The second movie for the festival is another anime, albeit an older one, belonging to the 80s. I vaguely remember watching the series on television as I recall the familiarity of the pirate motif spaceship. But maybe I remembered wrong, as there are plenty of such space aged cartoons in those days, like Macross, Gundam, and the likes.

The introduction already put me off, with a really repetitive Phantom Harlock flying his red biplane and monotonous introduction of his name, over and over again. The plot takes some getting used to, with the bombastic names as we follow this rogue pilot/pirate in his quest to duel with Commander Zeda of the Illmidus alien race.

Watching this early 80s animation brings about the obvious comparisons and observation of how advanced animated movies have become. It's obviously 2-D drawings here, and plenty of details which were not possible to be included. Things like background characters having continuity presence issues (varying numbers amongst a crowd in a constant setting),and objects appearing and disappearing for the same reason that drawing by hand, takes up time, and yet draws attention to themselves. And having to draw many, well, sometimes animators do become lazy. This is most unlike today's computer generated graphics where crowd and objects are rendered with a click of the button, and possibly given some artificial intelligence along the way so that they can seem to "act" independently.

Space battles have become a dime a dozen, and watching this film today, sadly, the battles are not as exciting as it should have been, with its numerous laser cannon scenes. Some scenes were repeated by showing stock clips over and over again, and brings back fond memories of how, as a kid, you tend to see past these shortcomings, and enjoy the animation for what it is. In today's standards, this will be judged more like stemming from the indifference from the animators, and the lack of pride and professionalism.

The characters here are typical of Japanese anime, with weird coloured hairdos, and quite surprisingly, this movie loads up on the melodramatics and exaggerated dialogue. Compared with anime of today, there has been vast improvement in story pacing, setting, and character design.

While there were families and kids watching Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, and this one, it wasn't unexpected that this anime too had its fair share of walk outs, probably because of the hard-to-grasp storyline for toddlers, or the insane need to read subtitles and then explaining to the kids what some of the imaginary words meant.

P.S. somehow the screening was marred by the speakers set to maximum volume. The dialogue and musical fanfare just got drilled through your ears into your head and probably gave everyone a splitting headache watching it. The first boo-boo for the festival, and I really hope it's the last.

In my heart, I believe this to be a great movie, for its time. The 1982 animation was acceptable, but doesn't compare to Queen Emeraldas Or Harlock Saga.

Now, on with the praise. I have grown up with Captain Harlock, under the guise of Albator (which is the French name) up here in Canada, and though I didn't see much of the series back then, Harlock stayed in the back of my mind to this day.

I own Arcadia of My Youth, and love it. Its story is very straight forward, and easy to follow. Essentially, it is to fight for your dreams and survive to enjoy them, no matter the cost.

I find the characters to be believable, such as Maya (Harlock's only love, and the Voice of Free Arcadia),because of her fragile nature and her devotion to try to save Earth from its catastrophic fate. Emeraldas a free-spirited, space-trader and Harlock's old friend, who crosses Harlock's path after she crash lands on Earth attempting a difficult passage in space. Tochiro, Harlock's new friend, a master engineer and kind of the comic relief in this movie, but not to the point of distraction. And then there is Harlock, which I identify with, because of his strong, silent presence. He is willing to do everything in his power to help his friends, just so long as they try to help themselves as well. He lives by his own personal code of honor, which echoes my own..."upon my honor, to do my duty."

He turns his back on Earth, because they decide to side with the invaders, The Illumidus, instead of fighting for its freedom, and Earth's government doesn't want any rogue elements such as Harlock's group. Harlock and company are exiled from Earth, which Harlock couldn't care less, because he doesn't want to cling to something that is dead anyway.

This movie is meant as an introduction to the characters of the Harlock series and try to make some sense of the convoluted mess that is the Matsumoto Universe, and I find it succeeds in this undertaking.

I feel this movie is worth seeing, if only to see how it all began, due to the fact that the Harlock series characters are enjoying some renewed interested in the past couple of years with the release of the Queen Emeraldas OVA and Harlock Saga OVA.

"I Live in freedom, under my flag."

I had this movie on video tape years ago in Japanese with subtitles and I loved it. It's a modern epic. I recently it saw it dubbed in English and the voice acting was some of the worse I've ever heard, plus the wonderful music was mixed so low it was barely there. I will add this to my collection, but only if I can find the original Japanese with subtitles and the original sound mix.