Bodacious Space Pirates
Marika’s First Day at Work
Summary
After being whisked away from a planned trip to the beach by Misa and Kane, and an endless day spent signing or stamping forms and visiting every government ministry of the remotest relevance, Marika finally gets the Bentenmaru’s letter of marque renewed. Only to discover it’s not valid unless it gets used within the next fifty days, so she’s whisked off to the Bentenmaru next.
What follows is long days of training, alleviated somewhat by Chiaki’s arrival to participate as well. But there are some things that can’t be taught, only learned from experience, so it’s time to (finally) commit some piracy!
The Bentenmaru attacks and successfully robs a luxury liner, complete with a staged sword duel between Kane (posing as a passenger) and Marika. Afterwards Marika collapses from exhaustion in the captain’s quarters and Chiaki prepares to leave. She declines Kane’s suggestion to say goodbye to Marika, even though she’s returning to her old school next semester. She does, however, keep the ‘trainee’ badge Marika stuck on her earlier.
Commentary
Yay, piracy! In space! Piracy that’s far more theatrical and staged than I was expecting, but hey, you gotta get by somehow when there are no rival powers to attack, what with the Galactic Empire swooping in during the war of independence and telling both sides ‘all your base are belong to us.’ At least that clears up some of the confusion I was having regarding the Stellar Alliance/Colony Federation and who exactly controls Sea of the Morningstar.
Still, it makes me wonder why Letters of Marque are still being issued. Initially it was much the same reason they were used historically, as a means of authorizing captains to raid enemy ships. But with that no longer the case, aren’t Letters of Marque basically just legalizing stealing to no real gain other than private profit and entertaining a bunch of bored rich people?
Also, there was an interesting change of pace this episode. Whereas before things were unfolding gradually, this time around it skimmed over Marika’s training, presumably to condense it all into a single episode and let us know it happened. It suggests that they could’ve done the same thing when showing that she’s got some basic familiarity with spaceships and has the basic qualities to make a good captain. It would’ve gotten things to this point more quickly, for sure, but I don’t think that’s quite how things are.
A lot of her training is basically expanding on her basic familiarity with spaceships, and that’s really all that’s being glossed over. With things that are completely new, she’s still rough around the edges. She was reading from a script when she announced the boarding and it showed, and Chiaki commented that her swordplay is still weak. We see her struggling with how she should act and getting conflicting advice. That Schintzer guy tells her she shouldn’t worry about living up to anyone’s expectations or try to emulate her mother – she should just be herself. Chiaki complains that she comes across as a ditz and that people won’t take her seriously if she keeps acting like that. She didn’t fully anticipate her responsibilities as a captain either, thinking at the beginning of the episode that she could do this when time allowed, not when its responsibilities demanded it of her. It may seem like a lot of ground was covered, but she’s still learning.
Another
Face to Face
Summary
In flashback, we learn that Mei agreed to become the one who didn’t exist, and that what is happening cannot be shared with anyone outside the class (although the other teachers do know about it). The class numbers changed when Kouichi joined the class, but because he’d never lived in Yomiyama, has no siblings, and had warm hands Akazawa concluded the dead one isn’t him.
Kirikia comes home, but while she’s friendly enough she and Mei seem distant. Kouichi asks Mei about this when she walks part of the way home with him, and she says she’s like another doll to her mother. She explains that she lost her left eye when she was four and almost died during the surgery, which she still vaguely remembers. Her artificial eye was made by her mother.
Chibiki, the school librarian, admits to Kouichi and Mei that he was the Class 3 teacher 26 years ago and implies that he was accidentally responsible for what happened; he’s stayed at the school ever since out of guilt and fear. According to him the 1972 Misaki was a boy and died in a house fire with his family. Kouichi asks him how successful ignoring someone is and he says it only seems to work about half the time. He doesn’t believe the curse can be stopped once it starts, but Reiko seems to remember that happening the year she was in Class 3, the same one that Kouichi was born, although she doesn’t remember the details.
The next day, the teacher walks unsteadily into class. He says he did his best to keep everyone safe, but now it’s up to them. He pulls a knife out of his bag…
Thoughts
So apparently the 1972 Misaki was a boy (huh, I didn’t know Misaki was a gender-neutral name). I’d say I was surprised, except …*checks again* the beginning of the first episode specifically states that Misaki was a girl. And if there’s one thing that’s clear by now, it’s that memories aren’t exactly reliable in this series. We already know that Class 3’s memories are altered when the dead person joins the class, so why not their memories of what happened in 1972 as well? Mei did mention conflicting stories. I know Chibiki was there, but I can’t take his word for it yet.
I know I’ve harped on Class 3 for not telling Kouichi what happened, and there’s still no satisfactory reason for why they didn’t (Mei says it’s because he’d already talked to her, which made it awkward to broach the subject, but that doesn’t explain why they couldn’t tell him when they visited him in the hospital. And even on the first day of school, did they magically know he’d met her in the elevator or something?), but after what’s brought up in this episode, I think it’s important to be fair to them as well. Kouichi wonders why they’re doing all of this for what’s basically a superstition (and one not even guaranteed to work), but Mei says it’s because they’re desperate. And you know what, fair enough. I’m in no hurry to die and wasn’t any less so when I was Kouichi’s age – I know I’d be pretty damn scared if I was put in a class where there was a real chance I might not live to the end of the school year. It’s awful for the person who has to get ostracized, but it’s at least understandable why they’re willing to resort to such measures.
And speaking of people getting ostracized, we got some nice character development for Mei in this episode. Making her the one who doesn’t exist wasn’t imposed on her, she was asked and agreed to do it. That’s rather selfless of her, and principled too – she didn’t want to do that to anyone even though it might be the only way to save her life, so she took it upon herself to be the one who was. That’s really admirable, and I’m starting to like her because of it. When everyone’s been bland and uninteresting so far – not a good thing when we’re supposed to be afraid of what’s going to happen to them, finding a reason to actually care about someone is quite welcome.
It actually makes me wish the series focused more on her struggles to cope with her forced isolation, while at the same time it may be the only way to save her classmates. She’s been rather nonchalant about not existing so far, but she was still involved in some things beforehand and now she can’t do them. Everyone was happy to see her when she went to the art club this episode, but then Mochizuki came in and quickly pulled everyone out. It’s one thing to prefer being alone and another to have no choice. There’s much more ambiguity in her situation than Kouichi’s, and I think it would be more interesting to focus on that. The rest of Class 3 is scared enough to go along with it, but surely at least some of them are uncomfortable with doing what would normally be called bullying. For that matter, mightn’t it still be just that despite the circumstances? ‘Follow the class rules’ has been a recurring motif, and it has potential for highlighting tension between the need to conform and personally finding what it entails distasteful. Looking at that would be a great way to provide the rest of the class with some meaningful characterization.
Then again, there’s still half the series left, so maybe this will actually happen. I certainly hope it does.
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