Review for Harlock Space Pirate Collectors Edition Steelbook 3D/2D

Introduction

This is where the whinge ought to be. After all, just take a look at how Harlock Space Pirate is being released, with the International version, only in English on a barebones Blu-ray. The Director’s Cut, or the domestic Japanese version, longer, and with extras is bundled in on A subtitled DVD only. I’m not the only one who wishes that was on Blu-ray. But this is not the distributor’s fault this time. This is down to the express requirements of producers, Toei. In Australia, you can pick up the International cut on single disc Blu-ray, or single disc DVD. If you want the longer subtitled version, you’ll only be able to find it on retailer exclusive 2-disc Blu-ray releases, but it’s still DVD only. And pity the poor Americans, they aren’t getting Blu-ray at all, it’s DVD only for them. Manga Entertainment are releasing Harlock Space Pirate as 2-disc editions, DVD and Blu-ray both, so everyone gets the longer subtitled version on DVD. We’re actually getting the best deal out of the English speaking world when it comes to this movie. I still feel like whinging though.


Mankind prospered, flourished, and spread across the universe, but as is the way of empires, the inevitable collapse occurred. As a race, thoughts turned towards the planet that originally gave birth to the human race, Earth, but 500 billion humans wishing to return home couldn’t be accommodated. The Homecoming War erupted, stopping only when the Gaia Coalition arose, taking control of Earth, and declaring it an eternal sanctuary, off limits to all mankind.


This infuriates Space Pirate Captain Harlock, who believes that Earth shouldn’t belong to the elites alone. He’s even come up with a plan that will allow mankind’s return to a simpler age, by resetting the so-called Genesis Clock. But the Gaia coalition has placed an agent aboard Harlock’s indomitable ship, The Arcadia.


Harlock Space Pirate is a 3D CGI film from Japan, not exactly your usual anime, but it has director Shinji Aramaki at the helm, director of the excellent Appleseed, and the superlative Appleseed Ex Machina. Since the Blu-ray and the DVD offer different experiences, I’ve reviewed them individually. Incidentally the Blu-ray offers the film in 2D and 3D, but as my television is not capable, I’ll be reviewing the 2D version alone.

Picture: The Blu-ray

The 2.35:1 widescreen 1080p transfer is... dismal really. Sure enough you get a fair amount of detail, the CG animation is smooth and fluid, and the animators really went to town in terms of world and mecha design, going the full Star Wars when it comes to developing the future planets and cities. The character designs too avoid the uncanny valley, and instead look like high quality cut scene animations from a recent Final Fantasy game, with a whole lot of hair physics, and it does look proper HD, rich in complex detail. But the brightness is whacked way up, layering the image with a milky haze, shadow detail that should be black is pale grey, and the film is plagued by digital banding and macro-blocking to the point where it’s distracting. I might have expected it of the 3D version, to compensate against those idiotic glasses that people have to wear, but this is the 2D version, and if it was accomplished by just displaying one side of the 3D image, then the film could have easily fit on a BD 25, this is a BD 50. A real disappointment!

The images for the Blu-ray section are provided by the PR, and might not represent the final retail release.

Sound: The Blu-ray

This isn’t a 2D anime with lip flaps; this is a 3D CGI anime with realistic lip animation. You can have enthusiastic and emotionally effective voice actor performances, or you can have lip sync, you can’t have both. It’s like a live action foreign movie in that respect. Fortunately the English dub goes for heartfelt performances, offering a quality dub for this feature film. The only track is a DTS-HD MA 5.1 Surround English track. There are no subtitles. The dialogue is clear throughout, and the action gets suitable emphasis and placement in the surround sound stage. The Arcadia certainly has some LFE presence to it. The film’s music suits the action and the drama well, driving the pace of the film without being too obtrusive. It’s a fair surround track, although the actual translated script is another matter.

Extras: The Blu-ray

Just a slightly animated menu screen, scene select options, and when you press play, you have the choice of 2D or 3D.

Conclusion: The Blu-ray

One hour and fifty one minutes at 24 frames per second, one hour forty minutes of which I kept wanting to eject the disc and put Titan AE on instead, a movie which tells a similar story but is much, much better at it. Harlock is a veritable national institution, although surprisingly that nation is France, where as Albator, Leiji Matsumoto’s creation ruled the airwaves in the seventies and early eighties. Simply reworking a four decades old story for modern sensibilities isn’t easy, nor is trying to squeeze some forty plus episodes of material into 2 hours. The film keeps the characters, updates the iconic ship, but re-imagines the story for the 21st Century, dropping the alien menace, emphasising a declining human race, and making an untouchable Earth the goal for our heroes (Hmm, I could have watched Ice Pirates instead of Titan AE).


