Anime Thoughts: Bodacious Space Pirates Episode 22 - Pirate Hunting

Summary

The pirate ship Silver Fox is destroyed in an attack by a mysterious ship that’s been targeting pirates. Marika and the bridge crew discuss the situation, and since the Bentenmaru is due to get its licence renewed and Marika wants that out of the way before finals, they decide to go after these so-called ‘pirate hunters’. While driving Marika home afterwards, Misa asks her what Ririka’s up to these days, but she doesn’t know, and the latter is away a lot ever since she got her licence to operate large ships…

At the Yacht Club, Marika has been made president now that Lynn’s about to graduate (she’s even gotten a recommendation to Space University, so she’ll get to be with her girlfriend), even though she thinks Sasha, the vice-president, should have been given the position. Unfortunately, the club is apparently run through tyranny of the majority, so she’s stuck with it.

In order to effectively go up against the pirate hunters, Marika devised the trick of having the Bentenmaru guide another pirate ship, the Big Catch, although the captain agreed to Show’s request that he ask for an escort only reluctantly. During the trip, the bridge crew ponder aloud the implications of two pirate ships working together, and what it could lead to. Although nowhere near the 200 ships active during Sea of the Morningstar’s war of independence, there are still 50-60 pirate ships around, almost all heavily-armed, military-class ships. The Galactic Empire and Stellar Alliance allow them to exist because they operate independently, but if they united they’d have the power to become their own nation and wouldn’t need Letters of Marque to exist. Since they’re an independent lot, however, what are the odds that will happen…

The pirate hunter appears and proves to be impossibly agile for such a large ship, quickly taking out the Big Catch. Then another large, mysterious ship appears.

Summary

Oh jeez, don’t tell me Ririka is the pirate hunter. Sure, we’ve seen enough of the latter’s head to know she has white hair, but that’s what hair dye is for. Then again, I can’t imagine any reason why dying her hair would be necessary. Yeah, logic dictates that that’s a red herring, but part of me thinks this is all part of the grand plan that is clearly afoot. Except, the pirate hunter seems to be actually destroying the ships it attacks, but maybe they’re against whatever’s being planned, and Show’s in on it.

*Checks episode 21* OK, so the hooded man seems to have brown hair, and the guy standing on top of the second mystery ship has black hair, but hey, hair dye. Again kinda flimsy since it begs the question of why there’s any need to dye hair, but I guess I’m too wedded with tying what’s going on to my ‘Gonzaemon is alive’ theory. Except now it looks like he isn’t looking to retire but to become King of the Pirates (sorry, Luffy) and figured it would be better if he wasn’t connected to a particular ship. Or something.

Really, though, having him be alive seems to make the most sense. Sure, they could introduce a new character, but it’s a bit late in the show to bring in someone in whole cloth. Plus, Gonzaemon’s been built up so much through those who knew him talking about him, and mentions of how much Marika is just like him – they just dropped another one of those this episode, no less. ‘Actually, he’s been alive the whole time’ actually seems to make sense after the amount of build-up he’s had. And if he’s alive it might mean there’s still a chance to address the elephant in the room – if he was alive until at least shortly before the first episode, why did he never visit his family?

Nevertheless, the pirates are obviously planning to unite. Just like it doesn’t feel like a coincidence that another mention of how Marika is her father’s daughter happened, the crew clearly started discussing the idea of a pirate nation for a reason. And it’s not just because the preview for the next episode makes it clear this is going to develop into at least something – there’s few enough episodes left that there doesn’t seem to be much reason to not start a final arc. Yeah, I just really want the show to end on a high note, but the evidence does seem to suggest it will, which is only a good thing, so I’ll stop throwing out whatever speculation occurs to me and move on to the next episode.

Anime Thoughts: Bodacious Space Pirates Episode 21 - Final Battle at the Nebula Cup

Summary

Everyone freaks out when the Yacht Club arrives at the planet Calmwind for the Nebula Cup. Chiaki, who’s competing with the Sea of Foreststar team, stops one of the girls from asking another team what’s up, and it comes to light that nobody except Grunhilde and the two who were with her when she looked it up had any idea why. Even Lynn, who was in middle school at the time, is surprised. Sure, some of the club seniors decided the course was boring and had her crack the Tournament’s computers to create a more challenging route (only 2 of 142 entrants finished the race as a result), but she hadn’t realized it was that big of a deal.

When the race starts Marika goes out in a dinghy of her own to observe as part of the Bentenmaru’s role to provide security. In the middle of the race a Bisque Company gunship appears and starts firing on the racers since it doesn’t know which dinghy is Marika’s. She breaks off to draw them away, and the Bentenmaru comes to her rescue. It’s not meant for atmospheric flight and won’t be able to line up for a shot at the more agile gunship on its own, but Ai overheard Marika over the comms earlier and breaks off to tell her about an incoming wind that lets the Bentenmaru align quickly and shoot down the gunship. This costs Ai the race, but the Yacht Club still comes in second thanks to Grunhilde (Chiaki placed first). They can’t wait for next year!

