Based on the anime and manga series Captain Harlock, the movie Harlock: Space Pirate is an all-CGI reboot of the franchise, which was released in English in 2014. It was originally released in 2013 as Space Pirate Captain Harlock in Japan (宇宙海賊キャプテンハーロック, Uchū Kaizoku Kyaputen Hārokku).
Far in the future... or perhaps the past... humanity has spread to the stars. Due to an inability to terraform worlds and a lack of any truly viable alternatives, the species eventually turns back to Earth to re-settle. But there is no way the planet can support five hundred billion souls, and the Homecoming War is fought over who deserves the right to return. The Gaia Coalition eventually rises out of the ashes, as a government that unites the people around the idea that Earth should remain a pristine sanctuary, with no humans sullying her.
A hundred years later, humanity is dying, as the worlds they live on were never designed to support human life. Plants can never gain purchase in the ground for long, and food is running out. The only one who seems to be doing anything is Captain Harlock, the immortal pirate aboard his ghost ship Arcadia. Yama (Logan in the official English adaptations), a young man secretly in the employ of the Gaia Coalition, manages to earn a spot on the ship, where he learns that both the ship and the captain are immortal due to the dark matter engine, a gift from the alien girl who still operates it.
Furthermore, Harlock has a plan to fix everything. By detonating one hundred bombs on one hundred precise points throughout the galaxy, he can reset the Genesis Clock, turning back time and starting over. Of course, the people in power aren't particularly interested in that plan...
Harlock: Space Pirate provides examples of:
- Applied Phlebotinum: Dark Matter can do basically anything, but is almost impossible to control.
- Awful Truth: Earth isn't the pristine sanctuary the Gaia Coalition claims it to be. That's a hologram projected over the planet. Earth is a scarred and ravaged nightmare, torn apart by dark matter.
- Boarding Party: The Arcadia crew in Powered Armor swing across to the patrol ship on ropes. Later when the Orpheus fires anchor cables into their ship and they're boarded by Gaia Coalition troops, Yullian gripes: "Those copycat bastards; that's our M.O.!"
- Bolivian Army Ending: The movie cuts out with the crippled Arcadia preparing it's run to try and punch through the Coalition fleet and escape. After the mauling it had taken earlier, it's barely repaired enough to be spaceworthy, but the crew don't really seem concerned.
- Book Ends: The narrator from the beginning of the movie makes another one in the end.
- Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Yama (Logan) betrays the Gaia Fleet after hearing Harlock's plan for a "new beginning", then betrays the Arcadia crew once he finds out Harlock had destroyed Earth and planned to end everything, only to then betray the Gaia Fleet once again after finding flowers in the middle of the dark matter-ravaged Earth.
- Collapsible Helmet: The space pirates' hardsuit have helmets that retracts in the armor; Kei and Yataran use them for their first face reveal to the audience.
- Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: All Gaia Coalition ships are silvery white and their cannons shoot light blue blasts, while the Arcadia is completely black and shoots yellow blasts.
- Coming in Hot: Yama when landing his shuttle on the Earth, and the Arcadia is initially seen as a long black oily cloud boiling through the atmosphere due to its dark matter engine.
- Convenient Misfire: The first couple of shots by the Jovian Accelerator miss because it hasn't been fired for a hundred years.
- Darker and Edgier: Traditionally, Harlock has gotten darker with every incarnation, and this is no exception.
- Dub Name Change:
- The U.S. market release changes several character names, most significantly Yama (Logan in the adaptation). Yattaran also gets renamed Yullian.
- The French adaptation, on the other hand, keeps the Japanese names for them, but for Harlock it uses the name the character is known under in France since the '80s: Albator.
- Eyepatch of Power: Harlock lost his eye and his best friend before becoming a space pirate. Yama/Logan takes it up along with the sword at the end.
- Fake Kill Scare: Done when the crew informs a group of would-be recruits that they have room for only one, and everybody else gets a dropped off a plank several hundred feet into the ground below. When the Arcadia flies off, the audience is shown that they were above Soft Water, instead.
- Fanservice:
- Kei's zero-gee shower scene.
- Kei and Miime wear skimpy underwear under Vapor Wear clothing.
- Flying Dutchman: Harlock is an immortal captain who can't leave his ghostly ship without losing his power, having to keep sailing space.
- Ghost Ship: The Arcadia can apparently disappear faster than any sort of FTL travel should allow; can summon a dark cloud around it, including in space, and can regenerate itself down to its tattered Jolly Roger flag.
- Gone Horribly Wrong: Harlock tried to create a barrier around Earth with dark matter so that no human could set foot on it again. But dark matter is unpredictable by nature, and instead ravaged the planet entirely, robbing its ability to sustain life.
- Handicapped Badass:
- Harlock's fighting skills aren't diminished by having only one eye.
- Ezra is an admiral of the Gaia Corporation fleet and kicks Yama/Logan's ass in zero G.
- And finally, Nami acts as The Mole and gives the pirates the tactical advantage, all from her life support pod.
- Hope Sprouts Eternal: Yama brings back a flower from the ruined surface of the Earth, to convince Harlock and the others that the Earth is repairing itself and therefore still worth fighting for.
