- EMERALDAS MOVIE-
Emeraldas appear as a female pirate who wonders around space seeking Tochiro. She is also an old friend of Maetel as well as Harlock. Antales describes her as "cold mean witch", but she was the only one who knew the location of Count Mecha's Time Castle. Apparently, she has killed every single man who aimed a gun at her, but she lets Tetsuro live because he was too young. She takes off speechless when Harlock tells her about her beloved Tochiro's death, but eventually she is convinced to fight a battle with Harlock against Machine Empire in order to help Tetsuro who has inherited Tochiro's will. I especially liked the part where Queen Emeraldas was covering up the railroad track for 999 in the battle to protect the station. Slowly, Queen Emeraldas moves away from the track, 999 takes off, and the station blows up in nick of a time. I always love the visual effect in that part. When her ship Queen Emeraldas takes off at the ending, she is in her cabin, all alone, in contrast from Harlock with his clews. Maetel's facial expression says it all when she was staring at wounds and scratches on Queen Emeraldas. She has been traveling alone, and she will be taking off to her new journey with nothing to seek for.
She rescues Maetel from falling into the black hall; "Tetsuro, it is your duty to protect Maetel, if you are a man." Again, she participate in the battle against Planet Promecium with Harlock. At the end of the movie (in Planet LarMetal), she stops Maetel from going back to the Earth with Tetsuro, and she also enraged so many Maetel & Tetsuro fans. Would Maetel had gone if it wasn't for Emeraldas? I have always wondered, but there is no telling. "Maetel, you must not go with Tetsuro...you and I, we are both born under destinies to continue on in our endless, eternal journey..." Hey, if their journeys were eternal, would it be such a crime to get sidetracked just for a little while with Tetsuro?
She is a space free trader with a license and an old friend of Harlock (I wonder how she got to know Harlock?). She was used to be totally neutral, however, she starts helping out Harlock and Tochiro, and gets captured by Illumidas army because of that. Of course, she doesn't mind talking back to their officers, and gets her face slapped. When she tries to save Maya, she gets shot right in her face, which leaves her with permanent scar. Boy, she sure gets a shaft all the time! She shows quite a contrast from very quiet and fragile Maya. Well, but at least Emeraldas survived and Maya didn't.... It that helps any, that is. After escaping from the Earth with Arcadia, Queen Emeraldas becomes parted from Harlock and Tochiro and goes on her own journey.
Finally! Matsumoto said in his interview more than 17 years ago that he wanted to make a movie out of Emeraldas. Ok, so she did not make it for the movie, but this OVA series is great. The plot is based on the comic "Queen Emeraldas", which was never completed. "Queen Emeraldas" OVA was planned to have only 2 volume released, however, the when the first one came out, it sold soooo well. Apparently, it was way over production side's expectation. So after the first volume made such a good hit, the production side has decided to increase the volume from 2 to 6, and eventually, 8. .....But then production staffs changed largely on volume 3&4 thus quality of the film went down rapidly. In the end, only 4 episodes have been produced so far. I only bought up til volume 3, and I lost all motivation of buying volume 4.
Volume 1: Departure - Released: 6/5/1998
Hiroshi Umino has a dream of building his own powerful spaceship...something like the legendary Queen Emeraldas and Arcadia. The ship he is hiding in is surrounded by the fleet of space pirates. Just in time that the ship is going to be destroyed, a mysterious ship appears from nowhere and kicks pirates butt with it's power. It is the Queen Emeraldas, the ship of the most feared woman, a female pirate Emeraldas....
The implementation of 3-D computer graphics in Queen Emeraldas somewhat looked cheap. However, they did such a great job in rebuilding Matsumoto universe into this film. I noticed Emeraldas's hair were more blondish-color, rather than the red-tone of all her previous appearance in all other movies and TV series. Could it be that production staffs are very self-conscious of the setting that Maetel and Emeraldas are twin sisters? In any means, she is very beautiful in this OVA. The power of the "Warrior's Gun" was astonishing, too. Just a one skim on the surface, and the outer side small size ship has melted and the whole thing blows up right away. This episode also contains a short episode with Tochiro and a brief appearance of Harlock as well. One more note on this OVA... Yamadera has played Tochiro in this OVA for the first time instead of traditional Tochiro voice actor Kei Tomiyama, who passed away a while ago. Inoue plays Harlock although he only speaks 2 words in this episode. I really don't mind Yamadera as Tochiro, but I really do enjoy having Harlock played by Inoue rather than having Yamadera play them both as in "Harlock Saga". I hope they keep Inoue-Harlock in this entire "Queen Emeraldas" series.
Volume 2: Eternal Emblem - Released: 10/07/1998
The officers under Queen Paraluda come up with the plan to trap Emeraldas by holding Hiroshi and others as hostages. This episode also contains Paraluda and Emeraldas's duel with swords, appearance of "Metanoid" (creature from "Galaxy Express 999 Eternal Fantasy"), etc.
Computer graphics of Queen Emeraldas still looks cheap, but I suppose it is a little better than the first episode. By the way, I never knew Queen Emeraldas was such a powerful battleship! In all other Matsumoto movies and TV series, Queen Emeraldas was always the second best next to Arcadia, and naturally its' fighting strength was drawn rather underestimated in comparison. Recently, Queen Emeraldas's unique characteristics are more and more brought up under the spotlight.
In this episode, Emeraldas mentions the 5 owners of the "Warrior's Guns": Emeraldas, Maetel, Harlock, Tetsuro, and long-gone Tochiro. Traditionally, only 4 "Warrior's Guns" were supposed to be made. This is one of contradictions in Matsumoto world, but I suppose this list of owners makes more sense.
The plot of this episode is written so that it could be the conclusion or the story could continue. It was probably because of the initial plan of releasing only 2 volumes, however, a little twist in the end of it suggests very different plot development in future, especially with the appearance of the "Metanoid". Could it be that the future plot overlaps more with "Galaxy Express 999 Eternal Fantasy"? We will wait and see. The next volume will be released in summer 1999.
Harlock Saga - Nibelung's Ring I / RheinGold
Boy she looks so different! Why does she talk so harshly to Tochiro? And she looks so mean, too! Of course, this episode is only an introduction, and she does not have many dialogs anyway. However, the image of Emeraldas in this episode is completely different from any other Matsumoto animes I have seen (of course I can say the same thing about Harlock, too). I just can't describe it, but it seems that she lost her noble appearance she used to have. Maybe it is because the quality of "Queen Emeraldas" OVA was so good that I can't handle the differences. Different personalities for different stories, I suppose.
Back to EMERALDAS Page
Disclaimer: Copyrights of Captain Harlock, Queen Emeraldas, and Galaxy Express 999 belong to Leiji Matsumoto and Toei Enterprise, Inc. This site is created for purpose of personal leisure only. Any copying or use of any materials in this site shall not be allowed without my written permission.