Summary
The Yacht
Club talks about entering the 19th 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 13th 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!
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