Category: Mouretsu Pirates

Now this is where everything just comes together. Talk about an amazing episode here. The plot just got 10 times more interesting.

And the strange thing is that even though when you summarize this episode in just one line, it sounds horribly cheesy: the Bentenmaru saves Jenny Dolittle who has been forced to marry against her will. But the background and detail and all sorts of dependencies and politics that the creators threw into this episode were just awesome. This episode just showed how fragile the pirate business is, and how the Bentenmaru is completely dependent on insurance companies. Those insurance companies can be manipulated. The question remains how Jenny managed to start a company that gained such an amount of wealth, but with her connections, it’s probably not impossible.

Also, I really like how the creators waited 16 whole episodes before revealing that two characters are lesbian. This way it feels much more like being lesbian is just a part of who they are, rather than making their sexual orientation their biggest defining character trait. It worked really well and the two characters in question make for a very interesting and down to earth couple.

Also a nice touch is how this episode toyed around with out expectations and imagination. This series has been so grounded that when the girls started imagining how Jenny must be held captive, in full bride gown and all, it had to be one of those crazy delusions you see everywhere. And in the end, that delusion turned out to be what really happened.

My only complaint is how suddenly everyone is incredibly competent at their jobs. I mostly noticed this at the end of this episode. But really: this episode was the one who put Mouretsu Pirates a notch above the other big Sci-fi shows this year. Let’s see if they can follow.
Rating: *** (Awesome)

Up till now, I didn’t really mind Mami: she’s a girl with a healthy fixation on making clothes, and I can very much see why she wants others to wear the clothes she designs and makes. There was nothing creepy about her. At least, until this episode. Spending three all-nighters to create random costumes for twelve different high school girls on a whim. That’s a bit much.

The actual heist this episode also was hard to watch: it worked out fine in the end, but it was very unprofessional. Not to mention the dress up party that popped up from nowhere and some of the characters putting on very bad displays.

Thankfully though, this was far from the main point that this episode wanted to make. Everything apart from that was really solid. This is an arc for Marika’s growth. For that, this arc did take some risks with its suspense of disbelief, but then again Marika would never have been able to change and show herself off like this if it hadn’t happened. Also, the end of this episode finally revealed what this arc had been building up to all along. Wow. Now that’s an interesting twist.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Generic mecha protagonist who can instantly understand mechas as soon as he touches it: eat your heart out. This episode went pretty much as you thought it’d go when a group of teenaged pilots are forced to operate a ship they don’t know: with problems. You can see that they know a fair bit about operating space ships, probably both due to school and their work at the yacht club, but if they don’t know the quirks of a particular vehicle it’s going to be very hard to actually get it to work.

It probably still is a bit simplified (one look at the manual was enough for everyone to understand everything about a heavily customized vehicle), but I’m still really glad that this series addressed this. What’s also is interesting is that we got to see an interesting flaw of Marika here: her self confidence. In this episode she really underestimated what it would take to pilot the Bentenmaru and didn’t tell its crew about what she was going to do, and it’s a nice touch to have the crew rush out a bunch of manuals to guide them along the way. I also loved their reactions when they found out what Marika was up to.

And then there is the subplot of Marika’s mother going for a career switch. With this series finding very erm… “creative” ways to get its characters at the right place, I’m wondering what they’re going to do to her. Is she going to return to the Bentenmaru as well or something?
Rating: ** (Excellent)

An episode about insurance and recruitment. That is actually quite interesting. Ideally I would have liked to see Marika actually try and hire new crew-members, but the end of the episode gave a good reason of why this isn’t going to happen: Marika is looking for people she can trust. And for that, the Yacht club fits perfectly, despite their lack of experience. With such a huge cast, I kept wondering how the creators would bring all of them together. Well, I suppose that this is a way.

But things like insurance are also pretty interesting to watch. With all of the destruction you usually see in anime, you’d have to wonder how much restoring everything costs, and especially for someone like Marika, who has to maintain not just a ship, but just an entire crew, it’s very logical for them to be insured in the case of something happening.

