Captain Harlock (character)
fictional character from Captain Harlock
Captain Harlock (Japanese: キャプテン・ハーロック, Hepburn: Kyaputen Hārokku; also known as "Captain Herlock" in the English release of Endless Odyssey and some Japanese materials) is a fictional character and the protagonist of the Space Pirate Captain Harlock manga series created by Leiji Matsumoto.
Harlock is the archetypical Romantic hero, a space pirate with an individualist philosophy of life. He is as noble as he is taciturn, rebellious, stoically fighting against totalitarian regimes, whether they be Earth-born or alien. In his own words, he "fight[s] for no one's sake... only for something deep in [his] heart". He does not fear death, and is sometimes seen wearing clothing with the number 42 on it. In Japanese culture, the number 42 is associated with death (the numbers, pronounced separately as "four two", sound like the word "shini"—meaning "dying/death"). He is a descendant of the Harlock clan, an ancient Germanic clan of pirate-knights based in Heiligenstadt.
The character was created by Leiji Matsumoto in 1977 and popularized in the 1978 television series Space Pirate Captain Harlock. Since then, the character has appeared in numerous animated television series and films, the latest of which is 2013's Space Pirate Captain Harlock.
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This entry incorporates text from “Captain Harlock (character)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.