ARCADIA OF MY YOUTH (1982)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *sociological*

The 1980s was the first time that Japanese manga and anime made significant inroads into the U.S. market, and I had a pretty good vantage point from which to assess most if not all of the major developments in that cultural exchange. However, even though the content and technical excellence of Japanese animation outstripped most American cartoons of the early to mid eighties, not everything was equally appealing. I for one never warmed to the acclaimed work of Leiji Matsumoto.

I was mildly interested in Matsumoto's famous works, GALAXY EXPRESS 999 and the various CAPTAIN HARLOCK exploits, but I always felt they lacked "heart." From my viewpoint Matsumoto's approach to "big themes" like war and bereavement was a trifle too generalized, and so ended up feeling pretentious.

The 1982 movie ARCADIA OF MY YOUTH is a case in point. Since I may never get around to reading Matsumoto's original Harlock manga, ARCADIA provides something akin to an "origin story" for the iconic character, though at times I felt Harlock was a bit too much of a mouthpiece for the author's lofty anti-war rhetotic.

ARCADIA actually gives the viewer the origins of the family that spawned the futuristic space-opera captain. By "family" in this case I mean only male progenitors from two eras of the twentieth century, for in no era does Matsumoto linger on detailed familial relationships. The earliest male Harlock is an aerial explorer of mountain ranges in WWI Germany, with no explicit associations to the ongoing martial conflict. The second Harlock appears during the WWII conflict, flying a plane for Germany but not allied to the Nazi cause. By chance the pilot stumbles across a Japanese exchange student, a flight technician named Toshi, and the two men bond over their shared desire to see flight technology used to conquer space, not in pointless turf wars. Harlock does Toshio a service and the Japanese scientist swears that someday his descendants will repay the debt.

Generations later, Earthmen have indeed conquered space, but 30th century sentients are just as petty and acquisitive as their forbears. The future-world Harlock, a dead ringer for both of his 20th-century ancestors, serves in Earth's space-forces, but he and his battle cruiser are away from Earth when a green-skinned humanoid race, the Illumidas, does a blitzkreig over the entire planet Earth, conquering it with apparent ease. Harlock and his human allies mount a resistance movement. They receive some help from the Tokargans, who seem to be humans who colonized another world and who rendered some vague help to the alien llumidas. Harlock's movement gets a great shot in the arm when he encounters the 30th century descendant of Toshio. This scientist, also named Toshio, just happens to have built a great space-cruiser, far more powerful than Harlock's old vessel, and from then Harlock and his crew work to liberate Earth as a fighting-force of one ship.

This sounds like heady space-opera, but Matusmoto is so focused on the fated encounter of Harlock and Toshio that he barely expends any energy on depicting the supporting characters, much less establishing even a general outline of this fictive universe. The villainous aliens, who ought to inspire antipathy in the audience, are just stock tyrant-figures, and so don't furnish the hero with worthy foes. The movie ends with Harlock washing his hands of the puppet governments on Earth and heading for the stars, though I don't know if future installments followed that same pattern, since the Harlock saga in both manga and anime went through many mutations.

It's impossible not to observe that the interaction of Harlock and Toshio draws its resonance from the 20th century alliance of Germany and Japan. I don't think Matsumoto sought to justify that conquest-based alliance in any way, but there's something a bit spongy in the way the script avoids mentioning any "bad Germans" or "bad Japanese" in the WWII segment. Yes, there's no doubt that many virtuous individuals of both nationalities who were caught up in the hostilities. But while I don't believe in endlessly harping on the sins of the past, Matsumoto's larger-than-life romanticism seems to be perilously close to disavowing the specific horrors of 20th-century war in favor of a very generalized anti-war stance. The movie's ending also seems something of a disavowal: "you Earthmen refused to fight for yourselves, so that frees us up to forget you and go off on astounding adventures." One's mileage may vary, of course.