Wander the Edge of the Stars with Captain Harlock

Wing Commander Academy storyboard artist Tim Eldred is a true old school anime fan; in fact, his spectacular Art Vault website maintains a continually updated, world class section on the anime that inspired him. His familiarity with shows like Space Battleship Yamato and VOTOMS was a clear influence on the board work he did on Academy.

When he was designing the character sheets for the Tiger's Claw deck crew (first seen in The Most Delicate Instrument) he included a little Easter egg intended primarily for the shows' Japanese animators but too small to really appear on the show: a tattoo of Captain Harlock's distinct skull emblem on one of the crewman's forearms. Well, those animators took the nod seriously and you can ever-so-briefly pause the show to find the tattoo!

Space Pirate Captain Harlock is a 1978 anime series about the pirate crew of a starship defending Earth from an alien invasion from another galaxy. I decided to watch the show to better understand the influence and I was really surprised first by how great the show is today and by how obvious some of the influence was. The blocking for Captain Harlock's mighty Arcadia, in particular, is extremely similar to shots of the Tiger's Claw! This one, the last shot in the final episode of Academy, is very apparently a nod to this shot of the pirate ship that makes a regular appearance on Space Pirate Captain Harlock: