I don't pretend to know a lot about the 'classics' of anime. I watched dubbed Speed Racer as a little kid and heard my mother talk about Starblazers, but my real education in anime began with Ronin Warriors and Sailor Moon.
That out of the way, I've always had a soft spot for pirates, and one of my early VHS purchases was the first Queen Emeraldas OVA, which I bought, to be perfectly honest, because the cover sported a kickass looking female space pirate. I was vaguely aware Emeraldas had something to do with the Galaxy Express 999 manga, which I read in spoty but enjoyable installments through Animerica, when it was still something worth spending ten or fifteen bucks on. So I figured, at the very least that I wouldn't be horrendously dispointed with something set in that universe.
Harlock is part of that universe too, but for the life of me I have no idea which came first or how it all really ties in. All I know is I'm twenty episodes in and regretting very little. 99% of all shows of any sort unless they were of the comedic variety had an opening narration back then, at least from the exposure I've had to them, and the narration for Captain Harlock establishes that it is hundreds of years into earth's future, and there is a single world government. That government, to supress war and discontent, has effectively drugged the entire planet into contentment, whatever planet-bound resistence having died out or taken to the stars ages ago. One source of resistence is Harlock, who captain the Acradia, a ship unmatched in technology by just about anything. Barring what I learned in the Galaxy Express manga, all you know of the ship's creator is that he was Harlock's best friend and the father of a girl on earth who Harlock looks out for, Mayu.
Harlock is viewed as a criminal in terms of the world government, but as the narration clarifies, he's actually doing more to save the earth than anyone. The oceans are polluted and drying up, and the soil itself is dying, and one of Harlock's main missions as a pirate is to gather as much food and water from trade ships as he can and stash it away for the day the whole bloody planet starves itself to death because they're too hopped up on futuristic purple koolaid to notice there's nothing to curb the perpetual muchies they all suffer from. So already Harlock is less a pirate and more Robin Hood.
The action of the series picks up quickly, introducing Harlock, his crew (the typical gathering of creepy aliens and miscreant earthlings like himself) as well as the antagonists of the series, an alien race known as the Mazone. The Mazone make their pressence known by landing a giant meteor-ship on earth, which no one seems too concerned about thanks to the concentrated happy juice they're all drinking. No one cares save a scientists and his son, the token angst-monkey, Daiba. When the Mazone kill Daiba's father for trying to expose how dangerous they really are, there's nothing left but for young Luke to escort Obi-Wan to Alderan...mean, for Daiba to join the crew of the Arcadia and seek revenge.
Stylistically, Harlock can be a little trying in the pacing, as it just feels like the writers weren't sure where to take it. Even with the Mazone running around, there's several subplots an episode, and it can feel terribly cluttered in it's storytelling. There's a lot of character development that probably could have been better placed, but at the same time it makes for an interesting effect. As an audience, you're forced to get to know the characters before you really know anything about them. When they are first introduced, they are people without pasts. Their actions speak louder than who they were or what they did before coming to the Arcadia. a prime example is the Cheif Engineer, Maji. Like most of the crew, Maji spends most of his time on the wagon, drunk as a skunk...but after a visit from Mayu he gets incredibly depressed. Eventually it comes out that the reason he's on the Arcadia is that in his former life he was married and had a daughter, Midori. It turns out his wife was a Mazone spy, who his former captain was forced to kill. As the scene played out, the old captain visited Maji, ready to murder the wife/spy right in front of him, and he did. Not long after, the daughter was kidnapped by Mazone, and Maji sought out Harlock to help track his daughter down. What really strikes the watcher about this episode is how resent compared to the start of the series it is--probably only a few years. The Mazone, by this point, are known to have been on earth for a long time, long enough to call it their second homeland and claim squatter's rights.
And that's really the only problem I have with the series. It tries to do so much at once that often ideas are introduced and simply left there to hang. Sure the idea of aliens being partly responsible for ancient civilizations isn't a new one but it gives a whole other spin to human life altogether to think of the whole race as sort of an unexpected turn of events. The Mazone prepped Earth for population when they learned their planet was going to die out, but when they got here...well, Earth was already pretty well populated, and more importantly, fucked up by the natives. Not so much poor planning on part of the Mazone but definately a lost gamble. It sort of makes sense that their reaction would be to slowly infiltrate every strata of society to kill us all off. Almost has a Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy feel to it, when Arthur Dent is trying to find an Earth comperable to his own but something is very off every time.
Outside of that, Harlock is amazingly fun to watch. The crew is interesting, and however awkwardly placed within the greater narrative, their personal stories are all heartbreakingly told. There's a fair bit of social commentary coming out of the portrayal of the government as well, as most of the time they're either unconcerned or outright unwilling to do anything about anything. There's a very pronounced fear of idleness and leisure that only could have come out of a Japan going into the 80's and looking into the 90's. There's a lot to see, almost to the point of there being too much to keep track of.
The last thing to really note that struck me about the series is that it had great occasion to be artsy. A motif of the series is musical insturments and music in general. Harlock and Mayu have ocarinas, which they play for each other. The alien, and arguably Harlock's only love interest Miimae plays the harp; Daiba the harmonica and the navigator Kei, the shameisen. The episode devoted to Kei's backstory makes the most powerful use of the musical motif, to the point of being absolutely riveting. Perhaps that opinion is biased because to me the shameisen is a moving insturment regardless, but everything about how it plays out is taken from an old samurai drama--down to Kei luring her former-fiancee-gone-Mazone-spy to the beach to hear her play and then killing him. The episode ends with Kei asking Harlock to finish listening to the song her fiancee never got to hear the end of. There's nothing but the music, the sound of the waves, and the two of them standing over the body. That's an image that will probably stick with me for a while.
Overall Captain Harlock has a lot of give and take. You're asked to just accept a lot of things as they're presented without explaination or really promise of any, but when explaination does occur there isn't much to complain about--it's not because the writers couldn't think of anything, they thought of plenty of things just not at a good time. There's a lot to like if you can get past that, which I highly recommend attempting.
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grateful
tired
blah
cheerful
amused