Category: Mouretsu Pirates

This was a build-up episode that was mostly meant to flesh out Marika as a pirate. She developed a bit, got used to her life as a captain, and continued with her education.

Bizarrely enough a lot of her jobs are to act as entertainment for large cruisers for a very heavy fee (oh, the insurance will cover things anyway). What struck me in particular is how it focused on human errors. Usually in science fiction settings, everything is managed perfectly. Here however, this episode stressed that there are humans behind these controls, and that these humans can make errors. We have no idea who they are, but by describing who they are and what they’re doing, they are getting fleshed out quite well. That’s very good for later on in the series. I also like the solid advice that they kept giving Marika. If anything, Misa Grandwood is a very good teacher.

The end of this episode also showed the first glimpses of the overall plot of this series. The small girl who snuck aboard the Bentenmaru. She will very likely be the catalyst that will trigger everything that’ll be happening for the rest of the series. I’m glad to see that the creators waited relatively long with introducing her, in order to allow the characters to play themselves out. And all that, while avoiding the big problems of building up: not being interesting.
Rating: * (Good)

Whoa, this was actually a really well made episode. The script was just wonderfully written this week. And yet again this show turns completely different from what it was before. The variety in this show rocks!

The best way to describe this show was as a parody of pirate stories. And this isn’t in the predictable way, with everyone going “ARRRRR!!” and stuff. Instead, it showed what would happen if you added a bit more realism than usual to the usual “good pirate” tropes. I loved the bureaucracy in this episode, along with the little play that was set up at the end of this episode (don’t worry, your insurance will cover everything). I kept wondering how the creators would tackle the “legal pirate”-thing, but this was a very humorous look at it.

And then there was the scenario: the creators managed to stuff the bureaucracy, training, and stage into just one episode, without making things feel rushed. Things felt very natural here, and this episode added a lot to the setting of this series. Including its bizarre rules of having to do some pirating within 49 days, which is pretty much what Bureaucracy is about: overly complicated rules for the sake of consistency in the administration.

I also like how this episode didn’t bother to give a formal introduction to the rest of the crew of the Bentenmaru. They were just there, and there wasn’t the kind of forced introduction. Over the course of the series, we’ll get plenty of chances to get to know them. We already got a great start with the nicely named robot Schnitzer, who was very well acted: stern, but not the usual silent badass.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

These past two episodes are a really big surprise. At first I thought that this would be like Stellvia of the Universe, a series that Tatsuo Sato previously worked on. And here, this show suddenly makes a trip to Starship Operators, which was one of the most believable science fiction series involving small scale spaceship battles in terms of science fiction. And the thing is that we still haven’t reached the meat of this series: only at the end of this episode did the main character decide to become a pirate. Seriously, if the rets of this series is going to be as varied as these first five episodes, then we’re in for a treat here.

As for this episode, I really liked it. It really managed to make these science fiction concepts exciting, and the hacking sequence was done very believably. I really liked how the characters made use of their status as a bunch of high school girls to fool the enemy with “Dammy” systems and other diversions. The enemy on the other hand also wasn’t stupid here, and actually used the interesting tactic of just switching off their computers and resort to manually operating their guns.

This show also really shows that technology has its limitations. A lot here has been automized, but it’s like one of the characters says: when something goes wrong, it’s up to the humans behind it to tell it where to go next. Computers are very stupid things: they do exactly what you tell them to, but nothing more.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

So, I was ready to sit back and relax while watching the next installment of the quietly paced Mouretsu Pirates. And then they come with this.

This was a very pleasant surprise: the entire episode was just nothing but a long string of dialogue, full of technical terms and concepts that explained what was going on, and what could be done against it. A ghost ship suddenly appeared, and what in particular caught my attention was how thorough the lead character was in trying to find something against it.

I like how you really need to pay attention to follow everything in this episode. This episode actually showed, against all my expectations, that the creators don’t consider their viewers to be idiots. And while at first this episode may seem to have a lot of techno-babble, it does all fit together with the rest of the theories that it has presented so far. I did not expect to get so much hard sci-fi in this series, but it’s a very pleasant surprise nonetheless. And on top of that this episode also delivered some really good characterization on the captain and vice-captain of the yacht club.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

So, interestingly enough Tatsuo Sato decided for both this series and Rinne no Lagrange to just completely cut the romance. I like that. I believe that adaptations nowadays are too scared to make concessions, and instead either do them half-heartedly, or try to adapt a story, only to run into huge pacing problems at the end. Mouretsu Pirates in particular is different: it’s both faithful to the spirit of the original source, and yet it also tries to be itself. By cutting out the romance, it can focus on the other parts of the story. And I must say, it takes balls to drop the romance of all things. In most stories it just gets inserted for the hell of it and because it sells better.

In any case, after three episodes Mouretsu Pirates turned out to be a completely different series than what I imagined it would be. The big reason for that is that the main character isn’t even a pirate yet. Heck, if you didn’t know the title of this thing you could be fooled into thinking that this is going to be a show about a yacht club. Instead,, this show is carefully building its world and concepts.

