The Old School Otaku Lounge

Only a little late for the film's 40th anniversary comes my look at Arcadia Of My Youth, or My Youth In Arcadia as we used to call it, and how its various iterations have impacted my experience of the film over the years.

https://letsanime.blogspot.com/2023/01/ ... cadia.html

I enjoyed reading that. Then again, I even enjoyed the dub, when that was all that I had. Thank you for that trip thru your memory, as it helped me go thru my memory ... ... unless we are both currently being scanned from the thirtieth century and this mutual recollection is encoded in our future dna =P

I have similar feelings about My Youth in Arcadia since my first viewings. Prior to it, my only exposure to Harlock was the GE999 movie and just clips of other Harlock dubs from BAD (So, uh, thanks, Dave and the rest of CPF ). I felt like Harlock was something I would (or maybe should) have really been into. Getting AnimEigo's VHS of Arcadia was my first original-language Harlock experience and ... boy, was it a lot. The approach of the film almost as a Wagnarian opera (which, the 90s OAVs that actually take the name of one of his operas is probably much more apropos) and the bouncing around due to Matsumoto's use of similar if not identical designs -- there was definitely a let down feeling by the time I actually reached the end. I picked up AnimEigo's DVD and have watched it a couple of times more and I get a bit more appreciation out of it. I will say that early on in the Akihabara Renditions podcast days, we did a review of it and a couple members of the panel then all gave it really good reviews, so maybe the key is the less Harlock you know, the better.

I will probably pick this up on Blu Ray, if only to sell off my old DVD but I think I might stream it first to see how much I'd be willing to put down for it.