My Youth in Arcadia

Synopsis

Long ago, Earth had a great explorer who tried to cross the demon mountain in a biplane. His name was Phantom F. Harlock. His son, Harlock II, was a brave man of the skies as well. On the battlefield he met an engineer named Toshiro Oyama, and gave him his treasured gunsight as the token of a friendship that would never change.

Then a thousand years went by. Earth has been conquered by the Illumidus and now lies in ruins, a shadow of what it was. A man comes back to it. He is Captain Harlock, a man of the distant blood of Phantom F. Harlock and Harlock II. Like his ancestors, he too was a man of the skies, with courage and resolve. What he steers is a spaceship, and the sky he roams is the galaxy.

Harlock meets Tochiro, of Toshiro Oyama’s blood, and the two confirm a friendship that spans a thousand years. Wandering a town of despair, he searches for his lover, who keeps singing of freedom and hope in an underground broadcast.

At that time Zoll, a native of the planet Tokarga, learned that the Illumidus were about to wipe out his home world. He must hurry there, but even the ship of Emeraldas, on which he was counting, cannot be moved.

Then Tochiro cries out. In that case, he says, let’s use the ship I built. Its captain is Harlock, and its name is the “Arcadia”. The same name as the airplane on which his distant ancestor staked all of his youth!