Hakugei volume 5

The sci-fi of Hakugei: The Legend of the Moby Dick is actually pretty darn good. It's an intriguing tale altogether, and even if I didn't have this obsession with the classic status of the novel, I would probably still enjoy this while I have been watching lots of anime lately. It's a good show.

Ahab versus the android Robotnik (Jacobs/Murato) and Ahab loses. So Robotnik is a cool bad guy. Mono a roboto Ha!

Ahab: "If I lost to a guy like you then how could I ever face Moby Dick?"

Murato then fights and kills Barba, the Queequeg character. Barba's (Queequeg's) luggage has an inscription that helps to rebirth Barba--is this akin to the coffin in the original novel?

Madam Ohara (Special Assistant) and General Ho are interesting characters. Again, the cool bad guys are actually more interesting than the idea of Moby Dick the whale.

The reborn Murato crushes General Ho.

I wonder where all of this is going. In all respects, Ahab must somehow stop the android Dew from being this detonator of the Moby Dick space bomb in order to save the planet Moad. In other ways, Ahab must defeat the white whale in order to save the planet. The ultimate good guy then?

Or is that what Ahab was doing in the novel? I have read bits on how Moby references the evils of the world. Is that what the novel's Ahab was always chasing, the eradication of the world's evil?

But then that still doesn't help its narrative structure. Nor does it alleviate the torture of sitting through Ishmael's first hundred or so pages. Not to me, anyway.