I’m also surprised that someone who is supposed to be the second-most important character (if you look at the promo art and all), Chiaki has surprisingly little airtime. She was completely gone in the Serenity arc, and here too it looks like she’ll be away from Marika again, filling in for the jobs that Marika couldn’t take. I like how this show handles its cast, however with such a huge cast also come challenges: the development. Now that we’ve arrived in the second half of this series, we need to see these guys grow. Up till now, Mouretsu just did this for Marika and perhaps Gruier, while the rest of the cast remained fairly static. This needs to change.
Rating: *+ (Great)

Okay, so the princesses are now recurring characters. Yeah, Gruier found it so much fun as a regular student that she decided to stay a while longer on Marika’s school, taking her little sister along with her. It’s a bit forced, but I get what the creators were gong for: they’re princesses, so they should be allowed to be children for a while.

The rest of this episode was a quiet aftermath, mostly dedicated to the everyone passing a year. The captain of the yacht club is gone now, and there are a few new characters introduced. Nothing special, but it did give a good feel of its characters. The downside is that we’re probably going to have to wait a while until things get interesting again. I was hoping that this series would be more like Stellvia, having just one build-up arc at the beginning, but it seems that this is much more arc-based.

My favorite part of this was probably Ririka. She’s a really interesting mother for an anime: she stays in the background, as it’s obviously not her story, but she is not a mother who is there for the sake of having a mother here. In this episode she actually thought to change jobs, in order to find something to do that she really enjoyed. It’s also interesting how Marika addresses her by her first name, rather than the usual “okaa-san” or “mama”.Rating: * (Good)

The direction of this episode was superb. I mean, Mouretsu Pirates never really stood out through its animation, but the designs of the ship was really creative, and the camera work was really solid. I really liked this episode and it was a great conclusion to the Gruier arc.

So if I understand things correctly, Gruier was actually in the wrong here. What she wanted to prevent is the monarchy from increasing its influence. Her sister kept using the ghost ship, or rather the device that was used to create the royal bloodline of Serenity, to cling to it, and she wanted to end that once and for all, in order to move on. Interestingly, she seemed to assume that members of the family were still being produced, so she actually was ready to at least prevent these births. I guess that this is why she enlisted the help of pirates.

I really like how this show weaved actual complex politics into its story beyond the “let’s wage wars in order to end all wars”, or stuff like that. Again this show takes its audience seriously and I really appreciate that. On top of that, this episode had the best characterization, and I loved how the characters subtly played off each other. With this, I really have to say that overall, Mouretsu Pirates ended up as my favorite of the three big sci-fi shows of Winter 2012.
Rating: **+ (Excellent+)

The Bentenmaru has an actual crew? I mean beyond the people usually sitting in the bridge? That’s kindof like Seikai no Senki, isn’t it? The focus is entirely on the main bridge, while it’s assumed that the people who are working to keep the ship running are doing their jobs.

In any case, with this episode we’re introduced to the ghost ship. And so far, this has been some excellent mystery and the creators are very skillfully building up its secrets as the characters get closer and closer to it. It really piqued my interest of what the heck is up with that ship.

I also liked the process of getting there. this series was really in danger of turning into a lot of techno-babble, but they did q pretty good job here in explaining what went on and making things believable. The programmer in me also rejoiced when they suddenly showed the Serendipity’s identification code. I’ve had to struggle with these quite a few times myself.

There is one thing I missed. I might have looked over this in a few previous episodes, though, but why was Gruier trying to reach the ghost ship outside of her family’s influence again? There is so much going on in each episode that it’s easy to miss stuff and in my case I probably missed something very important.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

And again this show has gotten better. This was the most dangerous episode of this series so far, and it really shows how much time this series spent on build-up now. This episode showed just one simple encounter between a small unnamed fleet, but the build-up, the tactics and the way in which everyone had a different different reaction to everything that went on: it all rocked.

