n the distant past, Earth had a "sister planet" with the oddly prophetic name of La Metalle. This world orbited outside the paths of the solar system's other nine planets, but once a millennium it approached Earth, and one of its people bestowed wisdom on the Terrans, giving rise to a series of legends and folk tales about heavenly benefactors. But at some unspecified point, for some unspecified reason, La Metalle approached Earth "not with the open hand of friendship, but with swords drawn in attempted conquest." Then the "black sun Ra" threw La Metalle out of orbit and out of the Milky Way galaxy, "on a long, cold course for Andromeda." The technologically advanced planet managed to create an artificial sun, but the chill of intergalactic space became overwhelming, and La Metalle's people found it harder and harder to withstand
the cold, or to grow enough food to keep themselves alive.
In the opening scenes of Maetel Legend—the latest installment in Leiji Matsumoto's sprawling space saga about Captain Harlock and his allies—La Metalle's queen, La Andromeda Prometheum, decides to accept the sly suggestions of her engineer/advisor Hardgear, and allow her frail flesh body to be "mechanized" into a robot body that will give her "limitless strength and eternal life." Her daughters, the gentle Maetel and tough, no-nonsense pirate-to-be Emeraldas, disapprove, but keep their objections low-key, even when the queen rounds up all her people and forces them to accept the mechanization process themselves. She insists that the process is necessary to ensure their survival, and proves the point by threatening to kill anyone who refuses it.
Hardgear doesn't wait long to reveal himself as an evil overlord of the gloating-over-a-goblet-while-sitting-on-a-throne variety, but Maetel and Emeraldas still confine much of their attention to their mother, who sprouts throbbing lights all over her body and waffles between overseeing her people's systematic conversion and screaming with horror at the monster she's becoming. Even when they learn that Hardgear is planting hypnotic chips in his converts' heads and controlling their behavior, the two princesses spend more time discussing their feelings than rallying or rescuing the ever-decreasing human population.
Familiar flaws, but it could be worse
Like Matsumoto's Galaxy Express 999, another melodramatic movie prominently featuring Maetel, Maetel Legend leans heavily on the metaphorical value of people foolishly trading their humanity for power and immortality. Maetel drives the point home with a number of stirring monologues
about the human heart and its inability to endure such immortality. Unfortunately, she delivers these speeches to her mother after the irreversible conversion process has already begun. The sense that any resistance and any regret come too slowly and too late—in spite of the many chances to make a
difference at many stages of Hardgear's coup—is one of the several things dragging Maetel Legend down.
Other problems include endless repetition, heavy-handed symbolism and strange logical gaps. Sometimes all three problems crop up at once: A shot of Hardgear on his throne, drinking a red fluid and gloating, is repeated half a dozen times, sometimes overlaid with swirling shots of screaming people spinning into a red mist. "Nothing can strengthen us like the essence of the human soul," he comments during one iteration. Apart from the fact that the same sequence is used too often, apart from the image's grating melodrama, the odd concept that Hardgear is somehow consuming those souls is either a rather forced metaphor or a direct contradiction of other things that happen in the series. Similarly, a manipulative shot of lifeless, tearstained human bodies being dumped into a trash heap—and eventually devoured by rats—is recycled several times, even though it's clearly established that the queen's mechanization, at least, is a gradual process of conversion from flesh to metal, not a brain transplant that leaves a corpse behind.
Still, Maetel Legend holds up better overall than many of Matsumoto's recent works, particularly the deeply tiresome Queen Emeraldas. Harlock fans will doubtless need to see it just for the mysteries it clears up about Maetel and Emeraldas, and casual fans can appreciate its adventure, its emotional power, its many strikingly pretty images and its Matsumoto-patented wistful tone. Maetel Legend fits neatly into Matsumoto's canon, with all the usual benefits and flaws. But someday it might be nice to see Matsumoto manage the former without the latter.
I found myself resenting the way Metalle's people were used as plot devices in this two-part film; stripped of their humanity at gunpoint, they never have a choice or a chance, but the so-called heroes are entirely detached from that stratum of society. Maetel and Emeraldas mostly show concern for their mother,
themselves, their moral values and their endless nostalgia, which makes the self-styled champions of humanity not very humane themselves.
— Tasha
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