The big danger of this is it becoming boring before the build up can pay off. Unlike Rinne no Lagrange, which immediately started off exciting, this show is really taking its time… and therefore isn’t the most exciting. The key for this series will be to remain interesting while it builds up. Right now it still is because of the details on the yacht club, but that can’t take forever.
Rating: * (Good)

As for the series I’m not going to blog:
– Kill Me Baby just is too dull for a comedy.
– High School DxD is just another shallow fanservice fighting show.
– Symphogear’s second episode thankfully wasn’t as mind-numbingly stupid as the first episode, but it still forgets to build its characters, setting, and just about everything else and just degrades to boring exposition.
– I really bet that I wouldn’t mind Nisemonogatari nearly as much as I do now if the topics that the characters talked about were actually interesting. So why do these characters keep returning to talk about pointless fanservice?
– Amagami SS: hell no.
– The Knight in the Area just doesn’t live up to the standards of the sports series genre.

I’ve already pretty much figured out which series I want to blog this season. I only have one dilemma: I’ve got room for 7 new series this season. There are 7 shows that have so far aired that I want to blog. The problem is that Smile Precure and Black Rock Shooter haven’t aired yet. So if either of those turns out awesome, I may have to drop one of the other shos I’m blogging to make place for it. I doubt that it’ll be Mouretsu Pirates though, because it’s been quite a solid show so far.

I like that despite the silly looks, this show takes itself seriously. The characters here are well acted. They’re nothing amazing yet, but for a first episode they are solid and believable. From here on, the creators can start to play with them. This definitely is a series that keeps its trumps hidden for a while, because after two episodes the lead character hasn’t even decided yet whether or not she wants to be a pirate. This show has 26 episodes, so it can take its time for that.

This kind of pacing reminds me a lot of Tatsuo Sato, especially Stellvia of the Universe and Shingu: Secret of the Stellar Wars. In fact, this show feels like a bit of a combination between the two, as both placed a lot of emphasis on letting scenes play out between the different characters. I’m especially intrigued what will happen once the huge cast of this show turns up. Do I think that this show will become a classic, like what happened last season with Hourou Musuko, Madoka Magica and Levele E, though? That, however, I doubt.

This episode had some good stuff in it. While I’m not sure how a mere high school club got their holds on an actual space ship, the way it was operated had something whimsical to it compared to the usual older crews of these things, seeing as this is mostly done as a hobby. I also really like the relationship between the lead character and her mother, ad how the lead character is given ample time to make up her decision. The hacking… was done decently. At least they went further in detail than just “oh look! we’re being attacked! let’s try to type as fast as possible to make it go away somehow!”. The way that they explained how it exactly worked really helped here.

Right now I’m going to hijack this post a bit to compare my first impressions of the season to that of other Winter Seasons, because that’s the best way to show the strenghts and weaknesses of this season. I mean, last year, Winter was awesome in the way that it delivered three amazing series: the abovementioned Hourou Musuko, Madoka Magica and Level E. Winter 2010 had only one such series: Heartcatch Precure (let’s say now that for me to consider a series to be awesome, I’d rate it 85/100). Then look at 2009, which had a whopping seven of those series (Rideback, Erin, Birdy, Shikabane Hime, Genji Monogatari and Hajime no Ippo). 2008? Also seven (Gunslinger Girl, Hakaba Kitarou, Spice and Wolf, Porfy, Shigofumi, True Tears, Aria), 2007 had three again, but two of those were classics (Nodame Cantabile and Les Miserables), while 2006 had the awesome Ergo Proxy, Rescue Wings and Ayakashi.

Based on this, the minimum of awesome series for a winter season is around three series, ignoring 2010, which was by far the worst season I ever blogged. In fact, apart from that year every winter Season had me rank three series of 87,5/100 or above (which pretty much stands for exceptionally good to me). Do I believe that this season will do the same? Well, things can still grow of course, but at the moment I do not think that this season has the caliber for that. Only Natsume Yuujinchou seems to be heading into that direction, and that’s a sequel.

However, let’s then look at a tier below that. The kinds of series that may not be anything amazing, but still well executed, fun and interesting in their own ways. The tier that Mouretsu Pirates belongs to. Setting aside the best seasons for a minute (2008 and 2009, which really can’t be beaten), and look at 2011, 2007 and 2006: then they don’t really have much else to offer. 2011 had shows as Wolverine, Gosick and Yumekui Merry. Apart from that there was mostly bland stuff. 2007 had even less: apart from Msater of Epic, Nodame Cantabile and Les Miserables, ultimately only Rocket Girls and Deltora Quest were interesting, and even then only just. 2006? Um, Hantsuki and that animated musical Nerima Daikon Brothers.

That is the tier in which this season really delivers: we’ve got Rinne, Mouretsu Pirates, Aquarion, Milky Holmes, Another, Knight in the Area, Inu X Boku, Ano Natsu de Matteru, Dansei Nichijou and if you like Shaft there’s also Nisemonogatari. Not to mention the upcoming interesting arthouse project of Black Rock Shooter, which might very well also make this list. All of them are just a lot of fun to watch and interesting to keep up with, and that’s where the real strength of this season lies. And if I turn out to be wrong and one of those does end up awesome, then that only is a very pleasant surprise.

After all, if you look at the list of awesome shows I gave for each winter season: in more than 50% of the cases I did not realize that I would end up liking these series as much as I ended up doing. After only two episodes.

Rating: ** (Excellent)