Kyaputen Hârokku (2013) Online

***Spoiler Alerts***

The first thing you will likely notice about this movie is the absolutely GORGEOUS animation. And well, that's about all you'll see. I've not watched a lot of Matsumoto's work, but I'e read enough to know this isn't the true backstory for some of the main characters. In general they tried to make a series from the 80's that could very well take weeks of binge reading and cut it down to about 2 hours. Which will not cut it. If you are already investing some $300 million on a movie, it means you have enough money to make a 3-4 parter. Because that's how long it would take to inform the average Joe of everything that's going on in the universe. Because aside from that, nothing would be memorable. If i hadn't read or seen some of the manga or anime beforehand, I would think that this started out as Star Wars in the beginning and throughout, combined with Halo 2, with Final Fantasy, and combined with Cowboy Bebop. Here's the story for you poor confused souls, 1) Big war happened because of too many births. Apparently they found this out when the human population reached 500+ billion. 2) Resentful from the way he was treated and cast away from home, Captain Harlock uses the power of the dark matter, basically super nukes made from the alien's essence, and decides to rid the Earth of all life. 3) Ridden to the core in guilt he flies around the galaxy looking for a way to just end all suffering because he royally f*cked the Earth up, so he finds some 100 galaxy sized nukes that was basically like doing an easter egg hunt inside an empty barrel. 4) Kiddo from the basically Star Wars Empire (Here its called the Gaia Coalition) decides to try to make his unappreciative brother happy for a mistake he did as a kid, and plays a saboteur. He becomes attached to a pirate crew (pirate being used loosely because they're only after the big galaxy nukes) and decides, "Imma be a pirate!" and plot twist happens. 5) Plot twist happened and after a small discussion with his older brother, he decides after having a flashback of an accident that happened when he was like 8-10 years old and only wanting to do his mom proud that he will finish what started. Plot twist happens again. 6) After this plot twist he finds himself unable to kill the captain so he decides to take a stroll on Earth, somehow still inhabitable by one person because a patch of flowers are still alive, but don't worry about the ash and debris or smoke filling you up, and picks some flowers while an interstellar war is going on. This i guess was a way to show the captain life still lives, but life adapts. It doesn't mean that that flower is a symbol that the Earth is safe again. 7) So after the heart-felt moment between Captain Harlock and his flower, we decide its time to take back the ship. Well that goes about as awfully as they could've planned, as the entire Coalitions fleet is there, and they got a toy still functioning after one use in 100 years. Looks like an exact replica of a Halo (video game) ring. And it fires what appears to be the Death Star on meth. And it misses the Earth AND the Arcadia (The ship). Threads that tiny space needle. But if the ship auto repairs why do they ever fear it being completely destroyed? In fact the original pirates of the Arcadia were fearless freedom fighters that often mindlessly obeyed Harlocks orders. But they cowered time after time in some really basic concepts of being rebels. Fighting the government. If you made it to the end of this movie still wondering what happened, you weren't alone. The movie made an impression like it was Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of The Black Pearl, if it was in Will Turner's POV the whole time, whereas it mentions very little about Captain Harlock, his crew, or even the main kiddo here that cant decide which side to be on. The movie failed to even deliver to me memorable names, because aside from Harlock,I hardly remember any of them. It was space fight, go find the big bomb detonator that for some reason is in plain sight, another space fight except a little less action, and then finish with the kiddo becoming the captain even though the original came back to life from the powers that be. Overall a very boring and time consuming experience, but worth a watch to allow all these greedy game devs or 3D animation studios that top quality graphics can NOT cover a crap story. Because I remember the manga in the 80's featured a lot more depth. This is like the shadow of the real story. If that much.

The film was released yesterday, Oct 12h at Sitges Film Festival, here in Barcelona. This is a brief summary of my impressions:

The first half hour of film announces an awesome movie: with a great intro the movie is presented visually stunning with a wonderful soundtrack, interesting characters, great action, but soon deflated by the poor script.

