Zoll shows up in both the original 1978 Space Pirate Captain Harlock anime and the film My Youth in Arcadia, though you'd barely recognize him between the two—his look changes completely, but the core of his story stays weirdly similar.
In the TV series, he's one of the last survivors after the Mazone wipe out his homeworld Tokarga. His people get absorbed into the Mazone fleet heading toward Earth, and what's left of his military gets forced into service attacking Harlock's ship, the Arcadia. The whole thing eats at Zoll—Harlock treats him with respect despite being enemies, which hits different when you're fighting for the people who conquered you. He makes a desperate, suicidal run at the Mazone rather than live with the shame, knowing his two sons will only remember him as a puppet. Before he goes, he leaves Harlock a memory device packed with intel on the Mazone fleet.
The Arcadia version reimagines him almost entirely. Now he's fully human-looking and the survivor of an Illumidas invasion instead. Same deal though—his conquered military gets ordered to fight Harlock, and they actually manage to push him back to Earth. This time he's got a brother and sister instead of sons. When Tokarga faces total annihilation, he and Harlock team up to try rescuing whoever they can from the planet. Zoll stays behind on Earth to guard Maya and the resistance, but gets killed during an uprising while trying to save Maya and Emeraldas from execution—shot in the back by Prime Minister Triter.
Content compiled by AnimeList.moe from publicly available sources.
