Arcadia Of My Youth (DVD)

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The animation quality is good for its time. Because there was no such thing as computer animation or effects back then, several backgrounds are sort of static looking, and not every effect looks as good as it could. However, many effects, like the exchange of broadsides between Harlock´s Arcadia and the Illumidus flagship, would look good when held up to any animated feature today.

Audio:
You can watch the show only in Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo Japanese. There is an option for complete or partial English subtitles. I watched it in Japanese with complete English subtitles. The audio on this disc was much quieter than other discs, and I had to turn the volume up by about 15 dB over what I normally set the volume to. The voice actor for Harlock, Makio Inoue, has actually been the same for the last few decades, up until the very latest additions to the Matsumoto-verse. In fact, the voice actor himself is almost as popular as his character, as he´s able to emote both the steel and compassion in Harlock.

While the background music is nice and orchestral, the songs are kind of cheesy sounding to my ears. Oh well, it´s not like American 80s music is burning up the charts anymore either.

Extras:
Along with trailers for various other AnimEigo productions, they included two original theatrical trailers for this film in the same menu. Clever.

The "Filmography and Unusual Facts" section is the real gold of the extras. It contains four subsections- "Harlock Filmography", "Matsumoto Filmography", "Actor Filmography", and "Unusual Facts". All four subsections are pretty exhaustive, so if you enjoyed this film and would like to see more of the Matsumoto-verse, take notes.

Finally, there is a small image gallery. There aren´t that many pictures, and some are a little on the small side, but it´s a decent effort.

--Miscellaneous--
The DVD comes with a three page fold out that consists entirely of text. Sadly, the trademark AnimEigo exhaustive liner notes take up less than one side of one page, the rest of the pages having gone to translations of the songs from the film. It´s still more than what most companies do.

Film Value:
I´ve never made any pretenses about not being a blind fool for anything and everything in the Matsumoto-verse. Matsumoto´s art design is unique, beautiful, unforgettable, just like the characters he brings to life and the stories he weaves. This isn´t a throw away, popcorn flick. "Arcadia of My Youth" is a somewhat sentimental, lyrical film about one man´s refusal to compromise his convictions, and just how powerful a force that can be. See this film. Then do everything in your power to see or read everything else connected to Leiji Matsumoto.

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