Moby Dick

The broadcast series Hakugei: Legend of the Moby Dick is set in the distant future, 500 years after the great age of human space exploration. Derelict ships called "whales" drift through the galaxy: rich prizes for the salvage crews known as "whale hunters." Fourteen-year-old Lucky Luck fulfills his dream when he's accepted as an apprentice by Captain Ahab, the greatest hunter of them all. Lucky is still learning his way around The Lady Whisker, when the crew encounters Dew, an android reprogrammed long ago by a mysterious and powerful white being. Hakugei is a somewhat manic attempt to move the clichés of Western seafaring into outer space: The crew consists of colorful misfits, Ahab talks like Captain McCallister on The Simpsons ("Yarrgh!"), and his orders are broadcast by a screeching mechanical parrot. Hakugei has about as much to do with Herman Melville's novel as Harlock Saga does with Wagner's Ring operas. (Rated TV PG, suitable for ages 12 and older: brief nudity, grotesque imagery, violence, alcohol and tobacco use) --Charles Solomon