How much longer until I run out of material? Well, yesterday, actually. I had intended on writing up my weekend posts throughout the week, but then I realized I didn't know what other material to cover! So excuse me if the material becomes a little subpar.
I was...going to post Jupiter Ascending...but I pulled the boxart from IMDB and saw the rating of the movie...and realized I probably didn't remember the movie too well. Then I watched the nostalgia critic's review (there's a first time for everything I suppose) and became utterly convinced I had no business posting about the movie at least until I re-watched it.
So, instead, you get to see my first anime post! Sort of...Harlock: Space Pirate! Because I'm in a Space Opera mood.
TITLE: Harlock: Space Pirate
DETAILS:
DIRECTOR: Shinji Aramaki
LEAD ACTOR: David Matranga
ANTAGONIST LEAD:
SUMMARY:
Mankind is dying. Only one man can do anything about it, Space Captain Harlock, but the Gaia Coalition will stop at nothing to end him.
PERSONAL CRITIQUE:
I sat down and considered re-watching Harlock, and believe me I will at some point because I did enjoy the movie, but not right now. So here's the best impression I can give from one semi-uninterrupted viewing. It is a steam-punk-esque space opera anime about an immortal pirate and his search to save humanity or something. Sounds like anime movie material to me. Evidently there's a manga and anime series out there, I don't know if I'll ever sit down and delve into those though.
There are some particular things that set this movie off, like an issue with lots of things being lost in translation. I don't know how major the differences are, but it's notable that I watch movies with subtitles, I like to read along to reinforce what the characters are saying, and it's particularly helpful with whispering characters. Not in this case, as with many anime the english dub and subtitles from the Japanese dub don't quite match up, generally this will be the addition/absence of small descriptive words, or even articles of little import in other languages, but in the case of Harlock, there's a mass of dialogue changes from the very beginning of the movie, with the narrator telling two different stories.
Harlock: Space Pirate has a terrific atmosphere and really brings out a detail about space opera that seems to draw the most attention, huge space battles. Which was basically the reason for the special effects in Ender's Game as well. Centering on a plot that may be a little outlandish (super outlandish) Harlock jumps into an epic story without much explanation behind how it's possible. Seriously, we hear a lot about there BEING dark matter engines, but no explanation of how it works really except that it doesn't stop working. And...
SPACE SPOILERS!!!
We know that there are aliens, but we don't get a lot of info on their origin or when they were met. Maybe all of this is divulged in the manga, but not in the movie...so that's kind of what I have to base things on. Even though we don't get a TON of detail, we get enough for things to be explained away, which is perfect, I don't think space opera is intended to be Hard Sci-Fi. It's...intended to be space opera.
Benefit of the doubt handed out, we have an awesome immortal protagonist, with a standard issue viewport character who serves both as key plot element, and binding point for both sides of a pretty well told story. Even though we're dropped into the middle of the action, we get plenty of background information to build the world without having read the source material, even if we don't get absolutely everything. There are plenty of characters in the space pirate's crew that avail themselves to a name and rank, and each of them is deserving in their own special, unique way.
All in all, not a bad shot at a sci-fi anime movie.
RATING:
Nine out of Ten Immortal Space Pirates would rate this one Three signs of life on a barren planet out of Five.
If you're into anime and sci-fi, this will probably float your boat, I know it floated my gravity distorting, dark matter driven, deathclass cruiser. (Deathclass...)
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