Note that this is a Harlock film where Harlock is not the main character!

The resources and ideas in some of the action scenes are weary of repeated over and over again...

The cinematography is great until after the first 45 minutes aprox. , then the film becomes very explanatory , with many dialogues and voice- overs. It's from there when the script becomes poor.

The changes in the character of Harlock are very large and they even betray the original spirit. In addition, i was tired with that "dark matter", an element of the movie used as a deus-ex-machina over and over again throughout the film.

A great opportunity is lost because the movies is visually stunning and the artistic design work is very good. If they had wrote a simple script , elaborated but not so complicated and keeping the essence of the character, the result would have been much better.

It's a shame, but i had an entertaining audiovisual 3D experience and i could discovered a beautiful soundtrack that i want to listen again and again imagining my ideal Harlock film.

There's a strange tendency in Japanese animation , it often uses cryptic and vague script to give the illusion of depth. Those who are familiar with animes or games would recognize this outdated pattern, the quirky storytelling would seem to be meaningful as the characters brood over a crisis, yet it barely tells anything relevant to the audience. In some cases it might even alienate the viewers.

This is the persisting problem with Harlock. It certainly presents good quality visual as it floats across the light show, but the vague narrative hurts the presentation. The dialogues may sound flamboyant, yet it is actually shallow and superficial. Backstory is glossed over while the interactions are deprived of enjoyment. The characters, even though looking attractive, just can't generate enough interest as they banter with foreign jargon.

It even resembles teen drama instead of space voyage at times. Development is often crude, only to give dramatic scenes without substance. The main story follows Yama as he tries to catch the titular Harlock. Both of them are not that audience friendly, they are already in lamentation with barely any introduction. It's hard to relate since they look like generic RPG cast with average mellow issue.

Then it becomes heavily convoluted as the movie tries to mix strange terms, they sound ominously impaction like dark matter or ancient race, but material is too thin. After a hefty amount of scenery changes, cool poses and starship fights, the movie can barely hold interest for characters and with relatively long runtime it turns into a plodding endeavor.

This is Final Fantasy: The Spirit Within all over again, glossy effect and drab boring story. It will be hard to either garner interest for new audience or please old fans with such lackluster narrative, but at least it works for an eye candy.

This movie is simply completely incoherent and delirious. The plot make no sense. The characters are meaningless. The conversations are at random.

The whole plot is based by an incomprehensible plan that none has understood, but for some reason the crew still follow the captain, even if no one has an idea of what they are doing.

A character that change side 4 time in a movie with ridiculous reasons is one of the worse thing I ever seen.

The only thing that save this movie is that the CGI is beautiful, and the ship is a true masterpiece of design.

But a beautiful CGI cannot save a whole movie from being horrible.

First off I would like to say that I grew up watching Harlock I am a die hard Harlock fan I have collected his Toy's, Models, Records, Movies, TV Animations and just about Everything Leiji Matsumoto has put out so my knowledge on this matter is immense. Now as for the new Harlock Movie, visually it was fun to watch. Seeing one's childhood hero in full on CG is always going to be entertaining but that was all it was. This movie lacked so much of the Essence and Soul of what is Leiji Matsumoto that I sort of considered the insert of a old Leiji Matsumoto drawing at the end of the credits a bit of a insult.. It's like saying "Hey we have the comics story's and art but we didn't use any of it" It was a slap in the face. I don't know what it is these days with buying the copyrights to something and then putting out something that is in no relation to the story.. What are the things that are wrong with this movie? Well here's a short list.

1. Harlock's back story is different from that of Arcadia of my Youth.

2. There is nothing about Leiji Matsumoto's art style in this movie asides from the appearance of his characters everything else is vacant his style of drawing city's buildings and computer rooms is not in here. The Gaia city looks more like Asgaurd from The Thor movie.

