Category: Tytania

Short Synopsis: Fan Hulic and Miranda stop by another group of rebels opposing Tytania.
Highlights: That battle was more like it
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7,5/10 (Good)
When this episode promised to shift the focus back to Fan Hulic&co, I feared for a bit, but to my surprise it ended up pretty good. There was no Lyra, and the whole episode continued to contribute to the much-needed depth of the pirates. All in al, an episode well spent. Just as I hoped, the setting is slowly taking shape in this series, promising some good stuff for the future of this series.

In this episode, the rebels manage to destroy one of the many fortresses of Tytania. They’re of course very happy about what they’ve achieved, but something tells e that Tytana isn’t just going to sit and let the rebels do their thing. The leader of the rebels especially seems to be a bit too confident, so I don’t think he really thought of some sort of back-up plan in case things get screwed.

I also liked that it’s immediately clear what repercussions Tyrandia’s demise had: prises have suddenly risen, poverty increased, people started stealing and looting. So yeah, the guys from Tytania really are a bunch of bastards, even though apart from Idris, they aren’t portrayed as such. Speaking of which, this episode finally shows him not having his way, which I appreciate. I think he’s trying to get in Ariabart’s way out of a strange kind of rivalry.

One thing I’m missing in this series is character background, though. It may be that this has been subtly mentioned here and there and I didn’t pick that up because I’m watching raw, but there’s hardly anything known about the different characters’ pasts, which is a shame since we’re dealing with a cast full of adults. I mean, everyone has to have his or her own story, but so far we don’t get to see anything of that.

Short Synopsis: Turandia is screwed, since they practically declared war against Tytania in the previous episode.
Highlights: The very first space-battle in five episodes… was rather underwhelming…
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7/10 (Enjoyable)
I’m really getting curious about the second half of this series. I mean, so far the series has been much brighter than I originally suspected when I watched the first episodes, so what will this series be like once it really gets fired off? The fact remains that the director and original writer once came up with Legend of Galactic Heroes, so they should be able to deliver something worthwhile. But then again, Ryoko’s Case Files was also written by the writer of LOGH, and I dropped that one after only two episodes…

In any case, this episode was solid, nothing more, nothing less. Idris gets a sneaky plan to have Ariabart fight again against Turandia, because a loss would mean a definite degradation of his, and one less annoyance to be bothered about. Ariabart, however, blows the enemy forces away with a very simple tactic. The battle really was the least interesting part of this episode. I mean, it was over before you knew it. In fact, it’s hard to call it a fight, and it just felt like another political action that happened to involve a bunch of spaceships.

In any case, Tytania is one of the few series this Autumn season that I’m watching and not yet sold on in some way or another, but that was sort-of to be expected. With all the build-up that’s required for the setting, I’m not going to expect anything amazing for this series during its first half. What it needs to pay attention to is just flesh out the setting and characters, so that it can have a second half that makes up for the first half.

Short Synopsis: A planet-nation called Turandia just lost its king, and Tytania immediately plans to re-establish diplomatic relationships.
Highlights: Finally some politics again.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7,5/10 (Good)
You know, it’s taken me five whole episodes to realize the whole hidden meaning behind the OP and ED: The OP shows just shots of the Tytanians, while the ED is about Fan Hulic, Lyra and Miranda. It’s a very nice use of symbolism, although the dramatic visuals in the ED worry me a bit. I really hope that the creators aren’t going to focus too much on the romantic relationship between Lyra and Fan Hulic, because so far it’s been the least interesting aspect of this series. Especially those thorns bug me.

In any case, this episode went back to the politics again, which was very much welcome after the previous episode. It was an interesting idea that Turandia, after the loss of its ruler needed to re-establish its political structure. Juslan was sent to that planet to help that (apparently, he’s the half-brother of one of the dearest friends of the princess of the country), but unfortunately most of the Turandia-officials decided to turn themselves against Tytania. I didn’t expect these two to die so suddenly either. The coup d’etat was one thing, but instead of just capturing the princess, they just shot her.

This episode also showed the large implications that Ariabart’s loss had to the image of Tytania. They’re no longer the invincible force that needs to be reckoned with, which inspired the Turandia-officials to grab the courage to turn themselves against the nation. I’m not sure yet how the rebels and Fan Hulic are going to form the centre of this opposition, but I guess that that’ll be clear in the next episodes.

Short Synopsis: Alses continues his manhunt for Fan Hulic
Highlights: Talk about a complete change of mood.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7/10 (Enjoyable)
Okay, so this is something I didn’t really see coming. This episode, instead of focusing on the usual politics instead tried to lighten the mood by focusing on first romance and then comedy. I’m not too much of a fan of Lira yet. I can understand how she would be desperate to keep Van Hulic as her ally, but nonetheless she annoyed me half of the time.

