Hakugei Densetsu: Legend of Moby Dick is a 26 episode space adventure based on the Herman Melville book Moby Dick. Abandoned floating ships are called whales and many times are of the shape of whales or other sea creatures. Many character names and themes are shared, but after that this anime deviates pretty far.

The story starts off in the Nantucket Nebula on a massive space station in the year 4699. There whale hunters gather materials, loot, and ship parts from whales. That space station was a project by a government for its people, but its location had a strong gravitational pull that brought dead ships and scrap from all over. An odd bunch is the crew for Captain Ahab, the highly thought of leader of a small while hunter crew. Every character is pretty much explained or given some sort of history in the beginning except for the 14 year old Lucky Luck. All that is shown is that he wanted to be a while hunter, but nothing is presented to really why or what his background is. The only semi-spoiler I’ll give is Ahab saves Lucky Luck as he is being unofficially tested to become apart of the crew. A gold coin is thrown into what was thought to be water and Lucky Luck dives in to get it. Shortly after the captain saves him with Lucky Luck unable to swim in the dangerous liquid. His hand opens up revealing the coin as Captain Ahab grabs him from the deep bellow.

Extra points are earned for the spray that allows people to go into space without suits, the small ships the crew flies on to travel outside their main ship, and that they actually try spearing ships to catch them in order to board them.

The animation is very old school in a good rough way much like Outlaw Star. This anime deserves to be watched in dub form because Captain Ahab has your stereotypical pirate voice with a robotic talking parrot to top it off. Lucky Luck plays a solid role as the narrator for being an optimistic character instead of an unknown voice. Only a couple moments where the lips and voices noticeably don’t sync well. Hakugei Densetsu: Legend of Moby Dick is for you if you’re wanting a refreshing old school space adventure with 1980s like characters designs.

ADV Films has a six disc box set with extras. One of the nicer extras is the interview with the directors Osamu Desaki and Matsuzono. I’ll be watching this to the end.