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Spaceships and mechanics in the Harlock universe

Section six: Heavy Meldar

Heavy Meldar is a major crossroads point in the galaxy, and home to the city of Trader's Fork. Sort of like Matsumoto's Tatooine, it's a dusty, desolate and generally underdeveloped planet where nevertheless everything important seems to happen. In Space Pirate Captain Harlock, Heavy Meldar was destroyed by the wandering planet Ganda just after the newly-launched Arcadia had escaped it, but the frontier world with the weird name continued to surface in almost every subsequent story featuring Harlock and company nonetheless.

Planet Heavy Meldar, which may or may be doomed to blow up someday.



The wreck of the Deathshadow

Harlock's first ship, the Deathshadow now sits rusting on the planet of Heavy Meldar near the mountain of Gun Frontier after being brought down by Captain Bentselle. In Galaxy Express 999, Tetsuro Hoshino encounters the ailing Tochiro Oyama living in the decrepit hulk of the pirate ship, and subsequently activates the machine that sends Tochiro's consciousness into the Arcadia's central computer (as seen on the picture on the right.) However, in the Endless Road SSX series, Tochiro just walks into the ship and turns the thing on himself, making one wonder if some sort of brain-emailing device is standard equipment on ships of this type.



The rusted remnants of Harlock's first ship.

Tochiro uses the Deathshadow's whatchamacallit device to send his mind across space to the Arcadia's central computer.



The Time Castle

A time and space-hopping fortress ruled by the evil Count Mecha. With help from Emeraldas and Tochiro, Tetsuro Hoshino tracks it down at Mt. Gun Frontier and infiltrates the citadel, finally killing the murderer of his mother. The Count's last-second, failed attempt at escaping through time ends up causing the castle to age away into dust.

In the TV version of 999, the time castle is ruled by a mechanized Harlock imposter instead of Count Mecha, who was killed off in the very first episode. When Tetsuro falls into the time vortex in the castle, he is forced to relive the experience of his mother's murder as an impotent observer, a concept subsequently resurrected in Adieu, Galaxy Express 999.



The massive citadel of the Time Castle, sitting in the dark and being generally difficult to see.

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