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Queen Emeraldas

Queen Emeraldas

List Price: $29.95
Your Price: $26.96
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Rousing musical score.
Review: Matsumoto Leije is a man with a lot of baggage. His works tend to follow very familiar themes, use similar characters, and follow common plot lines. Queen Emeraldas, despite its up-to-date animation, is no exception. This is merely yet another recycled plot, which even has the audacity to steal scenes from other well-known films.

matsumoto's universe is vast in one sense that there are many players, but it's also very small -- the major players are clones of each other. Emeraldas is the tall, stark, lone privateer, forever voyaging the Sea of Stars, haunted by the memory of her lost love, Tochiro. Umino Hiroshi (even the character names are getting all to familiar), played by Hayashibara Megumi is the young boy, destined to become great man and builder; a mirror of Emeraldas' lost lover. And you have the leader of the Afressian forces, a person of opposing political views, but of the same spirit as our lead heroine.

This series does bring one new item to the table -- the anime character designs faithfully capture the gnarled look of the minor players, most notably of Le Law, the grizzled old stowaway, and the crew members of the ill-fated freighter.

Even more impressive is the score -- a fully orchestrated piece, which exudes a grandness of scale perhaps better suited for a full-length motion picture. The opening theme's haunting vocals is a more modern version of what we've heard before in the Harlock series, and like its predecessors, it will stick in your memory.

But perhaps even more disturbing than the recycling of old ideas is the outright borrowing of scenes from other films, most notably the showdown between Emeraldas and Eldomain, a scene unabashedly lifted from Batman: The Movie, where Batman, on board his Batwing, faces off against the Joker. This is one series that needs more than a cosmetic upgrade to make it of any worth.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Very good, but...
Review: Queen Emeraldas is an excellent OVA for those who already are familiar with Matsumoto's works. However, if you aren't familiar with the 'Lejiverse' then you probably won't like it very much.

There are 2 things that are keeping me from rating this thing 5 stars. The first is the fact that the DVD encoding is horribly messed up! In episode 2, if you have the Japanese audio track on, it switches to French! The only way to correct this is to switch the audio over to French where it becomes Japanese. Then, halfway through episode 2, the French channel becomes French and you then have to switch the audio back over to Japanese. As you can see, it's sort of confusing, and annoying. I just pray that you all have DVD remote controls with Audio buttons on them, so you won't have to go to the menu every time.

The second is the actual OVA itself. I believe in giving an unbiased review, and to me, unbiased in this case means a review of someone who is not a Matsumoto fan. If I had no knowledge of the Matsumoto universe, I would wish I hadn't bought the DVD. I guess the OVA is sort of like a gift to the long-time Matsumoto fans. Also...with the exception of the very first CG shot, I can't stand the computer graphics.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Very good, but...
Review: Queen Emeraldas is an excellent OVA for those who already are familiar with Matsumoto's works. However, if you aren't familiar with the 'Lejiverse' then you probably won't like it very much.

There are 2 things that are keeping me from rating this thing 5 stars. The first is the fact that the DVD encoding is horribly messed up! In episode 2, if you have the Japanese audio track on, it switches to French! The only way to correct this is to switch the audio over to French where it becomes Japanese. Then, halfway through episode 2, the French channel becomes French and you then have to switch the audio back over to Japanese. As you can see, it's sort of confusing, and annoying. I just pray that you all have DVD remote controls with Audio buttons on them, so you won't have to go to the menu every time.

The second is the actual OVA itself. I believe in giving an unbiased review, and to me, unbiased in this case means a review of someone who is not a Matsumoto fan. If I had no knowledge of the Matsumoto universe, I would wish I hadn't bought the DVD. I guess the OVA is sort of like a gift to the long-time Matsumoto fans. Also...with the exception of the very first CG shot, I can't stand the computer graphics.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A nice edition to the Harlock Universe
Review: Queen Emeraldas is an excellent OVA, and well worth buying. The Animation is stunning. The story is well written. And the epic space battles are unforgetable. Queen Emeraldas is a must have for any fan of Leiji Matsumoto's work .

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Great Anime, Bad Execution
Review: This DVD would've gotten 5 stars if not for the following flaws, the english voice acting is AWFUL (a trademark of ADV). Secondly the audio language gets screwed up in the 2nd episode (it goes from Japanese to French). If you're a fan of the Harlock series, BUY IT! But please to really get the most out of it, play it in Japanese with english subtitles. I couldn't watch for 5 minutes in english audio without feeling sick...

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Lame - Simply Lame
Review: What is there to say about an anime consisting of two episodes running 30 minutes each? When you have a horrible plot, boring action scenes, and unbelievably terrible voice acting there isn't much. Queen Emeraldas herself will make little to no sense to those who know nothing (as I don't) about the Harlock Saga, however that itself doesn't excuse this movie from its horrible storyline. On one hand we have a random villain who happens to be scouring the cosmos looking for a fight and on the other hand we have a sullen heroine that just happens to come by and save the day more than once. I have absolutely no idea how people could think of this as a heart-warming movie or even an interesting one at that due to its dry plot. The music is hardly memorable, there are no captivating scenes, and the computer animation does little to deepen the movie. In fact, before I had read about the computer generated effects, I had no idea that Queen Emeraldas's ship wasn't drawn by hand. You know you have a real gem on your hands when you're falling asleep in the middle of the day to a movie. If you want a movie with space pirate adventures check out Sol Bianca. This movie hardly fits the requirement of what decent anime should be.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Lame - Simply Lame
Review: What is there to say about an anime consisting of two episodes running 30 minutes each? When you have a horrible plot, boring action scenes, and unbelievably terrible voice acting there isn't much. Queen Emeraldas herself will make little to no sense to those who know nothing (as I don't) about the Harlock Saga, however that itself doesn't excuse this movie from its horrible storyline. On one hand we have a random villain who happens to be scouring the cosmos looking for a fight and on the other hand we have a sullen heroine that just happens to come by and save the day more than once. I have absolutely no idea how people could think of this as a heart-warming movie or even an interesting one at that due to its dry plot. The music is hardly memorable, there are no captivating scenes, and the computer animation does little to deepen the movie. In fact, before I had read about the computer generated effects, I had no idea that Queen Emeraldas's ship wasn't drawn by hand. You know you have a real gem on your hands when you're falling asleep in the middle of the day to a movie. If you want a movie with space pirate adventures check out Sol Bianca. This movie hardly fits the requirement of what decent anime should be.


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