This is Leiji Matsumoto letting his two favorite men loose in the Old West with sake, six-shooters, and zero interest in explaining themselves. Harlock plays it stone-faced and lethal while Tochiro, the pint-sized samurai with a gunsmith's hands and a total lack of shame, does the horny comic damage, and their friendship is the actual engine here, not the manhunt for the lost clan of Japanese immigrants. The narration keeps insisting this wasteland is sacred ground for true men, and the show commits to that pulp register so hard it becomes its own genre: sex rings, bandit gangs, and bought-and-paid-for sheriffs, all shot through Matsumoto's dusty frontier design language. Yes, the woman they pick up along the way and half the villains are pure 70s archetype, and no, the story never lands a real ending. You watch it anyway, because this is where Harlock and Tochiro drink together before there was ever a ship.

Sea pirate captain Harlock and the wandering samurai Tochiro arrive on the Western Frontier of the United States, a hard, empty wasteland where the weak have no room to dream. The two friends share one goal: to track down a lost clan of Japanese immigrants somewhere in this unforgiving land. A mysterious woman they meet on the road joins them. Together they face bandits, sex rings and a corrupt sheriff, and they are ready to turn the frontier upside down until they find the missing clan. The result is a western with a sci-fi edge, built around action and adventure.