I never watched the TV show or read the cartoon but I really enjoyed this. Maybe it's because I had no source material to go by. I loved the CGI. I don't understand all the negative reviews beyond the fact this it's probably due to people who are diehard fans feeling let down. The look of the film in great and I liked the story.

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.

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.

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.