HARLOCK: SPACE PILOT 3D [2013 / 2015] [Collector’s Limited Edition SteelBook] [3D Blu-ray + 2D Blu-ray + DVD] [UK Release] Exciting and Epic . . . A Lavish and Thrilling Feast! Brings CGI To The Next Level! It Looks Ab-so-lu-te-ly Stunning!
Far, far in the future, or perhaps the distant past... 500 billion displaced humans long to return to the planet they still refer to as home. Captain Harlock is the one man standing between the corrupt Gaia Coalition and their quest for complete intergalactic rule. Seeking revenge against those who wronged both mankind and himself, the mysterious space pirate roams the universe in his battle cruiser, the Arcadia, defiantly attacking and pillaging enemy ships. Gaia Fleet leader Ezra sends his younger brother, Logan to infiltrate the Arcadia and assassinate Harlock. But Logan will soon discover that things are not always what they seem and that legends are born for a reason. Based on the original characters and stories created by Leiji Matsumoto.
Voice Cast: Yû Aoi, Jessica Boone, Ayano Fukuda, Arata Furuta, Adam Gibbs, Kiyoshi Kobayashi, David Matranga, Haruma Miura, Toshiyuki Morikawa, Rob Mungle, Emily Neves, Shun Oguri, Chikao Ohtsuka, Maaya Sakamoto, Miyuki Sawashiro, Rebekah Stevens and Mike Yager
Director: Shinji Aramaki
Producers: Joseph Chou, Rei Kudo and Yoshi Ikezawa
Screenplay: Harutoshi Fukui (story), Kiyoto Takeuchi and Leiji Matsumoto (manga)
Composer: Tetsuya Takahashi
Image Resolution: 1080p and 576i
Aspect Ratio: 2.39:1 and 1.78:1
Audio: English: 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio
Japanese: 5.1 Dolby Digital Surround Sound
Japanese: 2.0 Dolby Digital Stereo Audio
Subtitles: English SDH
Running Time: English: 1:51:18 and Japanese: 1:50:24
Region: Region B/2
Number of discs: 2
Studio: Manga Entertainment
Andrew’s Blu-ray Review: Captain Harlock and his skull-faced space train steam around the galaxy getting into spectacular space battles in an adventure that impresses with its dazzling CGI manga reboot visuals more than with its original story.
“Unleash the dark matter!” “Activate the Jovian accelerator!” “Prepare to enter the IN-skip!” You have of course two versions of the anime manga film, the Blu-ray disc you can view with the dialogue dubbed in English and of course with the DVD you can watch the original Japanese film subtitled in English with the animated epic ‘HARLOCK: SPACE PILOT’ is an absolute riot for the geeky imperatives fans, very fitting for a film that’s all about urgency, pseudo-science and speed. Helmed by Shinji Aramaki, this is a glorious marshalling of state-of-the-art technical expertise that boasts top-notch 3D stereoscopy, but the portentous script is too nerdy to cross over to the mainstream. Fans of the original 1970s manga-turned-cartoon “Harlock” and younger anime buffs, however, will wolf this down at home and in a number of key offshore markets.
While the anime film revives the situation and main characters from the manga by Leiji Matsumoto, which inspired Toei Animation’s TV series known as “Albator” in Francophone territories, where it was a huge cult hit, the emphasis of this update is much more on post-millennial gloom and environmental anxieties, rather than the original’s mix of sci-fi swashbuckling and anti-Fascist subtext. Taking a leaf out of the ‘STAR TREK’ sci-fi film franchise and is not dissimilar in setup, especially with the help of Helmer Aramaki and screenwriters Harutoshi Fukui and Kiyoto Takeuchi have cannily rebooted the basic concept to suit the 2013 zeitgeist. Still, the anime film will likely not to break out beyond the franchise’s core audience of fanboys, especially getting turned on by the attenuated-yet-busty femme characters and videogame aesthetics, the latter referenced directly at several points by shoot-’em-up-style shots that herald the inevitable tie-in games.
Having it both ways for reasons made clear towards the end, the opening action “far, far in the future or perhaps in the distant past,” sometime after humans from a resource-exhausted Earth have scattered 500 billion members of their species across the universe in search of new homelands. The whole colonization project didn’t work out so well, and when humans tried to return to Earth, a huge conflict called the Homecoming War broke out some hundred years before the plot proper starts. In the end, no one was allowed back and Earth became a kind of planetary wildlife preserve, worshipped as a symbol by its scattered, doomed descendants throughout the galaxy, while a repressive state called the Gaia Coalition governs all.