Thoughts

Well, that felt like filler. The only things of note to show up in the last two episodes were the hooded man at the meeting, and that there are others out there who might want to go after Marika, both of which could have been introduced in other ways. And in the case of the latter, I won’t be too surprised if this is the last we even see of the Bisque Company – just another disposable threat. Plus, if the hooded man is who I think he might be, there isn’t any compelling reason why he has to show up or be hinted at before a big reveal later. And as far as things that actually happened in this episode, the only thing of note was the reason Lynn was put on probation, but technically I’m just assuming that, and there’s been nothing to suggest that the specifics behind it matter, so it didn’t add anything.

Not much, but I’m trying to stop forcing myself to write at any length about episodes where there really isn’t much to say. Moving on…

Anime Thoughts: Bodacious Space Pirates Episode 20 - The Captain Rides the Waves

Woo, backlog cleared! Not that anyone knew I had one, but I totally did...

Summary

The Yacht Club talks about entering the 19^th Nebula Cup Racing Tournament, but apart from middle-schooler Ai no one has any experience piloting the dinghies they’d be flying. In the midst of the discussion they meet their new club adviser – Kane, who has renewed his teaching credentials and is now a PE teacher. He seems to think that means ‘drill sergeant’. After putting the girls through a number of ridiculous and/or over-the-top challenges to determine their skill and endurance levels, their entry team ends up consisting of Ai, Grunhilde, and fellow club member Natalia.

At one point, Grunhilde looks up why the club hasn’t entered recently and discovers that after the 13^th tournament they were banned for 5 years for interfering with the race and violating safety regultions. The organizing committee seems to have worries along the same lines with the club now able to enter again. One committee member suggests that if they’re worried about Yacht Club cheating, they should bring in cheaters of their own. Apparently this involves contacting Show, who later contacts the Bentenmaru with a job offer performing security for the race…

Meanwhile, representatives of the various shady organizations who signed the non-aggression pact protecting Marika meet to discuss an outside group, the Bisque Company, who seem to be plotting to go after her. Ririka, whom Kane brought to witness the meeting, recognizes a hooded man sitting in the corner and realizes he’s the reason everyone there agreed to the pact. His presence reassures her.

Thoughts

I was kinda worried when I saw the preview for this episode. Nothing wrong with the yacht club, but we just spent six episodes giving them spotlight time – I was hoping for a return to the actual pirates. And, since this is getting into the home stretch of the series’ runtime, something truly high-stakes and more serious than usual to cap it off would be nice. Sure, the Golden Ghost Ship arc turned out to be fairly high-stakes in retrospect, but it was for two secondary characters who hadn’t been well-developed up to that point, and the stakes themselves never did get developed either. I mean something that’s high-stakes for Marika and the crew of the Bentenmaru – they’re, nominally at least, the focus of the show; they need an arc that’s all about them. Plus, Ririka hasn’t had a chance to do something awesome yet. When’s that gonna happen? I’m probably tempting fate by saying so now that the show’s finished airing, but damnit, I wanna see Ririka do something awesome!

Fortunately, the episode itself mitigated things. Whether it’s the dirty dealings about to go down behind the scenes at the Nebula Cup, or the impending threat to Marika and the Bentenmaru, this is obviously going somewhere.

And speaking of tempting fate, I’m half-expecting this to end up looking like a complete idiot for this since I’m making predictions after the show’s already aired, but in refreshing myself with this episode to write this post I suddenly developed the crackpot theory that the hooded man is Gonzaemon and this was all some sort of elaborate plan to test Marika’s worthiness to be his successor as captain. Because…I dunno, he wanted to retire or something. Hey, it would explain his off-screen, anti-climactic death. I totally expect to be way off-base with this, but if it turns out to be something like this, that’d be totally cool!

Anime Thoughts: Bodacious Space Pirates Episode 19 - The Bond Between the Four

Summary

While Gruier and Grunhilde have lunch, the former reflects on how much fun she had being a pirate. The latter tries to remind her that being both princess and pirate isn’t entirely appropriate but it’s clear she had fun too. Gruier thinks it’s no coincidence Gonzaemon gave her the Bentenmaru’s ID ring.