3. The enemy is GENERIC and forgettable.. there is nothing memorable. There is so many influential villains in Leijiverse you could have pulled something from the past like (Count Mecha, Queen Promethuem, Faust the Black Knight, The Mazone, or Illuminads.

4. In this movie Harlock's crew are portrayed as cowards Harlock's crew are not cowards! They might be pre-occupied but when Harlock asks for Volunteers those who sail under the flag of Freedom on the Arcadia VOLUNTEER.

5. In this movie Yataran is portrayed as a coward as well, Yataran is not a coward and never doubts Harlock, the XO has always believed in the captain and is far more important than what he is portrayed as in this movie. His love for building battleship and airplane models was also missing in this movie. The personality's of these characters was totally different from how they are portrayed in previous Harlock story's.

6. Spacewolf Fighters (Arcadias Space Fighter Jets) None to be seen in this movie.

7. Leiji Matsumotos love for WWII Airplanes and Battleships does not show in any of the mechanical designs. None of that. The Arcadia looks like a mix of HR Gigers Aliens and a giant penis. Even the enemy's fleet has no Leiji Matsumoto influence in the design of their ships.

8. No DR.Zero, No Masu chasing a Mi Kun with her Knife, No Chief Engineer Maji No Kiddodo and Taro Ama.

9. The story is a MESS, this story makes absolutely no sense, At first they present to you a crew that sails for freedom so much to the point that to board the ship it's the one word that will get you onboard the Arcadia yet as the back story goes according to this movie Harlock wasn't even about Freedom he was just some cursed pirate mutation who was spawned from black matter. Random weapons are being pulled out by the Gaia Coalition on the fly, giant space bomb, what?

10. Tochiro is like some almost un existent element in this movie. the Arcadias main computer where Tochiros soul lays is totally bares no resemblance to Leiji Matsumotos desgin which has been on each and every Arcadia previous to this movie. Furthermore it is like a non relevant thing in this movie. Tochiro and the Arcadia are a essential part to the Harlock Universe cutting that out is like pizza without the cheese it just doesn't work. Tochiro isn't just Harlocks best friend and traveling companion they are freaking Bro's before Hoe's brothers! With past life history you don't just brush a character like that under the rug.

11. There are no Mechanized people in this movie.

In short this movie was a great big FAIL.

Anyways I hope this movie was a one off and if ever there is to be another it will be giving to someone with some insight into Leiji Matsumotos Vision and history of Captain Harlock someone like Rintaro who has a history with Harlock and Galaxy Express and would understand the character and behavior of Captain Harlock and his followers.

It is currently 3:37 am in Boston Massachusetts right now. I took the time out from going to sleep,just to comment on how bad this movie was....

So much plot holes!!! The movie started off pretty cool, I was excited for the visuals, it seemed like boy was about to embark on a journey with these pirates and one dimensional characters!... Harlock seemed so cool.

Halfway into the movie, it was all about the boy's past and him flipping sides, which he ended up doing like 4 times. His brother has no other emotion but anger, non justified anger I might add.

Harlock is insane and the crew still follows him after they learned that they were mislead for all those years.

The ending leaves you with a stupid look on your face. I kept wishing that it was going to get better...The plot has ZERO foundation. It holds a theme for twenty minutes at a time. 30M dollar budget for the greatest CGI I've ever seen, horrible story, should've spent some of that money on the script, heck give me six figures and I would've sat in Starbucks all day for a year typing away.

Did I mention one-dimensional characters? Sorry, I'm done and off to bed... I feel like I have just finished my civic duty to mankind.

I enjoy a lot of SF and this type of animation is a very good vehicle/medium for it (like in Vexille, ST Invasion, GITS Innocence...). But this particular story was not very good for me.

Reviewer Andrea Daviddi summed it up well; incoherent back story, clueless characters...

...that are implementing grand plans without any idea why. One of them was a turncoat who changed sides at least 4 times. He was that much confused.