And as to the backstory, here you have the main premise is that Captain Harlock [Shun Oguri], the eponymous immortal space pirate of the title, is in perpetual rebellion against the Coalition, and flies about the universe in his super-cool-looking if suspiciously phallic intergalactic man-of-war, the Arcadia, both ship and man running on “dark matter.”
The plot’s main engine of conflict is that high-ranking Coalition leader Ezra [Toshiyuki Morikawa], who looks like a futuristic wheelchair-bound Sgt. Pepper, has sent his kid brother Logan [Haruma Miura] to infiltrate and spy on Harlock and his crew. Naturally, the kid, who looks uncannily similar to Harlock or at least goes to the same barber, starts to sympathise with pirates, especially when he learns of bitter secrets kept by the Coalition.
Either way, the dark matter ends up getting unleashed, the Jovian accelerator is activated, and then all hell breaks loose when they enter IN-Skip, all good fun as the very fate of the universe hangs in the balance. The important thing is that it should all look awesome, and with the huge amount of coin clearly spent on rendering, motion capture and incredibly detailed background work, it duly does.
The odd thing is that, especially for Western audiences used to more expressiveness in animated character design, the faces here seem to have all been injected with cartoon Botox, given how static they are in relation to the rest of teeming visual world Aramaki and Co. have created. One can only presume this is a cultural or aesthetic decision, so that everyone should appear congruent with the limited-movement look of the original series. Indeed, a lot of Japanese animation, especially more laddish fare like this, shows the same disconnect between statue-like characters and hyper-detailed surroundings. Sometimes the pace feels really dragged out by the time animation crawls to its apocalyptic end, but it’s hard to see how anything could have been cut without making the story even more incomprehensible.
3D Blu-ray Image Quality – Manga Entertainment presents us ‘HARLOCK: SPACE PILOT’ with a spectacular 1080p encoded image that really enhances the 3D image is so fantastic and has an incredible depth of field that is mind blowing and I do not hesitate to give it a five star rating. We also get an equally impressive 2.39:1 aspect ratio. Everything was sharp, clean, and again with outstanding detail, both in the 3D and 2D versions. But again the 3D image wins hand down and makes you get involved with the action that bombards you with every twist of the plot. But again the 3D image wins hands down for me as the people at Manga Entertainment certainly have done a most professional job. Please Note: Playback Region B/2: This will not play on most Blu-ray players sold in North America, Central America, South America, Japan, North Korea, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Southeast Asia. Learn more about Blu-ray region specifications.
3D Blu-ray Audio Quality – Manga Entertainment brings us ‘HARLOCK: SPACE PILOT’ with a spectacular audio experience, with two alternate audio presentations of either the English: 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio or the Japanese: 5.1 Dolby Digital Surround Sound. Both are equally impressive, but the English: 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio wins hand down for me personally, as it seems to have a much more dynamic presentation and gives all of the speakers a brilliant surround sound experience with the big battle scenes, especially those taking place on the Arcadia are expertly achieved, with various "bells and whistles" dotting the surrounds and crafting a believable ambience of what life on the spaceship is like. Dialogue is presented very cleanly and clearly and is well prioritised. Also again the fidelity is top notch and with also a very dynamic range extremely wide on both of the surround tracks.
DVD Special Features and Extras:
The DVD disc contains the original Japanese film with English subtitles.
