Albator, Corsaire de l'Espace (2013)

	Also Known As: Space Pirate Captain Harlock (English)
	Year of first release: 2013
	Director: Shinji Aramaki (Appleseed, Starship Troopers: Invasion)
	Actors (voices): Yû Aoi, Ayano Fukuda, Arata Furuta
	Country: J
	Genre: Animation, SF, Adventure
	Conditions of visioning: 23.09.2014, Blu-ray, Home cinema, 2D
Synopsis: While the decaying humanity is forbidden to go back to sacred Earth by the Gaia Coalition, Captain Harlock and his crew aboard the Arcadia are fighting against the established order.
Review: The fact that a whole generation enjoyed watching the animated 24-minute episodes of the cult TV-series when they where young doesn't mean that they will appreciate this long-awaited cinema adaptation. I was not the biggest fan of the series, finding it too dark for me at the time (I was probably too young for it) but I could still easily watch the episodes in which Albator (The name of Captain Harlock in French) was fighting against the bigger and bigger weapons that his enemies could conjure, and I definitely loved the design of his emblematic ship. This dark aspect is also present in the movie, the design of the Arcadia is awesome, the two mega weapons are impressive (one converting neutron stars into pure light power, an the other making use of Jupiter as particle accelerator!) and the space battles nicely done although the Arcadia seems too strong to be true, defeating some 68000 ships! When I first saw the trailer one year ago, I immediately noticed that the spaceships laser weapon design look very similar to the ones in Starship Troopers: Invasion (by the same director) and it is indeed the case, but pushing the comparison further I noticed that the landscapes, faces, movement animation, cities... are better-looking in this Captain Harlock thanks to progress in technology in only one year's time, or maybe a different approach, I don't know. Unfortunately, for me this avalanche of nice-looking shots doesn't compensate for the too slow rhythm, and the typical Japanese characteristic of being over-explicative and elliptic at the same time. It is also really difficult to relate to the characters because of their non-understandable reactions (like the one who changes side three times over). No wonder that the international version is 4 minutes shorter than the Japanese one (that I watched) to improve the rhythm, I even thought it would have been shortened to 1h30, like they did with The Day of Resurrection (a.k.a. Virus) in the 80's. Another disturbing element is the borrowings (mostly in designs) to many many other SF/Space Opera movies or books: from Wall-E to Starship Troopers Invasion, Titan A.E., Star Wars, The Universal War graphic novel, Joe Haldeman's Forever War, several Asimov and Clarke's novels...But this may as well only be because some of those were inspired by Japanimation in the first place, like James Cameron has never hidden.
Rating: 4 /10