Although I am generally disdainful of the armchair philosopher’s propensity towards reading too much into film and television, it does seem as though, consciously or otherwise, writers, producers and directors imbibe meaning into the seemingly mundane and banal. Like trousers, for example. Universal archetypes (see Archetypes) are more often than not woven into most storytelling genres, and the audience absorbs them without being truly aware of their existence and the meanings they impart. Captain Harlock’s trousers may be just such an archetype.

Harlock is unique amongst anime characters in that he changes his clothes regularly. Sometimes he wears blue, sometimes he wears red. Sometimes he tucks his shirts in, sometimes he leaves them hanging out. In his manga incarnations Harlock can change his outfits in the course of a single chapter. While this can at times be disconcerting for an audience not used to their leading men having a wardrobe with more than one outfit in it, it signifies once again that with Harlock you never quite know what you're going to get. It is symbolic of his mutability and the changes that have occurred within his life. For the sake of this diatribe, I have divided the distinct phases of Harlock’s incarnations into the following:

| Bluepants Harlock
| Redpants Harlock
| Whitepants Harlock
| Blackpants Harlock

| Bluepants Harlock
Harlock wears blue pants in two of his incarnations: the back-story to Space Pirate Captain Harlock, and in Cosmowarrior Zero/Hunt for Young Harlock. Blue pants, in Harlock's case, represent youth and optimism, clarity and happiness. The archetypal colour of communication and harmony, blue reflects the boundless sky and, by extension, hope and freedom. Harlock in his blue pants is a different creature to any Harlock we know. Apart from his youth, this Harlock unashamedly demonstrates his emotions — he laughs and cries, looses his temper, makes wild promises and runs around barefoot. This Harlock has yet to lose an eye, has yet to see his dreams shattered. All his future lies before him, and it’s an endless future that he actively looks forward to. Had the development of Bluepants Harlock been untouched by tragedy, he would have been a far more aggressive pirate, but he would also have been a lot of fun. Glimpses of Bluepants Harlock's personality occasionally emerge in the original TV series and his other incarnations, and it’s always a shock when that personality emerges. But we must remember that this personality is at his very core, the Harlock he started out to be.

| Redpants Harlock
Red pants appear on Harlock's bottom only once, in the feature film My Youth in Arcadia. During this film much blood is shed. Many people die — friends, enemies, lovers, innocent bystanders, children. Harlock loses an eye, his girlfriend dies an untimely death, Emeraldas is tortured and scarred, Tochirō is attacked and humiliated. My Youth in Arcadia is a trial by blood and fire, and Harlock's red pants are an indicator of the suffering that will be required to initiate a great change in his life — which life is altered irrevocably in the space of this movie. My Youth in Arcadia is as traumatic for the viewer as it is for Harlock, but it gives the audience a (false, as it turns out) sense of satisfaction that at last we can understand some of the motivating forces behind Harlock's personality. As a colour, red is an indicator of movement and action, and My Youth in Arcadia certainly delivers much of that.

| Whitepants Harlock
Do Harlock's white pants indicate a return, or a need to return, to hope and peace? Harlock wears his white pants in the original Space Pirate Captain Harlock television series. It is a time in his life when he has been forced to return to Earth to look after Mayu, the child of Tochirō and Emeraldas. White is traditionally the colour of purity and surrender — do these pants then represent a kind of surrender (albeit a half-hearted surrender as he retains his black shirt and cape), or are they representative of a hope that Earth may not reject him this time. Certainly the Harlock of Space Pirate Captain Harlock is gentler and slightly less depressed, but we can never forget that his best friend has died and left a child in his care, and that the mother of said child has disappeared and effectively abandoned her daughter to the vagaries of a hostile planet. It isn’t an attractive situation, but Harlock puts his best white pants on and bravely rises to the challenge.

| Blackpants Harlock
Black is the archetypal colour of death in many cultures, and black pants may represent the ultimate surrender on Harlock's part, a total absorption of the self into the cold dark of space. His black pants put him at a remove from others and indicate on a superficial level that he has succumbed to total piracy, and on a deeper level that he is just a step away from death. Blackpants Harlock is the ultimate depressive personality. He’s abnormally quiet and non-reactive, ignoring people rather than interact with them. In fact it seems he derives a perverse pleasure from ignoring people until they overreact in exasperation, which can be rather amusing for both Harlock and the viewer. But Blackpants Harlock is not dissociated from his surroundings — in fact he is keenly aware of them. It’s simply that life has kicked him once too often. He’s had too much emotional crap to deal with and he doesn’t seem to want any more, Hence the distancing behaviour — and all that red wine. Harlock dons his black pants in the latter part of My Youth in Arcadia (to indicate the great changes that have been wrought within him), in Endless Road SSX, Ginga Tetsudō, Harlock Saga and Endless Odyssey (where they are way too tight).

While Harlock's black pants appear to be his favoured workwear, he looks his absolute best in blue.