It looks fantastic, Blu-ray issues notwithstanding, and the story does look good on paper, but in execution it’s a mess. This is a universe where things happen, like space ships ramming each other, or Harlock jumping a few miles down onto the surface of a planet, because they look cool. There’s a whole lot of disbelief that has to be suspended to make this film even remotely credible, and I just don’t stretch that far. Don’t get me started on the film’s protagonist Logan, who switches loyalties like he’s on a see-saw. This is the same guy who had a tantrum because he couldn’t get a plant to grow on Mars, blew out a dome, which crippled his brother, and almost killed his sister in law. This film isn’t too hot on character motivation or back-story.


On top of that, the title character is a total ominous non-presence through the film. He’s there to look cool and moody, but I never actually felt as if he was the star of his own film. And don’t get me started on the gratuitous Zero-G shower scene with the token hot female character, Kei. None of these characters matter, which makes it hard to believe that the story matters, and the natural corollary is that the film is meaningless too.


This could be because the film was lost in translation. Sometimes the dub script makes too many compromises and easy translations and loses the substance of the film. I’ll try the extended Japanese version after a few days to erase this version out of my memory, and see what the story looks like in the original language, if the extra scenes fill in the countless gaps in the International version. As it is, the dub version of Harlock Space Pirate is all colourful bang and no substance, a Michael Bay anime!

5/10

Picture: The DVD

The Director’s Cut gets a 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer as you would expect, which is pretty decent for a DVD presentation, with only shimmer on fine detail and a hint of aliasing indicative of the limits of the DVD format. The downside is that it suffers from the same issues as the Blu-ray when it comes to excessive brightness washing out the detail in the image, and more than the usual digital banding. The resolution may be less, but the experience isn’t too far removed from that of the Blu-ray.

The images in the DVD section and the rest of the review have been captured from the review disc.

Sound: The DVD

You get DD 5.1 Japanese at the unusual bitrate of 512 kbps, 64 more bits than the average 5.1 surround on DVD. Not that it made much difference, with the dialogue clear, and the action giving the surround speakers a fair workout. I certainly had no complaints about the audio, and there was lip sync! The same can’t be said for the subtitling, which is lacking, and not only in the thick white font selected. The subtitles seem to be taken from an early dub script, with the English version names used, even when the Japanese character names are obviously different, Ezra = Isora, Logan = Yama, Sheffield = Toshiro and so on. The translation feels loose, and there are whole lines of dialogue which go by un-subtitled, although it’s usually the background chatter, or off-screen dialogue.

Extras: The DVD

It’s here that you’ll find the sole extra feature for this release, The Making of Harlock Space Pirate which lasts 22:48. It’s in Japanese, with plenty of clips from the film, and interviews with the key creative talent behind the film, including the director, some of the cast, and the original creator Leiji Matsumoto. But it does feel more like an EPK promo piece than anything substantial.

Conclusion: The DVD

The International Cut Blu-ray runs 1 hour, 51 minutes and 11 seconds. This director’s cut DVD is actually shorter at 1 hour, 50 minutes and 24 seconds. Of course when you take PAL speed-up into account, it’s actually a smidge under 1 hour and 55 minutes, so there is more story to partake of here, although other than an extended scene for the conclusion of Nami’s character arc, I didn’t notice much different about this cut. I guess it’s just a little more connective meat to the bones, helping the film flow a little better, less jarring in the edit, and maybe a tad fewer plot holes.


It really is the same movie though. Other than that one scene with Nami, I can’t see a lot of difference in the two versions, although I also have to admit that the one scene with Nami managed to explain a whole lot of character motivation and development with regards to Logan/Yama and Ezra/Isora that was sorely missing in the International Cut. It’s also a lot easier to watch a movie when the voices are in sync with characters’ mouths. The Director’s Version flows better, and it makes a little more sense, but it’s still a dull, weak summer blockbuster explosion of a movie, crippled by its thin characters and daft plot. The second time around, the better edit was offset by the tedium of a repeat viewing of a film that I don’t really care for much.


And as so often happens recently, Manga’s presentation lets the side down, even though they did the best they could given the restrictions that Toei placed on the release. It’s the weakness of the subtitling on the Director’s Cut which is most disappointing. The translation feels too loose. There are quite a few lines missing, which make this a poor effort indeed from Manga Entertainment. You might get the feeling that you’re not reading the same movie as you are watching. I certainly did.

6/10

In Summary

Steelbooks may be shiny, but the shininess can often be tarnished by what’s contained within. I certainly had high hopes for Captain Harlock, given what director Shinji Aramaki has previously delivered with the Appleseed movies. Those movies had interesting stories, engaging and likeable characters, and aesthetically pleasing toon-shaded animation. Harlock has none of this, instead a poorly expressed story, thin and weak characters and animation that belongs in a console game cut scene. On top of that, the presentation on disc is weak as well, both visually, and in terms of the translation of the director’s cut. Watch Titan A.E instead.