At one point a dark matter powered ship is destroyed in an explosion but transforms into a different ship sporting a human skeleton hood ornament. Dark matter is a mysterious force that also loves design.

Another movie that is completely destroyed by the poor quality of the chain of events. The absurd numbers of side changes the main character has, the big speech from the captain that clearly goes to another movie, the commercial poses of everybody, the plot, the plot itself is a huge waste of time. Character develop is a joke in this movie.

In other hand, the visual photographic scenes are very good, that brings the necessary balance to watch this movie till the end.

It seems the tried to make a change to normal workflow, by putting the main fighting scene at the middle of the movie, in an action film that is a big risk if you don't have enough plot to make a comeback. This film just fill the space after the fight with useless words, with character introduction, its a mess....

I would NOT recommend this to friends

This review is nothing but spoilers. Read it or don't, but please don't watch this horrible movie. Below I detail Commander Kill Everyone's sincere efforts to single-handedly KILL EVERYONE.

01. When you find out about government corruption destroy planet Earth and kill tens of billions of people.

02. Pursue plan to DESTROY THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE which will kill hundreds of billions of people.

03. Kill countless people on dozens of ships while executing the plan to destroy the universe.

04. Scratch plan to destroy the universe.

05. Perform attack that will kill countless people on dozens of ships to inform humanity that it may not be ENTIRELY doomed to extinction (but it probably is, and that's OK).

Like almost all the Italian kids of my generation I grew up watching Matsumoto's series like Battleship Yamato, Galaxy 999 and of course Captain Harlock.

I was surprised to see that a movie had been developed and I had nothing about it, I saw the trailer on TV and even if I'm not a CGI fan at all I decided to give it a chance...well I wasn't disappointed.

The plot is simple, doesn't have anything to deal with the previous TV series of the 70s, the 80s or Arcadia of you Youth, the Endless Odyssey or any other OAV, it seems that the Japanese have never been interested in developing a consistent continuity or mythology of any kind while they are more focused in re-creating the same..."atmosphere" perhaps is the right word. Here we have the same basic ingredients of Harlock's history: he's a pirate, an ex captain of a military ship in a previous war that he lost, he fights for freedom and for Earth, a place from where he is banned (this time everybody is banned, for the matter), his dear friend Toshio is dead, his crew consist in outcasts and among them his right hand is Key and left hand Yattaran. I don;t know why in the FAQ it is written that his love interest in the previous movie was Esmeralda because as far as I remember she was Toshio's girlfriend and the alien Mime is again the woman who dedicated her life to him, the last of her race that here we are informed were the Nebelung,who possessed an esoteric technology that is the center of the story. The main antagonists are the gerontocrats of the Gaia Coalition who banned Humanity from Earth, some real life references to aging population and the decline of Civilisation are new and interesting elements that reflects some themes of our actual times especially in Japan (I guess) but also in Western Europe.

Without giving too many spoilers the story makes relative sense until the end when something unclear happens: on one side it seems there is a cosmic regeneration ongoing and the baton is given to Yama (that here like in the original series always looked a "young" Harlock) but in reality it doesn't seem that Herlock's original plan was carried on...perhaps the movie has been cut for the European release or there has been something lost in translation ( for instance certain dialogs of Z Gundan in Italian or English don't make any sense at all,it seems the characters are discussing about Philosophy during a duel), I don't know but however the romantic atmosphere of the movie has not been disturbed, at least for me.

Talking about CGI: this incarnation of the Arcadia is cool but from the outside I preferred the original blue version or the green one of Arcadia of my youth, the turrets and the interiors have a real mechanical feel that rarely CGI can give (I think about the "fakeness" of Transformers first), the ship of the Coalition have a beautiful retro' style that seems taken from Alien and Aliens, the 3D works great too, without feeling too intrusive.

