Well, here’s another idea. This one was meant to be a fanfiction retelling/consolidation of works done by Leiji Matsumoto, specifically the space operas/sci-fi he’s well-known for. His works include a lot of anime/manga, e.g. Space Pirate Captain Harlock (Albator in French), Galaxy Express 999, and Queen Millennia (or Queen of a Thousand Years, depending on which translation you prefer), that are put together in what is called the “Leijiverse.” The aforementioned examples are well-regarded retro anime (some of which you can find on crunchyroll) from the 70s and 80s and some of my personal favorites, so I thought I would try to put them together like how Marvel put its heroes together in the MCU.
The only problem is that Leiji Matsumoto’s works don’t really have a single continuity between each other (as there have been different retellings of Captain Harlock throughout the years), so it was kind of difficult to make my project in line with the spirit of Matsumoto’s writings. Still, I’d like to share with the summary I had for this project and below that is the unfinished prologue for my Captain Harlock retelling. I hope you like it.
It’s the 30th Century. The machine men of the Promethium Empire are expanding across the universe, seeking to mechanize everything and everyone. Earth is ruled by a puppet government that kneels to the authority of the Promethium Empire.
In this trying time, as people forgo human life for machine bodies and alien powers wage all over the cosmos, many figures and tales have emerged, filling the ears of the weak and desperate: a captain and his crew of space pirates fighting for freedom, a lone queen and her journey across space, and a mysterious beauty who rides the railways of the cosmos.
Welcome to the Leiji-verse.
In all his years of service to the Sol Defense Fleet, Captain Jenkins had not seen much action. He had signed up just hours before the Promethium-Terran War was declared over. There were no glorious last stands or cries of freedom like he had seen early on, just silent acceptance. Jenkins has done the same over the next decade, tiring over inspection after inspection of cargo ships heading for the Sol System. He grew into his role that he had gotten used the boredom.
So imagine his surprise when the klaxons blared loudly for the first time in over ten years.
“Alert! Alert! Unidentified object has appeared!” one crewman’s young voice rang through the comms of the Fourth Column.
Taken aback, the captain did not know what to do. He was frozen in place and let the red lights flooded over him and the bridge’s pristine silver floors. The rest of his command crew were at their posts, doing as they trained for several times, taking any readings they can find and giving out commands.
“Unknown object, detected! Frequency, unknown!”
“All hands, man your stations! This is not a drill! I repeat, this is not…”
“I don’t care what those idiots are doing! Get them up here, now!”
“Tracking trajectory of unknown object! Coming in at mark zero-zero-nine…”
“All pilots, report in to your squad leaders!”
“… you serious?! Get someone on those batteries!”
“Captain, your orders?!”
Snapped out of his daze, Jenkins smoothed the creases in his uniform. “I need a report from engineering! I want to know what’s going on!” he ordered the lieutenant who asked, a scrawny man in blue.
The next minute felt like hours before Jenkins got a response, “Captain, we can’t get a visual on object!”
Jenkins frowned. “Ready the thrusters! Get us in closer to that thing!”
“Sir, we can’t-”
“Do as I say!” Jenkins barked at the corporal who spoke up.
The floor shuddered on the captain’s command within minutes. “Approaching the object,” announced the same corporal. “ETA in five minutes.”
Those five minutes felt like an eternity. Already, Jenkins heard hushed whispers of concern from his crew. He would have told them to shut up if he wasn’t so unsettled and trying to figure out the reason behind it.