The yacht club goes up to the relay station to clean the Odette II, while Marika alternates between helping them and cleaning up the Bentenmaru. Between those and catching up with school she’s become completely exhausted but is unwilling to ask anyone for help. By the second day of cleaning she’s so worn out she accidentally drops the ID ring without realizing it. This leads to some trouble when the bridge crew gets back and she can’t undo the master lock on the ship’s systems. Fortunately, Grunhilde picked it up after she dropped it, and the club shows up to help finish things. Gruier reprimands Marika for being careless with the ring – it’s the sign of the bond between her, the princesses, and her father. After the club leaves, Gruier expresses hope that she’ll be able to go pirating with Marika again sometime. Grunhilde says she’d better take her along as well.

Thoughts

I’m not really sure what to say about this episode. All it really did was show that Marika tends to take on responsibilities and try to do things herself to the point where she takes on too much, which has been shown already. I’m pretty sure the point of the episode was that she had to learn to start relying on others more, but did that really need to be the sole focus of an entire episode?

It didn’t even really do what I thought it would, which was give the princesses a bit of character development. Up to now they’ve basically been Marika and Chiaki Lite – you’ve got the cheerful one, and the uptight one. Almost nothing new happened here to expand on that. Sure, it had the clearest indication that Grunhilde is having more fun than she’s previously been willing to admit, but at this point that’s the same as Chiaki except for Grunhilde actually admitting it out loud. Still, it now means they aren’t entirely the same, so I guess that’s something.

Basically, it’s just an epilogue to this arc like episode 13 was to the Ghost Ship arc, but at least that one had Gruier giving Marika the ID ring, which’ll probably end up being more important later, and explained a little more background – albeit that would’ve been welcome earlier to give a better sense of the stakes. All this episode seems to have was Grunhilde potentially loosening up a bit and Marika accidentally stumbling on her family’s secret pot-au-feu recipe (so even if the ID ring never is important again it at least did something). Eh, it’s not like it’s a bad episode, it just doesn’t have much going on.

Anime Thoughts: Bodacious Space Pirates Episode 18 - We'll Have Juice at the After Party

Summary

The Bentenmaru completes its jump, but the Hugh and Doolittle fleet is right behind them. While the club members desperately dodges cannon shots Marika, Chiaki, and the princesses hold a meeting with Jenny to figure out what to do. Jenny can’t think of any usable weaknesses her uncle has, but when Grunhilde suggests they change their focus they decide to go after Jenny’s fiancé – Junigh Coolph, eldest son of the Secretary of Interstellar Transportation. If nothing else they can at least get the marriage cancelled. Meanwhile, the bridge crew hacks into Hugh and Doolittle’s accounts and sends the info to Marika through Show.

Thanks to a bonus piece of information the bridge crew found, the girls locate and board Junigh’s personal yacht. They’ve hijacked the airwaves (somehow) and are broadcasting this live. They discover him supposedly plotting a revolution, but the attendees panic and are easily captured after Chiaki fires a few shots. Juniph protests only expose him for the spoiled man-child he is – it’s just a hobby, honest!

Jenny’s uncle follows them and boards the ship, but the girls whip out the data they have. Unexplained spending isn’t incriminating enough on its own, but he never deleted the secret conversations of him illegally selling military-class ships to Junigh’s father.

So Jenny gets to go to Space University. Her uncle’s powerful enough to get out of any charges against him and keep his position, but now she knows he can be beaten. The Bentenmaru gets to keep the Silent Whisper, and the bridge crew finds out they’re not infected and will be free in a week. Everything’s just rosy.

For now…

Thoughts

I’d ask how they were able to hijack the airwaves so thoroughly – somehow everyone on Sea of Morningstar was able to see that broadcast – but instead of dwelling on the implausibility I’ll just go with ‘Lynn’s awesome’ and move on.

For that matter, why isn’t a massive interstellar company hiring top talent to program its security? It’s not just that the Bentenmaru’s bridge crew was good enough to crack it – Jenny explicitly lampshades how shitty it is. I guess her uncle really is just that arrogant.

Eh, at least the whole thing was therapeutic for Chiaki. Being surrounded by girls who’re treating this whole outing as ‘awesomest field trip ever’ was probably getting on her nerves already, and seeing a bunch of guys who are beyond old enough to know better thinking they can stage a revolution just because they want to really badly can-I-please-have-a-revolution-daddy was the last straw.

The princesses haven’t really done much since the Ghost Ship arc, but they did have a good moment here when it was shown they’re just as willing to play dirty anyone else. Not really much of a surprise with Grunhilde, since it’s already been shown that she has a sneaky side, but hearing Gruier say with enthusiasm and a smile “Morals are not of particular concern here” probably isn’t something you’d expect to come out of her mouth. Marika certainly didn’t. Not sure if it’s the influence of being around pirates so often rubbing off, or they’re more politically savvy than we’ve previously been shown – we already know the situation on Serenity had been getting pretty ugly under its fairy tale façade so they probably have some experience with it already – but it was amusing either way.