CGI as usual fails portraying realistically humans: Harlock and Yama look a little like Big Jim dolls, Key on the other side being a woman and "smooth" is more similar to a real actress covered with make as it is fashion today, of course the "best" looking character is the Alien Mime, much better than anything we have seen in Cameron's Avatar. All the character and costume design are faithful to Matsumoto's original design, so men and women are slender and ethereal, the hairstyles are pleasantly 70s (Kay looks like a Norwegian model of that era) as well as the costumes (I want Yama's leather jacket! Or at least, it looks like leather), it is surprising what the Japanese can do with a budget of just 30 million dollars, the American directors and Hollywood managers should watch this movie, they can learn one thing or two.

In conclusion, I liked the movie, in comparison to the Hollywood's crap-fest we are watching on screen in the last years it is a masterpiece, the weak points are the traditional "Matsumoto" flaws: a certain lack of consistency, no real relation with the other media, evanescent plot, but if you are familiar with him and generally speaking the world of Japanese Anime you have to deal with that.

The movie at its core was beautiful, though I was only able to get the translated part that made absolutely no sense at times. This had amazing artwork and colors that send you spiraling through a more vampiric/steampunk/futuristic/pirate feel. So much to it but, yet it kinda fits some how.

The Visual Effects were stunning but, what about the story and its animation? Well the animation was good just not great.

Things happen to fast and the characters just never feel real or believable. It does have that unstoppable anime feel that you might also find in final fantasy movies. All their movies were also visually stunning, just hard to take things on a believable scale that measure up to us humans, so at times you can feel as though their a bit too distant.

Characters are usually something you want to feel or believe in. Having some sort of connection either to hate or like them. In this movie they didn't provide that and instead just threw you in the story expecting that you could make sense of it all. Even when characters die I could feel nothing for them since their purpose in the story was so small.

In the beginning they would simply throw you a character and still they would flip from one to another, then again without slowing down just a little to get you used to the main plot of the whole film.

Which I still could not understand....

Visually - 9/10

Story - 2/10

Realism - 5/10

Pace - Roadrunner Fast (Too hard to follow and so you kinda had to say "eh" and shrug it off just so you could watch the rest of it)

Probably my first 3D CG anime movie from Japan. There's no compromise in quality like they do for Anime movies. In fact, I found it better than American standards. The Japanese were already master in their animation called anime and now 3D anime. The new path has been created, yet to come some great stuffs on this way.

It was based on the manga and television series that I have not seen or read them. Earlier I had seen kind of similar theme movie named 'Space battleship Yamato'. Both were did not stand up to my expectations, but in the other perspective side spectacular action sequences made the movie look better.

The story was set in the year 2977, where 500 billion humans are sailing back to home planet who are waiting on the edge of the galaxy to enter the Earth's atmosphere. When the permission is denied by the inhabitant leaders someone must risk everything and fight for the rights. So our captain Harlock comes into the frame on the pirate flagged spaceship and would he break all the hurdles to make way for immigrants is what the movie describes.

A bit slow presentation, had great stunts, but was infrequent. Should have been little better in character development. Unfortunately, characters and story kind of merely merged. Flashbacks and twists were not striking as it desperately wanted in those parts of the storytelling. Other than those it had everything a space travel theme should have with it. Enjoyable movie, but not completely though opinion differs from a person to another. It may make you view a better, but still won't forget to keep in mind what I said here.

It is certainly not a film for children, because of some hidden contents and messages, and also for how some topics have been treated. Yet, Captain Harlock embodies an ideal of freedom that we all seek, since we are babies. For all our attempts to act in full autonomy, we are seen as "different" and judged, often condemned. This animated rendering film is a potential Digital Masterpiece, compelling and convincing. The job done by the creators is almost perfect. The attention is captured since the end, and the figure of Captain Harlock is seen by the eyes of the "others", and yet it's heavily present, in the Whole film! You must see it!

