But for people who understand Japanese, a 12 minute clip is available to watch online at Yahoo! Japan to show what the animators have done. Everything in this short looks drop dead gorgeous. It blends a bit of noir into a goth style ala Aliens with plenty of Warhammer 40K style aesthetics to boot.
Motion capture was no doubt employed to create part of the look and feel of this movie. The detailing of the sets and prop design shows how far CGI has evolved since the days of Square Enix’s Final Fantasy. Everything in Harlock Space Pirate looks hyper realistic. In this longer clip, some of the scenes look like they were props than imagined. The characters look real and they can easily stand next to a human and not be too distinguishably different. Contrast that to Harlock and his pet bird, Tori-San, this movie looks like it will successfully bring Leiji Matsumoto’s artistic stylings to life.
This film is directed by Shinji Aramaki (Appleseed) with mechanical designer Atsushi Takeuchi, and character designer Yutaka Minowa (Ninja Scroll) providing the ground work. The script is written by Harutoshi Fukui (Mobile Suit Gundam UC novels, live-action Bōkoku no Aegis) and stars Shun Oguri as the title character. Haruma Miura appears as a new character known as Yama. Other second billed characters include Yuu Aoi, Arata Furuta, Ayano Fukuda, Toshiyuki Morikawa, Maaya Sakamoto, Miyuki Sawashiro, Kiyoshi Kobayashi, and Chikao Ohtsuka.
A link to the video can be found here.