YMMV / Captain Harlock

• Awesome Music:
  • The French theme, particularly when sung by Michel Barouille.
  • The English dub theme from ZIV plants its feet firmly in disco territory, resulting in the infamous catchiness of "Take to the skkkkkyyyyyy...".
  • The Italian version of the opening theme. Immortal? An euphemism.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff:
  • The French love Captain Harlock, or as he's known there, Albator. He has become a part of French pop culture, inspiring many French creatives. The Captain Harlock sequel comic was written by a Frenchman, who dubbed the job "a dream come true." His other fans include Daft Punk, who invited Harlock's creator Leiji Matsumoto to work on their videos.
  Jerome Alquié: I am a child of the ’80s generation in France, a time when we saw the arrival of the first Japanese cartoons of which Captain Harlock was a significant part. Even though I wasn’t passionate about this anime at that time, I rediscovered it a little later in the ’90s with a slightly more adult eye. I fell completely under the spell of the series which was intended for a child audience but weaved some particularly adult themes such as immortality, robotics, and especially ecology, themes that are very present today.
  • No other country worships Harlock like Italy does, where he has his own statue. In addition, the 2013 movie was a Box Office Bomb in Japan, but to this day it is the most successful Japanese film to ever be screened in Italy.
  • Americans also love Captain Harlock, where he's well-known even by those who don't watch anime.
• Fridge Horror: About the Running Gag of saying that Emeraldas is the dangerous twin and Maetel the harmless one, when Maetel is the one who blew up a planet because she was disgusted. Becomes Fridge Horror when you realize that not only are the people who know them best making those remarks, but the twins fully agree, making you wonder what the hell happened to consider a woman who destroyed a planet harmless when compared to Emeraldas.
• Macekre: Several times; most egregiously, Carl Macek himself combined one series with Queen Millennia to create Captain Harlock and the Queen of a Thousand Years.
• Moral Event Horizon: It's debatable when Lafresia crossed it. Was it when she forced other conquered races to take down Harlock by holding their families hostage, kidnapped Mayu to lure Harlock away from his defense of the earth, killed Mazones who refused to follow her to Earth, or (somewhat belatedly) used human shields? Whatever the case, she certainly crossed it.
• Tear Jerker: The entirety of episode 10 of SSX.
• Ugly Cute: Tochiro is this to some fans - his SSX version especially.
• The Woobie: Mayu in the first series. The television show takes a perverse pleasure in torturing the seven-year-old girl in increasingly horrible ways. She's never actually abused, but has her pet bird eaten by a hawk, gets attacked by wolves (!?), and she even is forced to clean a church by herself with water dragged from a nearby stream (with other kids being instructed to go in and pray without wiping their feet first so she has to continually redo it). And never mind that she gets kidnapped by the Mazone and dragged off to a remote planet later on, either.