Fans of the late 1970s Japanimation series Star Blazers will welcome Harlock: Space Pirate, an animated action feature rebooting yet another Japanese series of the same era, Space Pirate Harlock (see what they did there?).

In less than two hours of viewing, the audience receives thrilling depictions of steampunk-imagined spacecraft, visually arresting animated characters, and plenty of the action, turnabouts, and potboiling that anime is reputed to consistently supply.

This Harlock is rendered in 3D CG motion capture animation, leaving it occasionally astounding visually, occasionally off-putting in the way The Polar Express left us feeling, and occasionally looking like a coming attraction for PlayStation 5.

The backstory is interesting, but not much running time is given to fleshing it out.

After a brief expository sequence to open, followed by an election scene that puts the young leading man, Yama, onto the (badass) ship of the dread "space" "pirate" "Harlock," we're off and running into action sequences and (non) relationships as simple as a Chow Yun Fat crime film (the ones where Chow carries not one but two guns).

And it all works, because everything looks cool. Well, maybe not the bird resting on the pirate captain's shoulder, which to my tastes looks a little too Seussy to be acquainted with pirates.

The dialogue, more or less pedestrian, is the film's weak point. Perhaps after spending a reported $30 million on the 3D CG animation, the studio decided there weren't any doubloons left for rewrites or line polishing.

This film started well and ended so complicated and, uff, how to say, empty. I just watched in these days the whole Evangelion and I have now this impression that Japanese people make things too complicated. At the end, this is no more an action movie, it is not a thriller, not a psychological movie, not a drama, it is just nothing. Like another reviewer said, there is this dark matter everywhere in this movie, all is dark matter, it is boring, one ship (and one man) can win against thousand powerful enemies just because of this dark matter. No plot, no fun. Then this "let's close the circle" mania of Japanese films, a bit like "luke I am your father", where all must be connected and find a meaning from itself, somehow onanistic cinematography. Just make things simple man! Good animations and good chances, but at the end, a mess.

This one is pretty bad.

The film has one disabled character in a lead position, which raised my hopes of diversity. One line of dialogue/subtitle seems to say that he'd be prime minister otherwise and that fortune doesn't favour the "ill-equipped". This may be a translation issue, but I found it pretty offensive.

The film is set in a dark future at the end of mankind. Almost all of humanity's women seem to have died out already, and only a few skinny underwear models survive in a population mostly made of men. The evil disabled dude has what seems to be a giant space phallus to shoot spaceships with. Humanity's leaders only seem to seek advice or give responsibility to the good looking. This led us to wonder if this is the logical conclusion to the Zoolander universe.

The plot is awful, and frankly makes no sense. I'm not going to spoil it here, but if you want to watch it, know what you're getting into. I normally love bad and cheesy sci-fi films, but this one crossed a line for me.

The CGI animation is good though.

Wow, after reading some of the negative reviews on here I just have to say that some people really don't get it. As someone who has never read or watched anything about the Harlock universe before I have to say I found this film great. It is definitely on my "watch again later" list. The ship alone is badass.

A mysterious vengeful captain. An epic galaxy spanning journey. A fearsome ship. Plenty of action. Family drama. What more do you want?

Does it get a little complicated? Sure, but so long as don't wander in with preconceived notions about how this film "should be" and just follow along with the story as its given then you should find it enjoyable.

While there are a few plot holes that either weren't explained or weren't explained enough I think that overall it was balanced well enough to tell the story the director wanted.

Bottom line : if you are a fanboy of the Harlock universe then you had better brace yourself for something that apparently has little to no relevance to what you are expecting. If you are not, then get ready for a kickass ride and try not to ruin it for yourself by expecting to be taken by the hand and have every little detail explained. Its not. But is still enjoyable nonetheless.

I really like Japanese anime and I have come to expect good animation and deeply interesting stories, mixed with some Asian quirks. Harlock has almost none of that. The animation is 3D and even if pretty well done, in the end it is kind of repetitive and lazy. The story is a complete mess, combining classic pirate ideas with space opera kind of battles, only in - again - such a lazy way that it totally annoyed me.

