Uchuu Kaizoku Captain Herlock

It is 2977 AD and mankind has become stagnant. Robots do all the work, the masses are kept tranquil by subliminal messages, and government officials are lazy, caring only about recreational activities like golf and horse racing. Captain Herlock has defied this insipid mentality, leading a group of like-minded rebels to a more adventurous life aboard the spaceship Arcadia.

A mysterious force known as the Mazone has invaded the Earth, taking the form of mysterious cloaked women that kill anyone who suspect their nefarious doings, such as Tadashi Daiba who is now on their hit-list. After his scientist father is ignored by the government and killed by the Mazone, he joins Captain Herlock and his ragtag group of pirates to assist them as they try to save humanity from the impending alien threat.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Captain Herlock Main

Inoue, Makio Japanese

Miime Main

Ohara, Noriko Japanese

Yuki, Kei Main

Kawashima, Chiyoko Japanese

Daiba, Tadashi Main

Kamiya, Akira Japanese

Emeraldas Supporting

Yoshida, Rihoko Japanese

Ooyama, Tochirou Supporting

Yamada, Keaton Japanese

Rafflesia Supporting

Kitahama, Haruko Japanese

Shiraku Supporting

Koyama, Mami Japanese

Yattaran Supporting

Ootake, Hiroshi Japanese

Ooyama, Mayu Supporting

Kawashima, Chiyoko Japanese

Rintarou Director, Episode Director

Ozeki, Masayuki Episode Director

Akehi, Masayuki Episode Director

Gatineau, Michel Script, ADR Director

Reviews

Dec 31, 2024

SCLFI

Recommended

"Let the superior man never fail reverentially to order his own conduct, and let him be respectful to others and observant of propriety – then all within the four seas will be his brothers." – Analects 12.5

Often, when trying to interpret anime, explaining it through the framework of pre-existing -isms or specific artistic styles is something that may be useful as an immediately understandable way to explain the feeling of a work, but rarely does it facilitate the sort of in-depth thought that would make that work interesting and worth thinking about critically. Space Pirate Captain Harlock marks an exception to this rule, it indisputably ... and comprehensively carries the DNA of the Romanticist movement in every aspect of its design, tonally and ideologically. Popular thought may have moved past Romanticism and many of its underlying ideas, but Captain Harlock manages to firstly demonstrate their relevance into a modern context, while also expounding upon them with an originality that leaves it incomparable to even the most ideologically and philosophically minded of anime.

Especially for something to have come from the 1970s, Captain Harlock is unprecedentedly evocative and audacious in its editing. Being mindful of Osamu Tezuka’s comments that he disliked the ‘aesthetic of stillness’ created through the cost-saving techniques he personally introduced, Captain Harlock demonstrates that, while making use of these techniques due to inevitable budgetary constraints, the presence of stillness does not have any currency when it comes to making an immersive and emotionally powerful work that uses every point of visual characterisation and metaphor to convey its ideas. In fact, the reason Tezuka’s aesthetic of stillness works is for the specific reason that the editing process, not the number of keyframes in animation, is the defining element in making a work engaging and visually memorable.

As concerns the editing process, Captain Harlock’s is its own unique specimen, one that grows in response to its own environment, accepting and embracing warmth, and retreating when it sees the cold. The real schwerpunkt that comes through in this stylised form of editing is that it manages to be ingrained into psychedelia and its heightened sensations, but not to a distortive effect. In terms of visual direction, it is deeply unlike Tetsuya Nakashima, whose method appears vaguely similar on a surface level, but Nakashima sets out to produce an extra layer of hyperreality on the visual plane to create a further degree of separation between character, viewer, and narrative. Captain Harlock’s editing engages with different motives, creating a coalescent sense of poetics that comes from experience, using the hyperrealised form of editing that brings attention to itself, to remove alienation and disparity between character and setting, rather than to enhance it. This also extends to smaller scenes, even the opening episode titles are put against an episode-specific background of movement and music that ensures it is kept interesting. Even in the most celebrated of anime, the opening title cards are almost always put onto a simple black background, but Captain Harlock moves beyond this arbitrary simplicity, which is representative of its editing process as a whole – they could have gone for a more standard ‘invisible’ continuity editing, but as they have demonstrated, it creates a far more poignant experience when they choose not to. Even still, it is not an overbearing part of the visual production, but it is always there, and each episode manages to make itself distinct by ensuring the editing maintains a field of visual layering and poetics that prevent it from feeling formulaic.

