Review: Harlock – Space Pirate

Harlock – Space Pirate plays in a time before or after ours. It’s the epic story of a man doomed by his own actions, and others bent on stopping his next.

It’s an animated movie, originally Japanese spoken. On Netflix, you can also choose for English, German and French as the language of choice. The movie is based on characters and stories written by Leiji Matsumoto. It runs for nearly 2 hours, which makes it an average length.

My thoughts about it? I like the concept of the story. The animations are nice, sometimes a bit too clean for my taste. The voice acting is definitely Japanese: dramatic and overaccentuating. But that’s something I don’t mind with Japanese movies. That’s also why I watched it in the original language, to get that specific feel from the movie.
I won’t spoil anything here, but the end is predictable. It has some nice twists and turns, especially between the two brothers in the story. Some events seem forced, like they needed to happen to come to the right conclusion, but illogical in the course of events before that.
I do like the epic battles, although they seem rushed. And the Arcadia, Harlock’s ship, is such a beauty. It reminds me of a comic I used to read: Requiem Chevalier Vampire (Requiem the Vampire Knight) by Mills and Ledroit. Menacing looking on the approach and bringing fear to anyone opposing it.

I would recommend this movie for science fiction lovers. Watch it when you have some time to kill and just relax. Don’t forget to turn on the subtitles! Unless your Japanese is better than mine.

If you want to watch the movie yourself, check out Netflix or get it on Amazon.com.