Let me give you a taste: there is a space ship that is kind of indestructible and has an immortal captain. It battles the horrible manipulators of the human race which hold the Earth hostage as a possible reward for the faithful, who would be allowed to return. And they have a zillion ships and planet buster weapons, but this pirate captain faces them head on and wins, because... he has an indestructible ship. Every character in there is a bumbling idiot, switching allegiances and going 180 on every decision they made, until you don't get anymore what the movie is about and what the characters are fighting for.

Bottom line: a waste of time with nothing to teach except... flowers are pretty, I guess.

On technical merits excellent movie. On script plot logic reason or honesty to the original stories this movie fails in nearly every aspect Harlock may well be in some ways an anti-hero but in this movie he is not a hero nor anti hero, he is at different times petulant vindictive teenager (mentally) and later a caricature of Ahab save the he does not wish to just kill himself and his crew in the quest for redemption against the white whale he wants to destroy the whole universe because it doesn't work the way he wanted too.

If you ever played Battlefleet Gothic you'll love the animation in fact Orpheus looks a lot like a battle fleet Gothic capital ship with less flying buttresses . Additionally the boarding actions look like a wonderful cross between the opening scene of Star Wars and any time a Space Marine Legion or chapter has used it tactical dread naughts to assault a ship.

It was in one small way refreshing to see the ultra environmentalist the guy of coalition the ultimately be a lie but I may be reading too much into it.

I do not know much (nothing) about the universe, it was a first. Those with more knowledge might disagree with me, might find plot-holes or flaws in the events, for me as a stand-alone movie:

I find it strange ( due to the difference in culture maybe ) but rather enjoyable. The animation is great and detailed, the story is solid (again, strange for my acquired European taste, the values there are a little different than here), voice acting is rather good as well.

There is intensity, enough action for two movies, a plot-twist or two, some tears here and there, pretty much everything one could ask for. I for one liked it, enough to re-watch it in the future.

Action movie, fine. Point the gun shoot it. 100 SPACE SHIPS ALL SHOOTING. They all miss! A person in the middle of a corridor, being shot at from either side. THEY ALL MISS. This is so we can see a person kill them with a sword in an age when the sword is a pointlessly outdated weapon.

The plot? The 'twist', or dark secret that emerges at the end, at this point the movie is hinting at complex themes. Then all the plot lines converge in a complete mess. What is 'dark matter'? Sounds sci-fi, right? No, it does whatever the magician wielding it wants to do. Not to mention some kind of magical 'space clock' thing that doesn't make any sense. This required the characters to put things in places, thus enabling the ship to go different places. Then the Gaia council has a super space weapon FROM NOWHERE. Guess what. IT MISSES. Why? Well...erm...dark matter...

So the ship crashes and everyone is pictured dead. One of the characters literally disintegrates in front of our eyes. Then everyone wakes up, the disintegrated person walks back into the room, and the ship just 'wakes up' and they fly off.

I think there's incest in this story. There was a bizarre love triangle that barrels its way into the final act, alongside the other plot elements. Some of the characters may or may not be related. It is not clear. Nothing that happens makes any sense. Two characters point guns at each other so often, we forget who's on what side.

If I am to watch this simply as an action movie, then guns that always, always miss don't make any visual sense. Everything in this movie is a complete and total mess. This was all CGIed, so such poor choreographing cannot be blamed on budgeting. You would literally have to plan out a digital image story board where over one hundred ships miss, (or seem to explode around the ship not doing it any damage), and you had to story board those corridor scenes.

Unforgivably stupid movie on so many levels. Fails on every level.