Likewise, the sound design in the series manages to be of the utmost quality, whether through the ambient soundscapes, or the layered tones of screams and deoxygenated flames that appear when the Mazone are killed (which is itself complemented by a dissociative and hyperrealised visual accompaniment of sharp, coloured lighting), creating a pronounced and poignant effect on the viewer. The same is true of the orchestral soundtrack, which appear both in diegetic and non-diegetic forms on a regular basis, conveying the operatic scale of action. Rather than using straightforwardly bombastic and high-energy tracks, its action sequences use music evocative of Samuel Barber, conveying the sense of danger and scale, but also the underlying sadness that permeates it. That is really the point that makes Captain Harlock exemplary, it may nominally be a space opera series about fighting alien invaders, but it retains an emotional core that is uncharacteristic of the genre – one episode ends with Harlock sitting at the oceanside as Kei plays the shamisen, a moment that carries distinct feelings to Harlock, Kei, and the viewer alike, but all of whom manage to recognise the sublimity in the distinctiveness and individuality from that one moment and experience.

As a character himself, Harlock is deeply elusive. A melancholic and Byronic hero, at least only in certain respects, he doesn’t adhere to the standard template of the Byronic hero, nor the more classical image of a hero (he may be on a nautical odyssey, but there is nothing Homeric in his character), and he has perhaps even less commonality with the more modern concept of a morally ambiguous anti-hero one may expect from his outlaw status. Ideologically, the series chooses to invoke nostalgia, taking place in a future in which “the impostume of wealth and peace that inward breaks” (as was once conveyed by an earlier writer) has prevailed, leading to an Earth which has been gripped by a Hobbesian conception of all the ills and insecurities of a pre-societal state, doubled with all the worst elements of corporate and government control that characterise a more contemporary life experience. Put up against this background, Harlock is questioned on why he would even choose to fight for an Earth that is so corrupt and hostile to his own existence, and though he gives various answers at intermittent periods, none of them are ever comprehensive. To return to the earlier conception of Romanticism, that is what Harlock is, as a series, and as a character. Harlock fights against modernity and technology, his ship carries a mixture of features of vintage, ancient, and new. It has all the futuristic radar and laser missiles necessary for its own survival, but no more, with other parts of the ship being made from wood, and carrying a similar triple turret formation to the IJN Yamato. Further, seeing as his enemy, the Mazone, is an alien race that may be characterised by two major traits, being an invading foreign force, and consisting entirely of women (tall women with hime cuts, to be exact), it can be extrapolated that the series also stands as an affirmation of pre-Showa social attitudes in this respect. Harlock is ultimately concerned with the sentimentality of Romanticism, in all its forms, fighting for one’s self, purely for its own sake, there is reference to his crew “fighting under the flag of freedom”, but the ship’s flag is a Jolly Roger, a symbol of death, not freedom. As a sort of ronin, Harlock is compelled to fight, not for an allegiance to Earth, but for an inherent Romanticist notion of fighting for its own sake, and for the love of the poignancy that being freed of all obligation and allegiance manages to carry, on its own terms. In its very structure, Harlock manages to show the impact of the loss of the grand narrative found in a deeply corrupt humanity, in which only the self may remain, and the series manages to demonstrate both the great sublimity that comes from a space-faring outlaw life, and the implicit melancholy, and longing sadness that comes from that very situation.

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

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Jun 21, 2021

xokker7

Recommended

Captain Harlock, to simply put it, is a hidden but not so hidden masterpiece. If you know anime or are into anime culture a lot then you have seen him before. Uchuu Kaichou Captain Harlock is a great space opera about pirates and if you're into stuff like Devilman,Star Wars,Gundam,Macross etc you will enjoy this plenty. It's considered one of the best anime of all time for a reason like one of the reviewers state. The characters are very unique and pretty well written. It takes a lot from sci-fi from it's time so it is to be expected to have a ton of references. ... It's a Leiji Matsumoto classic of course, so if you're into his stuff this is a must watch/read. Back to my first point, you can spot it in many shows/manga like Sailor moon,a-ko,cowboy bebop etc.

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

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Mar 2, 2025

Ernacram

Mixed Feelings

Spoiler

Captain Herlock has become an anime classic that any anime fan of my beloved french country has to watch one day, for two main reasons. Reason 1: it’s adapted from Matsumoto Reiji’s work, whose influence in manga and Japanese animation cannot be overstated. Reason 2 : Captain Herlock, known here as “Albator”, used to be super popular in the 70’s and 80’s, and in a sense it’s a series that gave birth to a whole generation of french anime fans. For these two reasons I had to watch it.

