Curse you, Marika, and your ability to execute basic strategies using a force of pirates against a single ship!
As expected, Quartz Christie is the shittiest pirate. Disrupting communications and positioning a ship to intercept the Grand Cross when it escapes the chaff field?????? That is clearly some Lelouch Lamperouge-level tactics going on there. How could Quartz Christie possibly see any of that coming?! She’s only one of the original pirates jumping around the galaxy.
It’s not a party without Strider, yo. Also, bonus points for the vampirate who shows up during the montage at the end. He might have appeared earlier in the episode, but I wasn’t paying close enough attention . . .
Speaking of being confused, all my blather about the Kanedroid last week was a result of being confused about just what the hell went on last week with all the robots and sneaking around and whatnot. This episode shows what a dope I am for speaking out of confusion and making assumptions.
This Pirate Hunter is Blue Rose from Tiger and Bunny. Prove me wrong.
So lots of stuff happening in this episode! Let’s start with Blue Rose up here since her screenshot is up there and everything. In the grand tradition of Mouretsu Pirates villains, she’s an arrogant fucking idiot. She’s basically toying with the Bettenmaru, because she has so many advantages that she could crush the ship any time she wants. What we know: 1) Her ship can zig zag like a mofo, although Marika has apparently figured out some sort of trick to avoiding bombardment. Maybe this is one of those dumb ships that can fire only from the bottom. 2) She has stealth and is skilled enough to sneak wherever she wants. She proceeds to use this power for taunting. Very imaginative. And 3) She has a stupid name (Quartz Christie).
Haha, OK, I have to hand it to the show for the silly handwaving this week regarding the Parabellum and its silly, theatrical technology. First off we find out that the image of the captain, who goes by Ironbeard, is actually a hologram. The thing that perplexes me is why the episode went out of its way to hide that at the end. Obviously if you think about it, Ironbeard isn’t actually standing on top of his ship in the middle of space and shouting. The image at the end of the previous episode is clearly different than the image we see here, however. I suppose it’s to make Ironbeard seem even more larger than life; really, though, it made me realize more how silly this show is that I actually thought for a moment it would have a pirate standing on his ship exposed to space and shouting.
Oh, this fucking pirate.
I’m of two minds about this goofball: First, I think the conflict at the end of the episode is actually legit dangerous, even though we have a total “Boy Who Cried Wolf” situation going on with this series. I refuse to believe this situation will resolve itself in any way other than anticlimactically. It doesn’t matter how big and impressive this pirate hunter ship looks while slaughtering pirates. (Possibly for the government? I do agree this is strongly hinted at throughout the episode.) But at least for now there’s some excitement going on, which has been true for basically every storyline so far in the series. It’s kind of like Index in that the arcs start out cool and then fizzle out at the end, except there’s no Touma constantly opening his fat fucking craw here.
Ah, this show. I lost it when those pirates (or whoever they’re supposed to be . . . they’re too worthless to get their exact designation correct) flew in and tried to gun down high school girls left and right, and the main explanation for their behavior is that they’re jealous of Marika’s pirate license and thus wish to violently murder her. Ahahahaha. They of course fail because any adult who is jealous of a high school girl is destined to never succeed at anything. This works even though anime teenagers are the most competent at any activity imaginable.
It’s telling that the only significant damage they do is to the crazy ass chief organizer, who is a rather pathetic figure herself. She’s spent more than half a decade stewing in anger about some high school girls (and their middle schooler accomplice) hacking into her cream puff race course and dialing the difficulty up from Yoshi’s Story to “Rat Race” from Battletoads. It’s not like they swooped in, nuked the race and robbed all the corpses afterward. Not sure that dicking around with a race course merits years of uptight paranoia, but hey, maybe race organizers operate on a different level of reality.
I wonder if this typhoon death laser of doom will have any effect on the local climate? Who cares, though, as long as the high school girls get their sailing training and Marika doesn’t have to worry about the race and her job at the same time? Fuck you, Mother Nature!
After every episode of this series for a while now, it seems as if it would always be appropriate to start off posts with, “This is quite the silly episode.” This may be the silliest episode yet, but not for the reasons one might expect, even though it’s half a beach episode. There are cute girls in swimsuits everywhere; however, there’s not really a focus on them that’s greater than every other episode. Much more focus is paid to Kane’s ridiculously ripped body. Have to say, though, I actually couldn’t stop staring at his hair. It’s weird to see it relatively normal rather than the traditional Spiky Anime Hairdo. Not sure what this says about me.
Well, sort of. Mostly I just thought of that awful joke before I watched the episode and was going to use it whether it was good or not.
Anyway, I’m in that tournament thing. Toss me a vote if you like. I think the match ends in a little more than 24 hours. If you’re a first-time visitor, then rummaging through the nonsense under Random Stuff off to the side should be all you need to get the gist of this rinky-dink operation of mine. Have fun!
I also appeared on this week’s FAPcast with kevo’ and Aeroblip. We chat about this very series, and then move on to much more important matters: terribad anime. Give it a listen!
So, yes, Pirates. In just about any other series, this would be a breather episode, but the idea of a breather in this show is laughable when every conflict is resolved with the main characters barely needing to lift a finger. It probably says some things about this series that everyone does more work in this episode cleaning up the ship than they did in handling Gruier’s situation, and almost as much as it took to handle Jenny’s stuff (they did have to figure out how to fly the ship well, even if they got a lot of outside help).
Haha, it almost feels like a deliberate farce when the Yacht Club girls are like, “Wow, that was really close!” after their hilariously easy defeat of Jenny’s incompetent uncle. You’d think that in the future, someone who leads a major corporation and who actively engages in illegal activities would know better than to keep audio logs of his dirty dealings in places that are easy to hack. Obviously he has the data just in case someone tries to screw him over, but didn’t he ever conceive that someone would use the data to screw him over? Sure it’s the real pirates who yoink his logs, but why is that shit on a place the pirates can hack in the first place? I’m sure at this point in the future, hard drives are tiny and can hold more data than anyone would ever need in their lives.
Everyone in this show has grown up with all this crazy technology, right? You’d figure they would know how to actually use it. I suppose this is why Jenny’s uncle is not the leader of the main corporation despite being the older brother. That piece of information suggests that good ol’ Uncle Dumbass wasn’t held in the highest esteem by the family, although his abilities were appraised highly enough that he got the opportunity to lead a successful company. But with that in mind, combined with the fact that his crimes are laid out on live TV (though maybe only characters the protagonists know actually bothered to watch?), it’s baffling how he could just pull a few strings, reclaim his position and everyone is fine with this.
Hey, I’m not posting this out front because I’m a male chauvinist pig! I’m doing it because I celebrate all forms of love, especially when it’s two teenage anime girls kissing!
Self-mocking aside, I do like how this episode goes about establishing Jenny and Lynn as A Couple. The fawning from the peanut gallery is a bit much, but otherwise everything is refreshingly straightforward. There’s some embarrassment with Jenny and Lynn being so open with the ol’ PDA; Chiaki is so darn tsuntsun that she can’t stand to look at anyone being so up front with their feelings. But the big feeling around the room is, “Wait, you two are a couple? Pretty cool!” rather than, “TWO GIRLS KISSING GROSS/HOT” (I’m sure that feel was supplied in abundance by the audience, however). It’s kind of sad that approaching the relationship in this way is rare for anime in general regardless of whether the relationship is same-sex or not, haha.
UNMEI KAIHEN 