- Immortality: It's not quite clear how strong Harlock is, but he doesn't age, takes at least a few bullets to the chest without stopping, and survives a drop from low atmosphere without difficulty.
- Invincible Hero: Until the events of the film happen the Arcadia and Harlock have built themselves a reputation as uttely impossible to defeat, and in order for the Arcadia to get as busted as it gets it still involves it being affected with all sorts of epic situations and being attacked with massive fleets. The fact Harlock is pretty much a Humanoid Abomination justifies this.
- Mythology Gag: At one point Yama/Logan goes looking for Harlock and finds him in the Arcadia's engine room, whispering to the main computer. In previous incarnations, Harlock's best friend Tochiro uploaded his consciousness into the Arcadia's main computer upon his death. Ezra's explanation of Harlock's backstory claims that Tochiro/Toshiro was cursed to live as part of the Arcadia after the Dark Matter Engine accident that destroyed the Earth That Was.
- Otherworldly Technicolour Hair: Miime has green hair
◊ and is the only alien amongst Harlock, Logan, Kei, and Yullian. The film changes some particulars from the original anime, changing her hair colour from purplenote and her species from Juran to Nibelung. - Passing the Torch: It's implied at the end that Yama/Logan will take up the name and role of Harlock, though whether or not Harlock is dying or simply mortal now is ambiguous.
- Perpetual Motion Machine: The Dark Matter Engine for the Arcadia. An alien technology that gifts the ship the ability to never refuel, rearm or repair.
- Pirate Parrot: Er, Pirate Gray Thing that flies into a wall and help Harlock look dramatic; Tori-san is still part of the Arcadia's crew in this adaptation.
- Politically Incorrect Villain: Not present in the English dub, but random background chatter in the original states that Ezra had his promising political career destroyed by institutionalized prejudice against the disabled. His futuristic wheelchair seems specially designed to both provide maximum mobility and to be humiliating. There is a line in the English dub that hints this, though the guy was immediately told Dude, Not Funny! by another."If he had legs, he could run for cardinal."
- Powered Armor: The pirates use "hardsuits" for boarding enemy vessels that look like futuristic hard-shell diving suits. Kei, on the other hand, uses a fanservicey custom hardsuit that's almost indistinguishable from the normal space suits used by the Arcadia crew. She yells at Yama/Logan when he wears a normal suit during the first raid, which drives the discrepancy home.
- Pun: Yama reveals the truth about what the Gaia Sanction has been up to via a 'pirate broadcast'.
- Purpose-Driven Immortality: Not Harlock, but Miime is bound to the Arcadia, and lives as long as its captain does. It doesn't actually matter who that captain is.
- Ramming Always Works:
- Since the Arcadia is virtually indestructible, the crew sometimes finds that the best way past an enemy ship is to simply plow right into them.
- Reversed at the end, when Ezra commands his personal flagship to ram the Arcadia and push it so the Earth's not in the line of fire of the Coalition's Wave-Motion Gun.
- Remake Cameo: In the French dub, Richard Darbois is the narrator for the prologue. Darbois previously voiced Harlock himself in the 1978 series, Harlock Saga, and Space Pirate Captain Herlock: The Endless Odyssey.
- Reset Button: Harlock's goal is to set a series of explosion throughout the universe to trigger a space-time distortion that could rewind time, giving humanity a second chance to do things right for Earth. In reality, the detonations would destroy the universe, making way for a potential new universe to take its place.
- Restart the World: This is the true motivation of Harlock. Although he's led his crew to believe that resetting the "Genesis Clock" would simply rejuvenate the dying worlds in the setting somehow, it's revealed his plan is to simply destroy everything and everyone to start over. Although Yamanote is able to persuade him there's still hope, Harlock and Yama both keep the trigger for the Genesis Clock bombs at the end of the movie, just in case.
- Shoo Out the Clowns: To highlight this adaptations dark tone, Tochiro isn't even in here. He was killed in the flashback sequence. He's still with the crew however, as his soul merged with the Arcadia, reshaping it into her current form.
- Space Elves: Miime is a pretty textbook case, being an ancient pointy-eared creature with bizarre powers.
- This Is Gonna Suck: Yullian gives a deadpan "Well this sucks" on seeing a Wave-Motion Gun is about to blast them.
- Walk the Plank
- Yama and four others climb to the top of a mesa to where the Arcadia has landed, looking to join its crew. They are made to stand on the edge of the loading ramp on flaps sticking out over the abyss. Those who don't correctly answer the question: "Why do we sail?" have their flap dropped from under them. Two give the wrong answer, one is so nervous he stumbles and falls to his death on his own, and Yama gives the right answer right when the flap is dropped, only to be grabbed by Kei.
- Lampshaded when Ezra tells Harlock he's going to be sentenced to electrocution, but smirkingly suggests he might prefer to walk the plank instead.
- We Have Reserves: The Gaia Sanction open fire with the Jovian Accelerator regardless of their own forces being in the way.
- Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Harlock. After his plan to shield the Earth That Was permanently backfires horribly, it turns out that what he means by "resetting time" with the Genesis Clock is literally destroying the universe so a new one can be born.
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