Written by Shelby-Liza Ndumbi
Welcome, Cupcakes!
This is Sunday Cream where I’ll be giving my likes and dislikes/hate of movies I’ve recently finished... after three days or two weeks.
If you haven’t read my last entries, it will be posted under ‘Sunday Cream’. Last time I spoke about Batman Ninja 2018.
The good and bad attempt at dropping Bruce Wayne into a Japanese setting and giving me one the most excruciating pains ever. No exaggeration here. Lol
This Boxing Day Sunday, I chose to talk about a movie you Cupcakes might not know, and if you do, props to the 20% of you. It comes both in subbed and dubbed version. I watched the dubbed version, so I will comment as such. This is also a retelling of the original anime series back in the 1970s.
Anyway, this film is called Space Pirate Captain Harlock. I have a talent for finding hidden movie gems, I was on YouTube this one night a month or two ago looking for something to watch with my dinner. When I don’t know what to screen, I type “animated full movies” and the results pop plenty of options, even though some covers are misleading.
It shows you a white dog with spots but gives you a movie with anthropomorphic animals in the countryside instead. It’s always a pleasant shock.
Well, I found this motion picture which gave me a video game turned movie vibe. I usually don’t mind those. I mean look at Arcane. That show was everything and beyond. Or Resident Evil: Damnation (movie), or Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness (series). So, to my dismay, I thought this one was going to be great. The animation was decent if you don’t pay attention to the blurriness.
Or how the audio would cut itself and then resume in Japanese with subtitles that probably don’t match.
It’s on YouTube, after all.
But this... why? Since I’ve mentioned in my last entry that animated films are my favorite,
I really hate when the directors and writers mess that up in forms of character development, plot, design, dialogue and more. It’s an irritation at its finest. Yet there are worse ones than this movie.
Doesn’t mean it gets a pass though...
There will be spoilers for the 80% who don’t like it lol...
I’m sure I want to say nothing more but how much I hated this film. So far, it's not worse than The Outsider 2018, none of what I’ve written has topped that yet.
Not surprising. But we’re not here to further flame Jared Leto’s mistake. We’re here for Captain Harlock.
This movie took me exactly three days to finish, my brain couldn’t take it the first time, so as always, I had to leave. Not just because I was watching it late at night, but because I got bored. For those who don’t know me, I don’t get bored easily, so this was new.
Space Pirate Captain Harlock or Harlock: Space Pirate is about our man of the hour called Harlock. He recognized long ago that mankind is dying as a result of the fighting and that he can save them from their near deaths; he plans on eradicating their current universe and birth a new one. Due to his mistake, the Earth suffered and started to perish leaving him and his crew as immortal beings because of the Dark Matter spill that keeps the Arcadia ship running controlled by a mint color elf named Mimay (Miime).
Their government, the Gaia Coalition, wants their people who reside on other planets to believe that they’re trying to stop the space captain because he bombed Earth. Harlock is ready to expose their asses at any cost when he finds out the truth that after such a mess up, the Earth was shielded with holograms to make it seem like it wasn’t damaged. Wrong! It isn’t fully broken, and the elite want to keep it like that, so they can decide who will return first. There was still life on Earth once Logan (Yama in the Japanese version) discovered it when he crashed.
It’s always the government...
I read that this was one the most successful films in Italy, and like I said earlier, I don’t want to say I just hate it. I suppose it did better there than it did here.
My first negative point and shortest one in this movie would have to be the lack of usage of the plots and setup they had. I despise when directors set a plot up and don’t go with it. It was placed there just for the hell of it.
For example, towards the end of the film when Harlock and his crew on the Arcadia defeat the Gaia Coalition by exposing the holograms, why didn’t they storm in and finish the job? Nothing was actually resolved, nor done. There was still more to do.
It ends but it doesn’t at the same time. You’re left there wondering where the rest of the fight for freedom mission is. They set it, and it goes nowhere. No points!
I wanted to see those rich bastards get their asses handed to them. That would have been satisfying for me and the characters.
For a moment, I did think there to be a second film. Maybe soon...
As for the second more positive point would be the animation and character analysis. I like some animated entertainment myself, so this one didn’t fail too greatly in that department.
Harlock’s second-in-command, Kei Yuki’s design was amazing. I liked her red jumpsuit and the texture of her blond hair. It went according to her past design of the 70s but a little modernized.
She’s one of the few whose appearance didn’t bother me. There was also that mint green elf I mentioned. Her design was flawless and captivating like they intended.
Logan’s, however, was too close to Harlock. From the beginning of the film, I knew he looked like the captain because of his hair. What I didn’t know was that they were literally going to make Logan Harlock number two.
…........ I’m tired. Another negative.
Harlock is his own person; I didn’t need a double. I found it to be pointless. Logan becomes the new captain and prints as the former captain’s double. Which is weird since Kei has been there longer but...
He even got a scar on his face like the captain. I’m fine with taking them asses under their wing, but when they change one personality and turn it into a double. Oof.
Speaking of constant change, Logan’s character was doing just that. He kept going back and forth between his duty to atone for a permanent crack he caused to his older brother Ezra’s (Isora) legs and death for his wife Nami (and childhood love to Logan) - to his newfound loyalties to Harlock even after he knew about the boy’s plan to kill him like the Coalition wants.
Logan is a government spy. I forgot to mention lol.
He took too much time to pick and choose. Well, he’s captain by the end of it.
It’s normal to see characters find it difficult to choose sides and stick with it, but there are other times it gets annoying to watch their indecisiveness go ramped. It’s a movie, move the hell on.
I must say, there was this other crew member on the Arcadia whom I didn’t like. And that’s the man named Yullian (Yattaran in the Japanese version). He’s meant to be a science expert and a comic relief. But he wasn’t funny at all.
He says this one very sexist comment about women, aiming at Kei, that the only reason she got so high a position was because she slept with the captain.
I didn’t appreciate the typical remark that women can’t get what they want by pure ambition and hard work and not because a man put them there. It’s insulting and degrading. Once we become more independent, the men complain that we should need a male.
This just reminds me of this other motion picture that’s a period piece in the 17th or 18th century where women are shown to always need a man’s hand to guide them as if they can’t manage. Forced marriages and unnecessary matting behaviour.
I hated Yullian more after that comment. Even after he attempted to save Kei and the rest of the crew when the Coalition boarded their vessel.
But that’s how you wanted to make him. An unfiltered sexist. He did get slapped by Kei though... Golden!
Side thought: I don’t know if you Cupcakes remember the tv series called Slugterra (very good by the way). The character Pronto who is certainly an anthropomorphic mole, unfortunately resembles Yullian from this movie. Poor shame... lol I like Pronto
Pronto from Slugterra
Yullian from Harlock: Space Pirate
This almost slipped my mind, but there was this unnecessary scene where Kei is taking a shower and flipping around like some mermaid under water for no reason.
It took me out of the movie for seven seconds and made me forget where I was, then brought me back. Lol I was confused.
My last thought about this film is that it really could have been better. Always. I really wanted to like it more than the final rating I’m about to give it.
6/10 seems fitting. IMDB agrees lol.
Leave your comments below if you want.
Note: These upcoming Sundays
(Jan 2 & 9) there will be a gap between, so I can find new things to write about. I will be back on Jan 16. Stay tuned. You can also find me on Wattpad @Shelby-Liza. Merry Christmas!