Mazon

The Mazon are a species of humanoid plants that resemble human women. They originally hailed from a planet of the same name but it was destroyed a long time ago in a supernova. Since then, the Mazon had begun to travel throughout the cosmos to find a new home, forming a planet conquering empire in the process.

Physiology
The Mazon are plant-based lifeforms and generally look alike with the standard appearance common in Matsumoto's women characters, tall beautiful women with long hair, willowy bodies, with long eye lashes. As they are plants, Mazon are technically hermaphrodites, allowing them to reproduce with both pollen and seeds. Since Mazon generally have bodies that resemble the ideal Earth women, it allowed them to blend in within human society and have high positions for their empire to invade.

While most Mazon look the same including the pale white skin tone, they also possess hues of green and blue. Some also have different hair colors such as black whereas most Mazon have blonde hair. Given their plant-based bodies, they have no skeletons or vital organs like brains. They also live off of photosynthesis and chlorophyll while breathing through their skin. Despite a lack of a brain, Mazon are capable of thinking and the anime reveals that they do have a sense of smell. They lack blood and the closest they have to bodily fluids is a blue sap, although Queen Rafflesia had a red fluid similar to blood flowing out of her after her battle with Captain Harlock.

The Mazon home world was described as being very humid thanks to high levels of carbon dioxide with a lot jungle vegetation. This allowed Mazon to survive very hot and warm environments, but they are not very well suited to dry areas like deserts or the immensely cold temperatures of certain worlds.

While it is unknown why Mazon look the way they do, Harlock speculates that it was merely mimicry. Some of the Mazon can also assimilate with plant-life becoming trees and seaweed on earth. Some of them are unable of changing back after this, but some can with the proper amount of water. On a side note, some have speculated if the Mazon had tampered with the DNA of some worlds giving those species an appearance similar to their own.

When shot with a gun or heat-based projectile, Mazon burn up into flames until there is nothing left. There is also a way to track Mazon as well, with Captain Harlock having such a detector on the front of his ship, the Arcadia.

In terms of reproduction, the Mazon reproduce used through special plant sap. A child Mazon's face resembles a mummy until properly hydrated causing them to grow into adult hood rather quickly compared to humans. While sexual activity with humans is possible for Mazon as shown in the anime, the union cannot produce offspring due to different body structures.

Behavior
Although the Mazon have more-or-less the same behavioral patterns as a human, their population has a unique social structure with the main focus on finding a new home by any means necessary, considering some individual thoughts as nothing but 'seeds'.

The Mazon are generally a proud species given their great civilization, often looking down on most of Earth's inhabitants especially the more corrupt world leaders they can easily control. As a result, they see most Earthlings as livestock for their civilization. Most of their losses were also considered collateral whether human or Mazon.

Besides Earth, the Mazon have other enemies including the inhabitants of Tokaga and destroyed Jura, the home planet of Miime. However, not all Mazon are hostile as some had actually made friends with Earthlings, including ones that were originally sent to kill the Arcadia's crew. Some of them just genuinely want a home to be able to play and enjoy life. A fewer numbers are even capable of loving outsiders, with a Mazon under the guise of a nurse eloping with a doctor as a significant example.

Social Ecology
The Mazon follow a pattern similar to social insects with a queen leading the rest of the clan with successors in bound. As they are plants, they do not follow some of the more human politics; some of them even find human taxonomy annoying. While the Mazon in the majority wish to conquer worlds, a small number are capable of friendly relationships with other species including humans with traits such as friendship and even love. An underwater pyramid also housed some whistling kelp, which seemed to be a species separated from the Mazon.

Writing and Language
On the super weapons and related structures, the Mazon have their language printed on them with a majority of their kind speaking it, it also seems to be a global language spoken by all of the Mazon rather than just one of many. However, the Mazon are also capable of speaking languages used by outsiders including the languages of Earth.

Military and Technology
The Mazon are a very advanced race, possessing technology that allowed them to travel the cosmos long before Earth was capable, complete with a cosmograph that shows a large area of where the Mazon have visited that is stored in a small rod-like storage device. The device in turn, could hold as much data as a human brain could and more, forcing the Arcadia crew to use both the Arcadia's computer and Death Shadow Island's computer in tandem. Other examples of this was a robot with a self-repairing system that was considered a dangerous scientific breakthrough. Rafflesia often used a hologram to contact other parties from many distances away, even when they are in other solar systems.

When it came to travel, Mazon ships are capable of dimensional wave travel, allowing them to warp from one point to the next in a manner of seconds through a special signal. The same technology is what allowed the Mazon to go onto Earth undetected. Underwater pyramids located in places like the Bermuda Triangle give off these same signals which can also reactivate sunken ships like the battleship Musashi and several submarines left over from World War II.

The Mazon ships are equipped with pulsar guns that rival the Arcadia in firepower and are numerous enough to be seen as another Milky Way from a certain distance. However many of these ships are either civilian vessels or rescue ships that were captured from conquered worlds. Specialized black ops spies are equipped with special infiltration tools that can even jam trackers on the Arcadia.

They're technology and military was so advanced that Harlock had wondered why the Mazon did not colonize Earth sooner.

History on Earth
The Mazon seek a new home after their home planet was destroyed when their mother star exploded in a supernova. They would visit other planets to see which would be the most suitable to live on.

The Mazon that live on Earth as undercover troops tend to live in jungles but also other humid areas such as some areas in Egypt, with some ancient ruins depicting Mazon activity. Some of these ruins also house advanced Mazon technology, classifying then as OOPArts. However, some Mazon have also appeared in Japan's urban areas. Some characters have even theorized that the Mazon may have arrived on Earth during the dawn of humanity. Other Safe Zones have been found on other planets including Venus.

By the current storyline, the Mazon lead by Queen Rafflesia decided to target Earth as their "second home". The drive was so much, that the entire Mazon fleet was mobilized for this, something that was not done on more threatening worlds like Tokaga.

However, not all of the Mazon followed the same plan. Due to the long waiting and journeys, some of them (mostly civilians) had defected. Infighting with the caravan was also getting out of control, so much that Rafflesia could not do anything to stop it. While conquering Earth seemed to go rather smoothly due to Earth's government's incompetence, the biggest obstacle came in the form of Captain Harlock and his crew. At the end, Arcadia's crew manage to stop the invasion by stopping the commander's advancements. With Rafflesia defeated, the stragglers of Mazon settled on different worlds including Earth without anyone's knowledge in order to live out the rest of their lives.

Etymology
The Mazon's name comes from the Greek Mythology women tribe, the Amazons, given that their members all resemble women. This also alludes to the Amazon rainforest given their plant nature and how some of their members are willing to cooperate with outsiders like the tribes that gave the jungle it's name.