A space patrol vessel heading for the congested spaceport of the Eclusian asteroid arrives to discover its normally thriving urban streets vacant. Tochiro and Emeraldas from the Arcadia crew, looking for a way onto the dead asteroid to which they've been lead on a search for a missing shipmate, muscle help from the space patrol to enter Elusian by force. The pair finds the missing Meeme, but only as an intangible image playing a voluminous pipe organ that warns them of a plot to steal the fabled Rhein Gold, a substance that has enigmatic powers of universal proportions. Meeme has just enough time to direct them to planet Rhein just before Eclusian explodes. Tochiro and Emeraldis dash to the planet Rhein to stop the bandits and rescue the enigmatic Meeme.

Harlock and crew pursue the bandit ship while Meeme, saddened by the theft of the Rhein Gold, the essence of time itself, remains recalcitrant on the true nature of their quest. However, when the trail leads to Earth, Harlock demands answers, which Meeme provides in inexplicably cryptic language. Todashi Deiva is the only scientist in the universe capable of fashioning the raw Rhein Gold into a ring, an act that would enable the Gold's power to manifest. Meeme visits the young scientist to warn him of this danger, but when one of the bandits approaches him about making the ring, his pride gets the better of him.

With only pieces of this elaborate, galactic puzzle to work with, Harlock and crew again question Meeme about the broader picture, but an attacking ship interrupts her revelations. Victory only deepens the mystery. Explanations abound. The bandits are actually led by Meeme's brother, Alberich, a man obsessed with battling Wotan, a god responsible for the oppression of his race. This war, though, would inevitably lead to the destruction of humanity. Wotan, meanwhile, has awakened from his slumber in Valhalla because of the disturbance of the Rhein Gold and forcibly summons Meeme.

Yearning to be an epic replete with angered gods and wistful sirens, creator Leiji Matsumoto's story sags under the weight of its own complexity. Sprinting from one cataclysmic explosion to the next, the tale inexorably dives into long passages of necessary but highly undramatic exposition, suggesting that Matsumoto had a clear vision for his larger ideas but left his details vague.

Beautifully poetic images evocative of classical mythology and folklore pervade the series' design. Designer Hideyuki Motohashi renders his cast in deeply quixotic strokes from Harlock's patch-eye and swarthy cape to Meeme's ivory fragility, like a princess weeping in the highest tower of a castle. The pirate ship design of Harlock's spacecraft, too, borrows elements from the sentimental story telling tradition. Narrative elements such as the tragic consumption of the Rhein Gold's three Siren-like guardians in a celestial darkness and a battle in the heavens between lesser and greater gods credit Matsumoto's concept with a Romantic boldness.

Would that the piecing together of these elements in a dramaturgically sound script were as equally important to the creator of such classics as "Star Blazers" and "Galaxy Express 999." The lofty themes of adventure and mysticism actualize in the script as conflagrations and bursts of blinding light, each new step in the story undercut by the vapid script technique of filling in textual chasms with conversational exposition. Though delivering one spectacle after another, Matsumoto does little to show us the gravity of his plot, preferring to tell us instead.

Worse off in this style of drama are the characters for whom the spectacle obscures advancement. Holed up in his ship, the eponymous Harlock demonstrates only the cursory emotional investment in the plot. Tochiro, more hands on than any of the cast, gets relegated to a sidekick position before too long. Meeme, though one of the most interesting characters, reveals more in exposition about the universe's fate than she does about herself responding to situations. She's part of a race of people that once ruled the universe at risk of being exterminated, along with her beloved human race, in the hands of an angry god. Yet she displays a queer reticence about explaining all to the Arcadia crew, as if Matsumoto's only recourse to maintain the illusion of having written a mystery is to withhold technical information.

"The Harlock Saga," though, stays afloat with quick pacing and a dense, if sometimes opaque, narrative tapestry, signifying hope for future episodes despite this patchy start.