#albator 78

[erkolblinguispretre]

Does someone has a sample of the Arcadia's/Atlantis' engine noise from the series Captain Harlock 78/Albator 78? I can't find it anywhere and I'm loosing my mind...

[reddit-eco-plus]

lien

[radetzkymarch]

So i guess Space Pirate Captain Harlock (1978) is getting a Blu-ray release next month?!

[etunpeudevitriol]

Tochiro coming back from the grave as the ship's computer, ready to throw hands with whoever is putting his family in danger

[gobigone]

[bbtree]

even more spch notes

how great is episode 16?? i wanna talk about how great episode 16 is.

there’s a beautiful opening scene, kei visiting her parents’ grave. she says she’s doing okay, which is nice to know, because she lives a very interesting life but we rarely see real glimpses into it. too, it’s nice to see her cool space-70s “civvies”.

you know some bad shit’s about to go down when her ex shows up, even before we get the flashback. how? the music. how the fucking FUCK does this show always have this incredible, weighty, ocean-of-sadness soundtrack? dammit.

i dunno if it’s the framing of kazuya’s introduction, but i’m not surprised when it turns out he’s spying for the mazone. for some reason he has “yaoi hands”?? the way he’s put her childhood home back the way it was is so creepy. the last time i, personally, saw this in a show was in jessica jones. (which was even creepier). i am thinking kei should have been a little less trusting, to consent to the experiment like this, but then she’s got a lot going on.

the torture/interrogation scene is pretty terrifying.

there’s some amazing moments in this episode. one of my personal favourites is the scene where everyone is chilling on the beach at one of the arcadia’s pirate hideouts. there’s harlock and a giant yellow beach umbrella. the crew and mayu are playing on the sand. miime is getting drunk drinking. they’re a nice bunch tbh.

harlock and the rest figure out the truth about kei’s ex, and then harlock stops daiba from trying to intervene, saying ‘she has to work it out herself’, but right afterwards we see miime climbing into kei’s room through the window. did harlock know that daiba would probably fuck things up with how he’d go about it? is miime acting as a free agent here or was it understood that she would be the one to go (i mean she’s psychic and also seems to know harlock better than anyone else apart from tochiro)?

nothing that passes the bechdel test (this IS ‘captain harlock’ by leiji matsumoto l o l), but we get a nice moment with miime and kei. i wish they could interact more tbh. (but this IS etc. etc.)

finally we have the scene that made my jaw drop. a little bit, at least. you know the one. the final scene, where kei “sings” her song of farewell to kazuya, dressed in her mother’s kimono, playing her mother’s shamisen. kei, who stayed back to help continue her father’s work, ends this episode channelling her mother’s spirit? something. it’s extremely moving.

kazuya pretends innocence, but kei presses her charge. he does the villain laugh, giving up the show. there’s more yaoi hands. she points her... cosmo gun thing... at him. he’s like, hahah, i’m your fiance, you love me, you’re not REALLY going to shoot me, are you?

reader, she does.

i applauded.

no, seriously, in how many texts does the girl actually shoot after a dialogue like that? i know this slots into a traditional japanese revenge structure well enough, but i don’t see this much even in more recent anime.

anyway, kei is a sweet person, and while she’s crouched over kazuya’s dead body remembering the good times they had together, the mazone sneaks up behind her to kill her. but kei’s boss shows up just in time. kei’s boss has good timing. he has great sense for dramatic entrances (if the poofy hair and the cape didn’t already clue you in).

the episode ends with kei playing the shamisen again, having asked harlock to just listen. which he does, looking out at the ocean. she plays, and the ocean turns blood-red, and the immensity of the sound of the waves mingles with the music to create a haunting rhythm of their own. it’s like a tone poem in animation.

the medium is perfect for this kind of thing, and i’m just reminded why i keep going back to watch this shit sometimes. there’s really a deep vein of poetry and melancholy in the original series that is worth it, for me, despite many other flaws. rintarou’s direction is incredible sometimes, and i really wonder how much of what i love about this show is due specifically to his skill and sensibility.

one last note: episodes like this make it even more disappointing that kei is terminally underused in the franchise, only being promoted to more and more fanservicey versions over time. gah.

[missbaltesg]

[missbaltesg]