Marika really is the best lead character of the Winter Season, perhaps with the exception of Natsume (who did already have 3 seasons of build-up). When I first saw the promo image for this series, I really feared that she’d be another moe blob, but the contrary has really happened. In this episode she again showed that she’s intelligent and level headed and I really liked how she considered that the fact that they had a princess on board was a great trump in terms of negotiations which should be saved for later. I like how this is one of those shows who doesn’t treat its audience like idiots, yet still remains it light-heartedness and innocence.

Also, for the people complaining that this show isn’t really about pirates: isn’t that the entire point of fiction? To give different interpretations of known facts? I mean, it’s in the same way that people complain about Naruto not being a ninja: the classic image most people have about ninjas (wearing all black with a face-mask on) are also completely different from the real ninjas. You can criticize Naruto for a lot (dragging on, having a really annoying set of main characters), but it did create its own universe based on the ninjas. Same as with this series: it ignores image of the “RRR”-pirate, and instead takes another part of pirates (them being used as mercenaries) and creates a setting around it with the premise of putting this into science fiction. I love it so far.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

You know, when I saw that picture of that castle I realized how un-typical this series is for Satelight. I mean, their trademark is spamming eye-candy, and lots of it, even with the series that Shoji Kawamori has nothing to do with. Mouretsu Pirates however doesn’t care about that in the slightest; that castle picture was probably the work of one of the artists behind Guin Saga who was brought in temporarily to make it look authentic.

The character-designs in this show are varied, but I really wouldn’t call them eye candy, and this is pretty much common over a lot of other works from Tatsuo Sato (most notably Stellvia of the Universe, where the CG looks really out of place when you think about it). However, this series does look very consistent, and it shows that with effort you can make a great show even on a limited budget without trying to be all visually fancy. This is a great example for the projects who don’t have great artists to back themselves up: instead of focusing on a few money shots here and there while ignoring the rest, it’s also very much possible to just deliver consistency without standing out, in order to focus on the characters. In this case, it worked nicely to bring life to the characters.

In any case, this was the type of building-up episode that I like: the ones that are interesting. This episode added a lot to Gruier by showing what her home country looked like. The Ghost Ship also turned out to be the first manned space flight meant to cross light-years, which is a clever way to again flesh out this setting.

Marika is also really getting the hang of being a pirate captain. She takes initiative when she needs to, but also listens to advice when she needs to, and this episode once again balanced this out really well.

I also liked that anti-climax that was used when the princess’ new dress was delivered. The two servants really looked dangerous and the music that accompanied it was really well chosen, and yet nothing really happened other than a few things being delivered. After all that build-up, it seemed kindof odd, but in a good way. We’re definitely going to see those two again, but this was a very interesting introduction for them.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

So, I expected that the mysterious girl at the end of the previous episode would set the actual plot of this series in motion. The timing and mystery around her character seemed just right at this point in the series. What I did not expect however, was that we’ve suddenly got ourselves a princess among the main cast.

Obviously the show wants to go somewhere with this, but with this episode I can’t yet say exactly what. It also doesn’t really help that that princess has been very mysterious about what she actually wants of the Bentenmaru, causing her to actually stow away, leaving everyone around her behind. That’s not something that princesses are known for.

So this episode was mostly clever building up. I admit that the creators did find a good excuse to somehow have her appear at school, especially considering how half-assed these reasons usually are. As by the series standards: she feels very natural as a princess: you can see that the way she acts is princess-like, but at the same time she also just feels like a normal girl. I also liked how the first person who Marika suggested to escort her was Schnitzer. The creators are really building up this guy as the lovable tough guy of this series.

Another big mystery of this episode is why the princess was allowed to board the Bentenmaru while it was known that they would head into a combat situation. Again, a princess is about the last type of person that you’d want to bring there. It probably has to do with whatever she wants from the Bentenmaru.
Rating: * (Good)