Bodacious Space Pirates
Episode 4 – The Final Battle is At Midnight
Summary
The club president tells Kane she ran an omni-directional scan to test the ship’s electronics and picked up three ships whose transponders – which broadcast the ship’s identity, location and flight path and are required by law to be continuously active – weren’t transmitting. One flew by at high speed, the other two just disappeared. Misa tells Kane one (presumably the one that flew by quickly) is the Bentenmaru and promises to warn them about the other two.
Marika and Chiaki are paired again for night duty. Everything they can detect checks out, but Chiaki says weather reports from the relay station and broadcasts to and from ground control have been cutting out intermittently. Using the ship’s fire control radar to conduct a scan they identify the culprit – a Colony Federation battleship called the Alcyon, which vanishes on a second and third scan. There’s just one problem – the Alcyon was destroyed in battle 120 years ago and never salvaged. When they report this to Kane he says they shouldn’t worry – ghost ship sighting are common but no one’s ever been downed by one.
Marika reveals her identity as heir to the Bentenmaru to the club, although the president and vice president – a rich girl and an amateur hacker, respectively – already knew about it. She devises a plan wherein they will create a copy of the ship’s systems to divert hacking attempts, while they try to hack the enemy ship themselves once it attacks them, probably on the other side on the sun from the shadow of the planet Sands of the Red Star.
Listening in from the infirmary, Kane and Misa agree that Marika’s plan relies heavily on luck and is full of irrelevant details, but the basic idea is sound.
Thoughts
Yay, something’s happening! It’s not space piracy, but at least it’s a bit of high seas adventure (In Space!) complete with nautical music and a ghost ship, even though the latter’s been identified as a small probe replicating the signature of a battleship. No matter, I get the feeling there’s still a surprise or two in store. But, even with Kane and Misa wondering who was behind the hacking attempt on the space station, it’s hard not to keep seeing this as a test of Marika’s abilities engineered by the Bentenmaru.
Not that that’s a problem, because if that’s the case she’s rising to the challenge just fine. Her plan is basically her abilities in a nutshell – inexperienced but holds a great deal of raw potential. And given that the next episode is called ‘Marika Makes a Decision’, I think she’s about to realize this and what she can do with it.
We also get more interaction between her and Chiaki, and I really do hope the latter sticks around once she becomes Captain of the Bentenmaru because they really do make a great team. Marika makes the decisions and act on them while Chiaki serves as the voice of reason and reminds her of the important details to consider. Not that Marika entirely needs help thinking of things – she did a good job of accounting for things when scanning for their pursuer, remembering to scan for any nearby battleships before using the fire control system to conduct a scan (which a warship would have interpreted as a sign of hostility). But it’s Chiaki who noticed the problems with their transmissions and warns Marika about the risks of what she’s about to do, even if it was unnecessary. She’s seems much more cautious and grounded than Marika, who’s shown a tendency to jump into things. They play off each other really well and I think it’s only a good thing that they’re going to, inevitably, become friends.
Another
Episode 4 – Put Flesh
Summary
A voiceover explains that Sakuragi’s mother died earlier the same day, and that the curse of Class 3 claims someone connected to it every month – not just students but people they know, especially friends and family. But something has to trigger it – no one died last year.
One month after the incident, Kouichi is returning from a trip to the hospital and runs into a classmate. Both of them are almost killed when a mirror in the back of a pickup truck falls over. Kouichi then goes to the doll shop, where the owner gives no sign that she recognizes him. Mei pops up in the basement again and tells Kouichi that even if his classmates only half-believed in the curse before, they definitely do now, and that if he still doesn’t know what’s going on its best that he doesn’t. He’s started to suspect she’s connected to what’s happening somehow.
The next day Akazawa and her friends wonder how to explain things to Kouichi without putting everyone in more danger. The latter finally gets in touch with Teshigawara and demands that he make good on his promise to explain everything in a month, but Akazawa says that was not his promise to make and refuses to explain anything. Mizuno, the nurse, had agreed to ask her brother, who’s in Kouichi’s class, about Mei but he refused to talk about her. While calling Kouichi to tell him this she gets into the elevator and it crashes when the cable snaps, killing her.
Thoughts
OK, I’m starting to get annoyed with this series. We’re a third of the way in and still being subjected to ‘everybody seems to know what’s going on but refuses tell Kouichi’ and it’s getting very tiresome. It’s one thing to withhold information to build tension, but when it seems like it’s being done purely for plot convenience it just doesn’t work. Maybe Kouichi’s classmates don’t know everything, but they clearly know something, and judging by their conversations when he’s not around what’s happening is beyond their control and they don’t seem to be in on some sinister plot, so it’s not clear why they might have a vested interest in not telling him. Does it really have to be Akazawa who tells Kouichi the truth (presumably yes, since she’s in charge of “countermeasures”, which hasn’t been explained either but it’s probably safe to assume it would (hopefully) be when she actually tells him what’s going on)? She blames it on her being absent the first day of school, so she couldn’t tell him, but what was stopping her from telling him when she visited him at the hospital? And if these deaths are happening because Kouichi triggered the curse, which seems to be what’s implied, wouldn’t it have been smarter to tell him as soon as possible to hopefully prevent them from happening? Reiko’s told Kouichi a few times that following the class rules is important, but how can he do that when nobody’s telling him anything?
And here’s another problem – it just isn’t scary. Horror is subjective to a degree so it’s possible that’s just me to an extent, but even now that people are actually in danger that hasn’t changed. It doesn’t help that we haven’t been given any real reason to care about any of the characters, even Kouichi – Mizuno’s death was no more horrifying than Sakuragi’s – like the latter she probably didn’t deserve it, but it came off as ‘well, there goes another one.’ Since there’s no reason to be concerned about anyone the curse isn’t generating any real tension either, and there isn’t anything else to make up for it. Mei never comes across as threatening, just a bit odd, and if anything she’s been more forthcoming with Kouichi than anyone else. The only person who comes close to being even remotely creepy is the doll shop owner, and again, she’s mostly just weird. Still not sure I’d trust her, though.
Which is a bit of a shame. The animation’s good, and the subdued, slightly worn-down, frequently rainy design of the town at least has the right ingredients for creating the right atmosphere. It just doesn’t follow through. That being said, I’m still curious about the mystery, so I’ll probably keep watching. It’s only 12 episodes, anyway.
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