Miranda, however, rocks. She’s the perfect example that women too can be GAR, and the soldier she captured (who seems to be an old acquaintance of her who joined the army) works really well with her in terms of banter. I never thought that I would praise this series for being funny, but there you have it, the second half of this episode was really fun to watch. ^^;

Meanwhile at the Tytania-department, it becomes clear that Alses and Salisch aren’t exactly on one line, and even though Salisch has a higher position, his mother seems to be more attached to Alses. Lydia is still far removed from the plot, and the rest of the family also doesn’t seem to do much in this episode. I think that the introduction is going to take a while longer, since the next episode is probably going to focus on Fan, getting accustomed to the rebels’ hideout. Still, it’s good that the creators are taking their time and not keeping to the same mood, but it indeed takes a bit of patience to sit through it. ^^;

Short Synopsis: Everyone and his dog is now trying to recruit Fan Hulic.
Highlights: This definitely is the series with the most focus on build-up of the entire season.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7,5/10 (Good)
In a way, I’m glad that I haven’t seen Legend of Galactic Heroes at this point. The thing is that when compared to Tytania, it has two major disadvantages: it’s likely not going to have the same huge episode length, and neither does it have the month-long gap between episodes that allowed the creators to put so much time and effort into the former, so that they could get every bit of development right. This way, right now I can enjoy Tytania to the fullest, only to be blown away by LoGH afterwards, which is probably going to be ten times better or so, instead of the other way around.

In any case, the past two episodes have made it very clear now what this series is going to be: this episode didn’t feature any space battles yet again, and the creators kept emphasizing that this is a political thriller, and the space-battles just come in at second place. I have no idea what this series is going to be like once it arrives at the real meat of the story, but for now I’m glad to see that it’s putting so much effort into setting everything up right.

This episode basically meant to show that Fan Hulic wasn’t just going to go with Tytania without a fight. Tytania is a force more fearsome than I originally believed, and the fact alone that he won a battle from them has labelled him as the hero of the many people who oppose the Tytania-family. Some of those people can be seen in this episode as they managed to recruit Fan for their own goals, rather than letting Tytania snatch him away.

I keep wondering what’s up with that girl… I think her name was Lydia (it’s amusing how even the characters in this series aren’t able to keep track of all the names of the different characters ^^;), but she feels entirely out of place in this series. Especially considering how she’s featured in just about every promo-material. I hope that the next few episodes will shed light on this, and make her more into just an ordinary girl who likes flowers.

Short Synopsis: Ariabart screwed up, so he now has to face the consequences.
Highlights: No battles this time.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 6/10
Okay, first of all, about the rating. After dunno’s comments I got thinking a bit, and I’m experimenting right now with a different rating-scale for episodes, that uses a bit more of the available numbers. I still need to tweak this a bit, but in a nutshell:
5 – lacking
6 – solid, good, but nothing special
8 – excellent

So yes, this episode was pretty much a good one, and I liked it, although it mostly was an episode of building up without any real battles. Over the next few episodes, I’m going to tweak that rating a bit.

In any case, for those who remember my little contest: this series ended up winning it, so it’s going to be blogged Tytania is most likely going to be my “why the heck am I watching this raw”-series of the season, with the huge amount of political dialogue and all.

In a way, I was pretty surprised when I found out that Artland is handling the animation for this series. Still, it might actually be the perfect company for this series: we’ve already seen in Gunslinger Girl – Il Teatrino that they pretty much suck at fluid and high-budget action-scenes, but these guys really try to make up for it with some excellent fight coordination, which is EXACTLY what this series needs. With this, we’re assured that this series isn’t going to feature some impossibly moving spacecrafts, but instead a very large focus on tactics. I mean, the animation of To Aru Majutsu no Index was nice and all, but in essence it’s just about a bunch of people who throw a bunch of photoshop-filters at each other until one of them goes down, which isn’t really my idea of an excellent action-series.

And there’s also that strange talent of Artland to choose the exact soundtrack that fits their series the best. Apart from perhaps Happiness or Hakushaku to Yousei, each of their soundtracks has fit the mood of their series perfectly: the very subtle natural sounds in Mushishi, the dreamy music of Bokura ga Ita, the folky music for Il Teatrino. And Tytania really has a soundtrack that screams “build-up” and “epic”, which basically is the essence of this series.

In any case, about this episode. I managed to pick up that Fan Hulic was supposed to lose his battle of the previous episode, because of some deal that his superior had made with the Tytania-family, which brings even more shame to Ariabart. If I understood correctly, this means that Ariabart will be degraded in ranks, and he’s going to have to keep an eye on Fan Hulic. The question is of course: if any other member of the Tytania-family would have commanded that ship, would he have lost as well?