Leiji Matsumoto
La Regina dei Mille Anni

I know well how to reach my personal dimension of daze and forgetfulness without the use of particular substances, and today thanks to the web it is more than ever at my fingertips, perhaps too much: a few clicks, some notes, a few initial images and I'm there.

Old-fashioned sci-fi, 70s-80s, vintage stuff as it would be called today.

Perhaps the space being described to you gives me the idea of an amniotic broth where I can mix in my thoughts, a Linus' blanket with which I can recall flashes of sensations experienced as a kid.

It would be nice to understand certain mechanisms of the psyche well.

Leiji Matsumoto is my brain's favorite potion.

Everything contributes to making it particularly effective: characters and spaceships, the Italian intros, the original music, the Italian voiceovers of the first dubbing, all perceptibly shrouded in an ever-thickening, dreamlike, opiate-like temporal blanket as the good Buzz would say.

I have a vague memory of when I first saw Queen of a Thousand Years, I think I didn't understand anything then, I was really very young. What I remember is that somehow I managed to catch a more intense melancholic note compared to other works by Matsumoto, a bit more sadness typical of a cycle coming to a close.

I also remember how much I would have liked to end up in the arms of those slender, thin, diaphanous women, and sink my face into their chests, wrapped in their very long hair. The first hormonal itches, of course, but there was also the desire to immerse myself in their magical aura.

A law that governs Matsumoto's worlds is that only female creatures can enjoy supernatural powers, the males (as far as I recall), human or alien, even if heroes, remain constrained within the limits of their natural condition. If they enjoy power, it is either technological or political power, nothing supernatural.

I don't think it would hurt to consider "Queen of a Thousand Years" the alpha and omega of the author's production. It closes the period of the most beloved anime based on his works, and at the same time, it is the least futuristic story (from the point of view of an 80s viewer) he wrote, the first brick in a universe that includes at least Captain Harlock, Esmeralda, and Galaxy Express 999.

I read an in-depth review online titled exactly "Queen of a Thousand Years" (I couldn't find the author's name, I hope they'll forgive me if they read this of mine and I'm not mentioning them) and it seems that Galaxy Express 999 and the work in question are actually two chapters of the same story. If I understand correctly, "Queen of a Thousand Years" is the name given to the daughter of the queen mother of Lamethal, whom she periodically sends to Earth (a thousand years? ... who knows?) to recruit young Earthlings with great qualities for her service. In Galaxy, it’s about Maisha, even if the Italian dubbing doesn't help to understand it, in this case, it's about Kira.

Both works feature a complex plot, where it isn't clear from the start what the mission is and who the enemy is, and there is a pair of protagonists formed by a not-so-handsome boy and a girl with long blonde hair with something mysterious about her.

This anime involves multiple factions, the Earthlings, the inhabitants of the planet Lamethal, the pirates, and the main narrative knot, the true identity of Kira the protagonist, is unraveled not too quickly.

But ultimately I'm not so eager to understand too much of the plot now that I'm almost as old as the queen, the only thing that interests me is to curl up for a moment in the memory I have of the sensations felt as a kid, seeing those images that had a certain effect on me back then, where the protagonist sacrifices herself to give humanity hope.