‘Harlock: Space Pirate’ or — My, That’s a Big One?
‘Harlock: Space Pirate’ (2013) is a large budget, fully CGI, feature length version of the beloved anime about the super sulky space pirate who flies about the galaxy in his skull-headed, giant phallus of a spaceship, the Arcadia. Here, Harlock is determined to reach Earth, the planet having been deemed sacred and off-limits by the Gaia Sanction, because many years ago Harlock once did something stupid and now plans to erase his stupid mistake by doing something equally stupid (i.e. blowing up the entire universe).
The Gaia Sanction immediately orders Admiral Isora to stop Captain Harlock and the Arcadia at all costs, even if it means using the Jovian Accelerator, a superweapon that turns Jupiter into a massive laser blaster. However, due to an accident involving dark matter and alien technology both Harlock and the Arcadia are immortal meaning destroying them will be easier said than done.
As you can maybe deduce, the story’s profoundly ludicrous but that’s a good thing because all this ludicrousness is in service of one very specific goal — to have loads of really cool looking space shit!
How can a spaceship be immortal? Who cares! See how awesome the Arcadia looks as it emerges from billowing clouds of black smoke whilst firing lasers in every direction. And we can tell director Shinji Aramaki thinks it looks awesome too because we see the Arcadia emerging from billowing clouds of black smoke whilst firing lasers in every direction A LOT.
Battles have scale and scope and the nautical nature of the whole ‘space pirates’ concept means there’s plenty of pounding laser cannons, broadsiding and, due to its indestructibility, the Arcadia ramming other spaceships to smithereens. And even though the interior of Harlock’s vessel can be somewhat murky and grey Aramaki and his art department contrast this with plenty of luminous pinks and blues during the action.
The only real downside is despite working well for environments, spaceships and all that explosive ordnance the CGI can leave the human characters somewhat devoid of charm compared to their hand-drawn anime equivalents. This is especially true of Harlock himself, a notoriously taciturn character as it is but here he’s so emotionally limp and lifeless his brooding comes across as nothing more than an adolescent huffy mope.
Still, none of that really matters as this isn’t about character growth or psychological depth but sci-fi tech, blinding energy rays and superweapons the size of planets, and with the film being the most expensive Japanese CG anime ever made it all looks absolutely stunning.
Besides, the Arcadia itself has more than enough personality in its huge, skull-helmeted shaft for a thousand Captain Harlocks so if you’re more interested in flotillas of beautifully designed spacecraft blasting each other with dazzling particle beams than any form of narrative integrity or nuance then you won’t give a damn anyway as you’ll be too blissed out at what you’re seeing to care.