Special Feature: The Making of ‘HARLOCK: SPACE PILOT’ [2013] [576i] [1.78:1] [22:48] With the start of this special documentary, it is narrated by an unknown Japanese person, but luckily it is subtitled throughout in English. We are informed that Harlock’s early conception was with an early anime Japanese TV children’s series, which has had a massive fan base around the world, especially with the legendary characters. Harlock’s legend began thirty years ago from the original anime series. The TV series began airing in japan in 1978 and it began airing on French TV the following year, and was a massive success and the viewing figures reached 70%, exceeding all expectations. Then suddenly it was reborn after thirty years of this legendary Japanese anime animation, because the Harlock character was so appealing to the entire fans world-wide. We see about the appearance of Leiji Matsumoto (manga) at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival in France in 2011 and which brought all the news media from around the world because of the appearance of Leiji Matsumoto. The anime film was finally completed for a big screen world premiere at the Tokyo International Anime Fair and while viewing this special we get a long sneak preview of what people were going to see when it was released in 2013. But we are informed that it was just not a simple remake, but was more of a reboot, especially with the stunning new animation visuals, while still maintaining the original story line premise. The production was led by the director Shinji Aramaki, who startled the world with is film ‘APPLESEED,’ where a civilisation was controlled by computers, and the moral dilemmas faced by who monitor computers, but similarly featuring a modern message with fantastic visuals. The anime film was written by the best-selling novelist Harutoshi Fukui, whose works have been adapted to the big screen numerous times. But with the Captain Harlock in the anime film, he returns as a darker version, where Captain Harlock is depicted with his laden past revealed. But also where is also an antihero to dissipate his role in the anime film. What we also see is personal views from Leiji Matsumoto himself, where he informs us that he wanted the Harlock character to live freely by his own flag and to have his desire to live out his life by one’s own creed, and to also live out one’s dreams in the universe, and he also wrote the story so that people could treasure that wish. We also get to view the faces of the voice cast, like Shun Oguri, Haruma Miura, Yû Aoi, Arata Furuta and Ayano Fukuda, and we also get to see an image of the One Ok Rock group who sing the theme song “Be The Light.” We also get to view behind-the-scene of the FX action with the extras, and how the effects were turned into the anime film, it also digitally analyses the actors facial expressions, which is then converts the data into the characters animation. The anime film used the latest up-to-date CGI technology throughout all aspects of the film, in making ‘HARLOCK: SPACE PILOT’ a never-before-seen visual experience. A lot of the efforts was put into making something of this visual calibre that is inconceivable, and not just the effort and time put into the anime film, but also physical and emotionally as well, especially for something on this scale. They feel this anime film proves how imaginative and creative people can be. But with the extracts from the film, the subtitle says, “What is the secret?” But we get the final prophetic words from Leiji Matsumoto, where he says, “Everyone around the world who watches this film, are all part of the same human race. Let us all help one another to live on this planet together. That’s the future I dream of.” But what of the anime film itself, well the Japanese narrator wants you discover the answers by watching the anime film. This was a TOEI Company, Ltd production.
BONUS: You get four stunning full colour rare postcards with images from the anime film, sealed in a cellophane envelope. I have not taken them out to view them, as I do not want to spoil the unique quality of the cellophane envelope, as in time they will be a very rare commodity.
PLUS: The Limited Edition SteelBook has a stunning design, with nice colourful images on the inside of the SteelBook.
Finally, ‘HARLOCK: SPACE PILOT’ visuals are absolutely stunning, especially in the equally awesome 3D images, that have totally awesome depth of field, but as to watching the 2D disc, I found it totally flat and totally uninspiring, still I suppose you at least have the choice of watching either image presentation. Again the breadth and depth of the space vistas in 3D are simply breath-taking, in both definition and execution. For the military sci-fi fans among us, the space battles are also truly awe inspiring, and I should imagine seeing the film in 3D IMAX would blow you away. If you're a fan of manga anime animation, then ‘HARLOCK: SPACE PILOT’ will appear as the culmination of decades of technological advancements in animation technology and art. It will most certainly become the standard against which all other animated anime films will be compared with for quite some time. On visuals and technology alone, ‘HARLOCK: SPACE PILOT’ stands as the true progeny of trend-setting anime films. Sci-fi movies are rarely known for their astronomical accuracy, and Anime is no exception. Dark matter is thrown in for good and used liberally in ‘HARLOCK: SPACE PILOT,’ but it appears more as a supernatural force than a force of nature. Technical merits are first class, but with this Region B/2 Blu-ray SteelBook the supplementary material is totally lacking in something decent, but despite this, it is still a good purchase in my opinion, and that is of course the personal decision on whether you feel it is well worth purchasing or not, but to me it ticks all the boxes, especially in this awesome 3D image presentation. Highly Recommended!
Andrew C. Miller – Your Ultimate No.1 Film Aficionado
Le Cinema Paradiso
United Kingdom
