Audience reviews
5 · Sample from the first available page, separate from the total number of ratings.
SMGJohn
Got anything better to do than getting a headache? Avoid this anime! Here is why:
Hakugei is one of those anime that has a very interesting setting, a good first half and the second half is marred with extreme production difficulties and strange choices because your writers leave mid production with only half the script finished.
Recommended by many YouTubers as a spiritual experience, its SPIRITUAL ARIGHT!
It starts off well, building on a darker tone, in a world where thousands of drifting spaceships from an era of great space exploration and the “scavengers” who are called whale hunters in this setting. Their job is to salvage anything valuable off these ships which are floating around aimlessly in space, drawn by gravity and flung around.
Much of the first half of the series does…
Read at the sourceCinaGinger
My score is around 7.5, it's extraordinarily beautiful and well-made and it gives a vibe that doesn't exist anymore nowadays. When they get seriously melodramatic it's epic (specially Dew sidestory) and when they get funny it changes completely into another genre from one second to the other...
This is the story of a muscular and handsome Don Juan called Cpt. Ahab (one of Osamu's alter egos) who likes to sing karaoke and rejects every beautiful girl that comes to his way. As a well-rounded captain should be, he's accompanied by a silly, womenless tripulation with a dark past. But... do they really have a dark past? Or it's the universe's corrupted ways that made them into acting like this? This series is a mixture between artful and dramatically mysterious beauty and the most cheesy telen…
Read at the sourceBlaizeV
I quite enjoyed this series despite its flaws. The Story while always interesting and often unpredictable was certainly a bit strange overall. Characters were pretty likable, though White's heavy transition to comedic relief in the latter stages of the series became a bit grating, especially since it's clear the humour didn't translate well. I'm guessing there was a lot of Japanese word play in that stuff?
I watched the show with the ADV Dub and it was pretty good though not without one major and unfortunate flaw. For some reason Ahab got a typical 'Shiver Me Timbers' Pirate accent which is some terribly lazy direction. I think the actor did an okay job with it but it was pretty bad they chose that, very close minded. Even some of the dialogue was changed specifically to play up the Pira…
Read at the sourceTHEAnimeHERO
Hakugei: Legend of Moby Dick is certainly an interesting blend of space pirates and cyborgs. While the series goes back and fourth between serious and goofy, it still manages to have a dark yet melancholy story.
To begin, the story has very little to do with the original novel of Moby Dick and only borrows the titular whale character but re-imagined as a cyborg. The planet Moad is under martial law and is set to be destroyed. A kid named Lucky requests the help of Captain Ahab to save the planet and its people. Ahab agrees as the Moby Dick acts as the destroyer of the planet and it also responsible for Ahab's loss of his left eye and leg.
Initially starting as an episodic space pirate anime, it gradually shifts into a darker tale of cyborgs with a doomsday clock. Part of the serie's lo…
Read at the sourceHazelHawks
A quick ramble on Hakugei.
First, Hakugei is not Melville's Moby Dick. It is not a modern interpretation of the classic novel, nor a space-age reimagining. Typical of the anime industry, the writers of Hakugei have merely appropriated high-profile elements of Melville's classic and have applied it, unnecessisarily but to interesting effect, to a space opera that reminded me in equal parts of Star Wars, Dune, Blade Runner, and, perhaps more so, of The Seven Samurai (indeed, I'm now convinced Gonzo's Samurai 7 was a remake of Hakugei rather than of Kurosawa's classic.)
So, does all this derivativeness make Hakugei a bad show? Nope. It's pretty decent, usually entertaining, and occasionally fantastic. While not exactly fast-paced, the writers do a good job of maintaining narrative thrust.…
Read at the source