Queen Emeraldas

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Queen Emeraldas

クィーン・エメラルダス
Genre	Adventure, Science Fiction, Shoujo
OVA
Directed by	Yuji Asada
Studio	Bandai Visual
No. of episodes	4
Released	1998
Runtime

Queen Emeraldas (クィーン・エメラルダス, Queen Emeraldas^?) is a four-episode Japanese anime OAV that continues the Harlock franchise created by Leiji Matsumoto. The anime was adapted from Matsumoto's 1978 manga of the same name. Queen Emeraldas is the story of the pirate spaceship, Queen Emeraldas, which is captained by the mysterious and beautiful Emeraldas, a strong and powerful privateer.

[edit] Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The storyline follows a young boy named Hiroshi Umino who sneaks aboard a freighter in order to leave Earth. As the freighter is flying through space they are attacked by an Afressian ship. However, the train is saved by a mysterious ship and is able to make it to their destination, a desert planet with a Western atmosphere, complete with saloons and bar fights. The boy meets up with another stowaway, an old man, and becomes friends with him. He tells the old man that he came to the planet in order to become a stronger individual. He gets himself a job in a bar with the roughest reputation on the planet to prove himself. When the attacking ship, led by Captain Eldomain, lands on the planet to search for whoever attacked him, Emeraldas appears to save the people of the town.

While the story can stand on its own, independent of Matsumoto's other works, it mostly assumes that the viewer has seen the other Harlock titles, especially Galaxy Express 999 (the TV series and the movies), which featured Maetel, Emeraldas' sister, but had the occasional appearance of Emeraldas (Note: Maetel, for some reason in the English dub is referred to as Mataire, possibly as a translation error). The story of Queen Emeraldas is set five years after the events of the final Galaxy Express 999 movie and was designed to give Matsumoto's fans a further glimpse into what became of Emeraldas. However, of the other characters, most are only mentioned in passing, except for Captain Harlock who has a brief cameo appearance.

Queen Emeraldas' first two episodes were produced by Studio OLM and licensed for American distribution by ADV Films, being one of their earlier releases on the DVD format. Those two episodes also have regular runs on the Action Channel. In Japan, the remaining two episodes were produced by Multi Access Company and were released the following year after the initial two, indicating that a separate contract (that is not yet forthcoming) would be required for anyone to license the concluding episodes of the story outside of Japan.