In space no one can hear you scream “filler episodes!” Volume 2 of the Cosmo Warrior Zero saga features episodes 5-8 of the thirteen episode series and is highlighted by space pirate Captain Harlock’s giant guard cow rampaging through a wild west town.
Usually, those sort of bovine antics would be enough to unhesitatingly recommend the title (even if there was never any of the expected giant cow pie scenes that such a creature promised), but while the story even has a midget killing the giant cow with a bazooka, things grind to a halt for the scene between the hunter and the guy he is hunting that he secretly respects.
You know the scene I’m talking about. It’s the one where both of our main characters meet face to face and engage in manly drivel about honor and promise one another that the next time they meet it will be on the battlefield and as enemies and that all this sissy stuff will be over because we’ll finally be to the last episode by then and something other than filler will actually have to happen.
In case you’re fuzzy on how we got to this point, Cosmo Warrior Zero Volume 1: Cold Steel Immortals was all about a guy named Warrius Zero who was the captain of a spaceship. His mission is to go out and hunt down the meanest star-cuss this side of Khan, one Captain Harlock!
Warrius Zero, is as we would expect, haunted by his past since his wife and kid were killed in the war with the machine men. He believes though that man and machine have to learn to co-exist peacefully and that’s why he has become their tool in the search for Harlock, who is causing trouble for his robot masters!
The first two episodes on this disc detail Zero and his crew investigating Harlock’s whereabouts on a planet where the town of Gun Frontier is located.
Gun Frontier is a town patterned after the wild west towns of old where there’s only two laws: don’t mess with anyone’s personal freedom and don’t mess with their drink.
Zero has information that there is a bounty hunter down on the planet named Sylvia who has been hunting Harlock for years. He sends down a bickering combination of crew members (humans and a machine man) to look around and see if Sylvia can put them on the right track.
I wasn’t sure what the point of this plan was other than to introduce a sexy bounty hunter and a really big cow to the story (and everyone knows that all good anime has at least one sexy bounty hunter and one really big cow) because if Sylvia had any info on Harlock and was trying to collect a bounty on him, why would she give someone else a lead?
Down in Gun Frontier, Sylvia runs into one of Harlock’s best friends, Tochiro. Tochiro is a midget who doesn’t look like much, but turns out to be a really deadly samurai. He also has a penchant for drinking milk and eating really big steaks.
Tochiro is eventually seduced by Sylvia and this leads to him almost getting strung up. The townspeople are mad at him for killing the big cow because the cow’s corpse landed on and destroyed all their whiskey and we all remember the two rules of Gun Frontier don’t we?
Harlock finally rolls in on his super cool space ship, the Death Shadow, to save his buddy.
Harlock is ready to wipe out the townspeople for trying to put the wood to Tochiro until he learns that Tochiro ruined their booze.
Well, why didn’t you say so? Harlock lives by the code of the space pirate and immediately does what he can to resupply their liquor.
Somehow this leads to Zero finally coming down to the surface to see what the devil his bumbling crew have gotten themselves into and thus we have the scene where Zero and Harlock drink for hours together at the local pub talking the politics of human-machine man conflict. There isn’t enough booze in three star systems to make that conversation tolerable.
They also meet up in the next episode when Harlock accidentally bombs a bunch of civilian machine men during one of his raids, prompting much hand wringing from Zero about how he thought Harlock was a space pirate with a heart of gold, but now he’s not so sure and prompting Harlock to re-read his maps.
If that wasn’t causing Zero enough problems, his first mate decides to go bonkers and starts following an intruder on the ship that no one can see but her.
This resorts in the expected engine room explosion you’re obligated to have in these space operas once every six or seven episodes and everyone except Zero thinks the first mate is the saboteur.
Zero abandons his ship and follows this chick to her home planet and we discover her secret origin and they end up rolling around in the snow!
This set of episodes has a rather jarring tone, shifting uncomfortably from the comedy of really big farm animals to the heavy drama of war crimes. The story line jumped around from character to character and new plots were being introduced as late the eighth episode in this thirteen episode series, relegating the ideological and actual battle between Harlock and Zero to secondary status.
The animation looks fine and is what you would expect from a Harlock project, but Zero is such a zero of a character in this set of episodes you just don’t care what happens to him. He’s a traitor to his race, he’s a crappy captain, and he abandons his own ship right after the big engine room explosion to rush after a sexy robot.
For the Harlock fans in the crowd, you do get more Harlock action in this set of episodes, but the choice of Zero as main character has to be classified so far as faulty. Since this is Volume 2 in a four volume set, your decision to pick it up probably will be influenced by whether you liked the first volume.
© 2011 MonsterHunter
