a planet then pretend that never happened. A REALLY bad explanation of how time works. And a VERY ugly version of the Arcadia.
This is a TERRIBLE version of the Leji Matsamuto universe and I really DOUBT The Coyote saw more than 1 episode (The 1st episode made sense all others just contradicted each other).
See it if you like to see Emeraldas (She has a 5 minute cameo). Otherwise avoid like the plague.
Trust me, and this is from a 999 Otaku who even liked Gun Frontier.

Last updated Monday, November 29 2004. Created Monday, November 29 2004.
Buy 8 8 8 5 7 The Coyote [series:334#64]
This is a well done continueation of Arkadia of my youth and Queen Esmraldas, and Galaxy express 999 for those of us that love this universe and the charaters involved it's a must see but I would sugest seeing some of the others first to get a feel for this series especially Arcadia of my youth or you will be a little lost but that said this is still worth seeing even if you haven't seen those.

Last updated Monday, October 15 2001. Created Monday, October 15 2001.

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