Bodacious Space Pirates
Episode 2 - My Power, the Power of a Pirate
Summary
Chiaki warns Marika that many groups are taking an interest in her now that she’s heir to the Bentenmaru and that she’ll be in danger if she isn’t careful.
Ririka explains that she’d planned to tell Marika the truth after her graduation and takes her to a scrapyard to teach her how to shoot a gun. She impresses on her the responsibility of using power wisely, whether it’s the power of a gun or of having a crew at your command. Marika still isn’t sure what she wants to do about the situation, but Ririka assures her that she has the resolve and decisiveness to make the right decision.
With Kane (it’s a coincidence, really…) as their new advisor, the yacht club prepares to go on a practice cruise on their private ship, the Odette II. Checking up the data on the ship they’ll be using, Kane and the other pirate, Misa, discover that it’s the Hakuchou, an old ship that was retrofitted as one of the Original Seven pirate ships used in the war of independence (yes Kane, a girl’s school has a pirate ship for some reason).
On the bridge, Marika and Chiaki have been paired, and the latter speculates that Kane did that to find out her motives. She’s busy dealing with cyber-attacks, but since the ship is connected to the station’s network it’s mostly just spam. Then she realizes there’s a genuine hacker, and together they’re able to identify the source as a transport ship, and Marika resolves to try and stop them even though neither has much experience in electronic warfare.
Thoughts
There is a distinct lack of piracy in this show so far, but at least they might actually get into space next episode.
Marika does get some more character development, which is nice. Her naiveté is still apparent, but we also get to see her decisive side, albeit paired with the former when she decides to take on the hacker despite having no experience with security countermeasures. Good thing the attack is clearly a test by her future crew to see how she’ll handle it (Chiaki wonders why the ship is making such a poorly concealed attempt; I’m sure if it was one of the other groups who were after Marika, they’d try to hide it better). Her mother does know her well – she makes quick decisions and steps up to the plate to do things herself. Not bad traits for a captain to have, although I foresee her naiveté causing them to get in the way in the future at a time where careful thought or delegation is the better option. There’s also her developing friendship with Chiaki, which I’m sure not won’t become strained once Marika finds out who she really is. And she’s got a real sweet tooth – apparently escaping from the police, military intelligence, the Stellar Alliance Special Forces, and the Space Mafia isn’t grounds for not finishing a parfait (to be fair, it did look really good).
Oh look, a boob shot. I guess there’s some fanservice after all, albeit well within tolerable levels.
Another
Episode 2 - Blueprint
Summary
Kouichi continues to try and talk to Mei, who keeps warning him to be careful around her. Once he sees her in the library and asks about her eyepatch, but the librarian politely but firmly shoos him out just as the bell rings.
Since he saw Mei go to the morgue in the hospital basement when they first met, Kouichi asks one of the nurses if anyone died while he was there. She remembers that someone, a girl, did, and agrees to find out her name for him.
After school the next day, Akazawa continues to question Kouichi and he admits that he was born at Yomiyama Hospital; Akazawa insists she has a feeling she’s seen him before. Kouichi spots Mei and tries to follow her. He loses sight of her but stumbles onto a strange doll shop. When he does the nurse calls him to say she learned the dead girl was in middle school, and her last name was Misaki or something…
Going into the shop, Kouichi meets the creepy old lady who runs it and agrees to take a look around. In the basement he finds a doll who looks very similar to Mei, and Mei herself (the owner said there were no other customers), who takes of her eyepatch and – cliffhanger!
Thoughts
More adults acting weird, more shots of ‘creepy’ dolls, more ‘everyone obviously knows exactly what’s going on but won’t just tell Kouichi’, and can’t anyone afford decent light fixtures in this town?
Kouichi is still pretty bland. We know he…likes art, supposedly (it’s not very convincing), and that he’s curious, but the latter seems more like an excuse to keep the plot moving. No one else really stands out either; they’re either a stock character or seem weird because things in this anime are supposed to be weird. At least Mei has the excuse that she’s supposed to be mysterious, being dead and the key to what’s going on and everything.
Kouichi obviously has been to Yokiyama before and has amnesia due to whatever horrible thing happened. There is also totally a freaky doll-cult of some kind, and I predict that the Class 3 homeroom teacher, the librarian, and the shop owner are part of it. And possibly Mei’s the villain and this curse everyone keeps talking about is her revenge. But since this show at least seems like it’s going the subtle route, I’m betting on whatever’s under her eyepatch being a missing eye or some mundane condition rather than something more ‘eldritch horror’.
On a completely random note, something about the whole ‘cute girl with an eyepatch’ thing makes me wish Mei would be transplanted into a different show where she has an actual personality (and is alive).
And waitaminute *checks*, the intro to episode one only said that ‘Misaki’ died 26 years ago, and that’s actually Mei’s surname. Guess this is also a family curse or something.
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