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)
This actually was a good battle. The girls almost won, so the Lightning 11 ship was disabled in several significant ways. The reaction of shooting with only optical targeting seems both desperate and vicious. Whatever their original goal in pursuing the Odette II, they are now eager for any victory, even if it means the destruction of the prize they were seeking.
I can’t wait to see more!
Very Starship Operators. I wonder if they have the same staff.
I checked, and the two series have absolutely nothing in common. But then again, Starship Operators had the most bizarre staff you’d least expect: the director of Shakugan no Shana and the original writer of Record of Lodos Wars and Galaxy Angel. I still am completely puzzled as to how these guys managed to produce such a classic.
Hm. Lodoss is a pretty old fantasy series from the 90s, even during Starship Operator’s time, which was..uh 2005? Pretty good in it’s time too so I’d say they got a successful veteran writer. Galaxy Angels was a successful series of real-time space strategy simulation games with love-sim elements, (think Sakura Wars), so I’d say that helped too. Shakugan no Shana is pretty wildly successful in Japan. They’re still kicking off a new season of anime years after the original. Great writer, great director. Yeah, I think they could have pulled it off.
Even better than the “Dammy” system is the “Erectronic” warfare system! So very freudian! You gotta love engrish
This show is turning out to be surprisingly good.
I wonder if they’ll be able to the keep this consistency regarding electronic warfare when it comes to bigger ships and also preserve its hole in the steps of a space battle or if they’ll throw it slightly aside in favor of our good old cannons and beams and not making things over complicated.
Even though this show seems not to believe its audience has no brains.
I’d be surprised if they drop the electronic warfare aspect entirely, but I’m guessing it’ll recede into the background a bit. The privateers are likely to have some pretty darn secure systems, so it probably won’t be as big a factor.
A much happier and cheery Starship Operators, I’d love it if they continue in this direction.
Finally! Like c160 I can get behind this as well, assuming they don’t start to sweep things under the rug. It was a bit silly to see all the students suddenly get hyper-competent, but at least it was fun. The characters may not be convincing, but at least their logic is. That I like.
A very good show….I can’t help but find this one to be my favorite of the season so far.
So far, I really like this show…overall very solid. I hope it’ll keep up it’s quality until the end. Although, some may find it’s pace very slow&there’s a lot of talking talking talking but on the contrary I’ve been enjoyed it’s slow pace&atmosfer very much, plus almost all the charas especially the main charas are very likeable&none of them is your typical clueless, damsel in distress kind of type.
FYI Psgels, the picture in the top right corner is Lan from Rinne no Lagrange. Haha.
One reason I liked the revamped Battlestar Galactica so much was that when it wasn’t just being a soap opera in space, it had a really nice sci-fi procedural quality about it – a lot of attention and dialogue was spent explaining exactly how this huge spaceship runs. And when all the alerts start sounding, everyone has to know what to do and take clear direction, or they’ll all be killed.
This week on Moretsu Pirates I got a similar vibe; the episode spends a huge amount of time with the operation of the Odette II during the battle, and took no shortcuts. The schematics and displays are really cool-looking and add a lot of richness to the experience. Marika’s intensity and poise and the crew’s dedication and professionalism also really drew me in.
Is it almost a little silly how much she’s learned about starship operations in so short a time? Perhaps, but she IS the daughter of a pirate captain; it’s been in her blood, waiting for the chance to shine, and she does. Using the solar sails to blind the enemy was an excellent tactic, because it made sense – like everything else in the battle, it’s not just random technobabble, but everything is explained and proceeds logically. Even when things don’t go as planned, Marika improvises and wins the day.