Now, when I started watching this, since I knew it would be about space pirates, I ... expected a SF / adventure series which would also be an ode to freedom, since you know, pirates equals freedom, anarchy, libertarianism, etc etc etc. But I have to admit I was kind of surprised by the philosophy it upholds, which, actually, has little to do with freedom. In fact, the philosophical / political subtext of this anime is plagued with boomer rants about the young generation that’s become corrupt, lazy, doesn’t want to work, doesn’t want to go to war, doesn’t want to die in a heroic way on a battlefield, etc. So in this review I’ll be mainly discussing the philosophy and the plot of this anime, because that’s what struck me the most.

Set in a future where technology has reached such levels that work has practically been abolished, the story revolves around a group of space pirates who are trying to save the Earth from the Mazones, an alien race attempting to take over the planet and exterminate humanity. The group of space pirates led by Captain Herlock have become disgusted with humanity which they see as degenerated and corrupted by laziness, and they roam space aboard a mighty (and oddly designed) spaceship known as the Arcadia. They are the only ones aware that the Earth is in danger, and as the plot progresses they uncover the Mazones’ plan for domination, and start to combat them to save humanity from annihilation.

Coming back to the anime’s philosophy. The anime portrays humanity’s degeneracy as such : the quasi abolition of work allowed by technological progress has made humans lazy and cowardly. Humans don’t want to fight, and will use strong labor regulations as an excuse to be lazy. At the same time, a minority of Mazones hiding among humans, using their feminine beauty, have seized control of the state and the institutions in the shadows, all of this in order to maintain humanity unaware of the coming invasion of Earth, and to prepare the extermination of humanity. What drives the alien race is the desire to find a new homeland where they can migrate. So what we essentially have here is a story that makes race war and the “great replacement” theory a reality, on top of being anti-progress and jingoistic. One could easily think the subtext of this anime is borderline fascist, and that adding pirates and empty phrases about “freedom” is basically just a cover-up to hide its propaganda.

Some people could argue that I’m wrong because the anime doesn’t portray the alien race as cartoonishly evil, since they have feelings, a legitimate goal, and most of the time their evil stems from the fact they are led by a brutal military dictatorship. That is indeed true. The anime also does show that there is a difference between the Mazone military who are genocidal, tyrannical warmongers, and the civilians. There are also inner conflicts between the military and the civilians. Though they are aliens, Mazones are essentially identical to humans. They have emotions, they just want to live a normal life, but are driven towards war because their homeland is dying and they need to find a new one. Captain Herlock repeatedly shows empathy towards the Mazones, doesn’t want to kill civilians, and tries to spare the aliens whenever possible, even if it means putting his crew in danger. The final episodes also tends to show that coexistence and peace between humanity and Mazone is possible. So in that sense, one could say I’m exaggerating when I say that the subtext could be seen as fascist.

The thing is, at the same time the anime shows that the Mazone are not purely evil, and that peace between races could maybe be possible, it destroys that possibility right after. Every time we see some sort of empathy and mutual understanding budding between a human and a Mazone, the Mazone is either killed by the plot, or revealed to be a spy, or something similar. Indeed, the Mazones are constantly lying and toying with the hearts of men, using their beauty to deceive them like mermaids.

On top of that, the anime teaches you to always be wary of civilians, because they might actually be soldiers trying to deceive you, or spies trying to get inside the Arcadia. And It will be the case 90% of the time. As a consequence the anime indirectly supports the killing of civilians and war crimes as a security measure. The death of innocent Mazone civilians is shown as something that can’t be avoided, because the Mazone military uses them as a shield. This is the kind of rhetoric that in our world, is constantly used by state propaganda to justify war crimes, or even ethnic cleansing. There are also scenes where the crew of the Arcadia goes on a rampage to kill Mazones hiding among humans. You have scenes where the viewer is told that it’s okay to kill your wife, because she’s from an evil race trying to deceive you. Watching these scenes made me feel very uncomfortable.

That’s not the only thing that makes the subtext of this anime ambiguous. Indeed, when humanity is degenerate and lazy, and doesn’t want to fight against the coming alien invasion, the only person that is shown to be aware of the situation is a military commander, while the bad guy is the cowardly prime minister who doesn’t want to mobilize for war because he is worried about upcoming elections. Here the anime shows both militaristic and anti-democracy sentiment. But that’s not all. On several occasions, useless military sacrifice is encouraged and shown in a positive light. We even have one guy doing a kamikaze while singing Japanese folk songs. Another way to make the viewer uncomfortable.

