What is Arzak? “Arzak is a world, a planet, a system, but in these times it is also something else.” It’s an animated French television series from the mind (and pen) of legendary artist Jean “Moebius” Giraud, creator of Metal Hurlant, or, as it’s known Stateside, Heavy Metal magazine, and concept designer/artist for such genre films as Alien, The Abyss, and The Fifth Element. Comprising 14 short episodes with a total running time of 56 minutes, Arzak Rhapsody is a gorgeous and easily digested slice of Gallic animé that does indeed put one in mind of Heavy Metal’s long-ago bastion of sexualized weirdness. Moebius’ art has a simultaneously organic and orgasmic feel: His main character, the wandering warrior Arzak, protector of the “B” desert, sails over the plains astride a great white “pterodoid,” which looks something like what you’d get if you crossed a pterodactyl with a dove and then called in a fluffer to finish the job, while below, fields of phallic, living grasses undulate and feminized portals beckon. Arzak (sporting some of the niftiest headgear since The Cat in the Hat) roams this perilous wilderness in search of a blue-eyed femme fatale while evading robotic scorpions, bumblebees, and assorted other pitfalls that recall nothing so much as the sum total of Seventies album cover art. The series’ atmospheric music score – by someone named Zanpano – feels equally of that time, with lush Spanish strings and an ethereal mix that only adds to the sense of blissful unreality. The Alamo’s run of Arzak is the first time the film has been presented outside its native land (and that would be France, not the “B” desert), and accordingly, the subtitles here have been painstakingly translated by Alamo femme fatale Karrie League, whose mastery of the language is now forever unassailable. Arzak Rhapsody is strange, heady stuff, dreamlike, oddly soothing, and existing somewhere on the periphery between the waking world and the unrecalled avenues of dreams.
This article appears in April 30 • 2004.