Earlier in April, Diskotek, the company that just put out the Lupin the 3rd series collection, announced that they would also be releasing this year on DVD the classic Anime, Space Pirate Captain Harlock!
The series was created by Leiji Matsumoto, whose other creations included Space Cruiser Yamato (known in the U.S. as Star Blazers) and Galaxy Express 999. But among many Anime enthusiasts, Harlock is probably his most iconic creation.
The series takes place in the distant future. Earth has colonized the solar system and space travel is commonplace. However, Earth itself has become decadent, and its central government is corrupt. Harlock is a space pirate who has taken it upon himself to assist those downtrodden citizens of Earth; hijacking food and supplies that would otherwise go to the more wealthier citizens. And it is these actions that have led he and his crew to be labeled as wanted criminals.
When aliens called the Mazone - a plant-based race who appear as human women - show up with plans to conquer Earth, the Earth government is unwilling to face this threat, and Harlock finds that he is the only one capable of standing against them. Pursued by both the Earth forces as well as battling the Mazone, Harlock and his ship, the Arcadia, wage a one-man war against the would-be invaders.
The interesting thing about Captain Harlock is that while he’s very well-known in Anime fandom, his show has never been seen by lots of people here in the U.S., as it’s never been given an English language translation. Or should I say…it’s never been given a proper English translation.
There have been a couple of attempts made over the decades since the show came out in the late '70s. In the early 1980’s, a company called Ziv released a videotape of the first few episodes. The dubbing for its time was adequate, but nothing special. However, the second volume totally dispensed with all intentions of taking the show seriously, and instead seemed to go the route of What’s Up, Tiger Lily? and played the whole thing as some kind of farce.
In the mid-1980’s, a company called Just For Kids Video released the Captain Harlock movie My Youth in Arcadia under the title of Vengeance of the Space Pirate. Again, the dub job on this was nothing special, but it was probably as close to a good English language translation of Harlock as we were going to get.
But probably the most infamous example was the two videotapes put out by Malibu Graphics, who at the time had a license to the property and were making their own Captain Harlock comics. The tapes were advertised as complete and uncut, and translated from the original scripts. So imagine the horror many fans felt when they popped-in the video tapes, only to find they were simply copies of the earlier Ziv video releases!
The other problem with bringing Harlock over was that considering that just about all the subsequent TV shows and movies after the original series were either reboots or retcons, it’s just about impossible to create any sort of comprehensive continuity. Harmony Gold, the producers of Robotech, ran into this problem headfirst when they tried to bring the original series to the states, and ended up having to merge it with another Leiji Matusmoto Anime called Queen Millennia, calling the resulting series Captain Harlock and the Queen of a Thousand Years. Needless to say, it was nowhere near as successful as Robotech.
In recent years, the Captain Harlock series has been subtitled and made available on such internet streaming services as Funimation’s channel, Crunchyroll.com, Hulu and Crackle. But until now, it’s yet to be released on DVD. And I’m one of those guys who just likes to have a physical copy of something. So when I heard that it was finally coming out on DVD, I was ecstatic!
No street date as yet has been given for the series (which will include all 42 episodes in a box set). But my guess is if this was announced in April, I’m anticipating a Fall release. Perfect timing for my birthday! (hint, hint!;))
If you want to know more about Captain Harlock - including the many attempts at translating him into English - the site Cornponeflicks.com has a great resource page on him, which I’ll provide in the link below. Enjoy!