One could also say that I’m overthinking, that this show is for kids and that it can’t have this kind of subtext. But given its serious themes (death, race war, genocide...), Captain Herlock isn’t really what I would call a kids’ show. And even if it was, even kids’ shows tries to teach children some kind of moral. During wartime we literally make propaganda aimed at kids to indoctrinate them. This argument simply isn’t valid. So regarding the philosophical / political subtext of this anime, I would say that it is at best ambiguous.

The plot of Captain Herlock has other important shortcomings. It has a tendency to be episodic, and as such it is plagued with episodes that feel like fillers. Some of them tried to develop the members of the crew, but I found them uninteresting for the most part. The two exceptions were the two episodes that developed Maji’s and Miime’s background stories, which where actually pretty touching and didn’t feel irrelevant to the main plot-line. But sadly, those episodes were the exception. The story also progresses at a slow pace and can get very repetitive. Indeed, an important part of the anime consists of Captain Herlock coming back and forth to Earth to save Mayu, the daughter of his late friend.

Mayu is truly the second major flaw of this anime. Watching the anime feels like every god dang episode, the Earth’s government abducts her and mistreats her in order to lure Captain Herlock. Herlock is a terrible human being for allowing Mayu to get mistreated this much when he could just bring her on the ship. The promise he made to his friend doesn’t change anything. Mayu shouldn’t even exist to begin with. She wasn’t in the manga. She was only added to justify Herlock’s attachment to the planet he thinks has no future. And also to underline the fact that he is the good guy in the story, which is not always very obvious given the fact he spends most of his time slaughtering pretty women. Another thing that makes me think Herlock is a terrible person is the fact that he would rather sacrifice the whole of humanity than let Mayu die, as it is shown in episodes 30 to 34 or so.

Being a space opera, the anime includes a lot of space battles. Sadly, I found most of them to be lackluster. The main reason is that the Arcadia is invincible. It practically never gets damaged despite going in the middle of the enemy fleet. Even when we see it taking a hit, we don’t see any damage. We don’t see any crew members dying. There are no cool ideas (the Arcadia’s space ram is the only notable exception) or clever strategies for space battles. The best strategy usually consists in going towards the enemy fleet at full speed like a kamikaze, and somehow the Mazones can’t win against that despite having thousands and thousands of ships and over a million soldiers. Even in land battles, you will see hundreds if not thousands of Mazone soldiers running towards the good guys and get slaughtered without being able to kill any of the crew members. So much for an army that is supposed to have subjugated or exterminated dozens of other alien races !

Space battles also aren’t that well animated. They lack detail and movement, and many still images are used. And while the Arcadia’s design is pretty cool and original, Mazone spaceships are essentially just flying saucers. Most of the land vehicles and space fighters also tend to look like toys.

When I see this, I can’t help but compare Captain Herlock to another space opera anime, the classic and masterpiece Space Battleship Yamato, which aired four years prior. In Yamato too, the good guys’ ship is practically invincible. But we do see it getting damaged several times, we see crew members dying in battle, and there are actual strategies and interesting ideas to make the space battles entertaining to watch.

With that being said, the art in general does look good. I really enjoyed the Reiji-style character designs, which look very cool and detailed for the most part. The characters design of Harlock is iconic, one that strucks the viewer and can never be forgetten. I also liked how Reiji portrays feminine beauty, though it’s true that all women characters designed by Reiji look pretty much the same. The soundtrack is also of quality. The Japanese opening is a certified banger. There are many good tracks in the BGM, the a-capella songs in particular contributed to the atmosphere, making it sometimes bad-ass, sometimes solemn. So it’s not like this anime has no redeeming qualities. Some episodes were worth watching. The ones I enjoyed the most where the first several episodes, those who are mostly centered around Daiba Tadashi, the newest crew member, and the final showdown with the Mazone queen.

So yeah, despite it being a classic, I didn’t enjoyed Captain Herlock that much. While it has some good moments and cool ideas, cool Reiji-style character designs, nice BGM, etc, the plot has several major flaws which made it a bit hard to watch until the end. Its ambiguous political subtext is one such major flaw. On the other hand, this anime’s historical value is huge, especially if you’re a french anime fan like me. So I’ll recommend you to give it a go, but to keep in mind that most of the episodes may bore you to death.

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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