In a future where humans have long left Earth, the crew of a pirate ship attempt to return home in this chaotic animated movie from Japan. The film is stunning to look at with CGI work so realistic that the spaceship interiors appear as if they have been filmed rather than animated. The human characters are uncannily realistic too when viewed from a distance. The visuals are, however, pretty much the only spectacular feature. To be fair, the story tackles some interesting ideas in terms of overpopulation and science fiction theories regarding resetting time, however, there is far more talk than action here. The film evens begins with such a wealth of voice-over narration and inter-title exposition that the complicated mythology of the movie becomes hard to take in... and the characters are not much more appealing. Fans of the title character -- whose adventures stem back to the 1970s in manga film and television -- might get something more out of the movie and this is perhaps not the best introduction. With a thought-provoking twist halfway through too and such gorgeous animation throughout, this is a difficult film to totally dislike, but it is mixed reputation is very understandable.

WOW! This had some very eye-popping animation. Visually, this is stunning. Unfortunately, trying to appreciate the story-line presented here just caused the blood- vessels in my head to start bursting as well. What I'm left with is an overwhelming desire to fall down and experience an epileptic seizure - to help get rid of the headache.

The only complaint I have about the animation is the fact that some of the space combat scenes were repeated more than twice, as so many animation movies are prone to do. Other than that, this is one of the most visually appealing animated movies I have ever seen.

I don't know what it is about Japanese writers that doesn't seem to inform them of any other audience outside of their own culture, but their sappy-happy, juvenile themes of romance and social behavior is just plain annoying to me. Okay, "annoying" doesn't quite describe it. It's downright vomit-inducing.

The worst part of this movie is the fact that no matter how many times the main space ship in this movie seems to be destroyed, it's engines out of energy, the crew worked-over, and the story-line played-out to the very end - no matter how stupid it gets, nothing is more important to the climax than to insist the ship and all of its' crew sail off into the proverbial sunset. The emphasis on continuing the romance trumps all else - no matter how implausible, and no matter how much damage that does to the overall enjoyment of the plot.

It would have been so much more satisfying to see this come to an end about 25 minutes sooner than it did - with a little more blood and guts to go along with the epic battle scenes. Just when you think someone has reached their end - no, there's some stupid plot twist that brings them back to life. Forget the fact that they're no longer an essential part of telling a good story - it's so much more important that everybody stay around, feel good, and stay around for more adventures to come. We MUST have a happy ending - because isn't that how epic battles always end?

At some time in out future, or perhaps past, Earth has colonized the galaxy with 500 billion people or so. As it turns out , it is not like Star Trek and inhabitable planets are inhospitable and there is only one other intelligent species out they are down to their last one. So even though we made it to 500 billion in space, we couldn't sustain it and everyone is told to come back home, apparently not a well thought out plan as the Earth couldn't hold everyone, ergo "The Homecoming Wars." A truce was made and a Gaia Coalition was formed telling everyone to stay away from earth, i.e. go back and die or something.

After creating plot holes big enough to drive a dark mattered powered starship through, enters Harlock a space pirate who is stealing detonators from dead planets. Logan signs on as a crew member although he is really an operative for the Coalition who want to prevent Harlock from returning to earth, which becomes clear later on. It is confusing as to who are the good guys and who are the bad guys. The plot twists at 30 minutes, then twists again at an hour, and then again. The pirate soldiers wore outfits that looked like there came out of "The Fifth Element" while the Coalition opted for classic Starwars storm trooper outfits.

The entire film is CG. There is a cute blonde, but I am an old fashion guy. Tifa is my first and only love. About an hour into the film it attempts to build character through some flashbacks, but it really sucked at it.

The film is about two hours long and my interested started to wane at about the third plot twist, which seemed more like a sign of bad writing than good. I enjoyed the graphics and an introduction to the Harlock character, another in an infinite series of Japanese animated characters I never knew about. The plot could have been tighter.

Parental Guide: No f-bombs or sex. Brief areola-less shower nudity.

Do not watch this unless you are a fan of this genre!