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「決戦は深夜」 (Kessen wa Shinya)
“The Decisive Battle is Late at Night”
The episode title sure is deceiving, as the leisurely exposition continues in the fourth episode of Mouretsu Pirates. At this point, the pacing will likely feel slow to a lot more people (myself included) since there was no immediate conflict — not even in the form of a stuck mast. However, the upside is that the build-up toward the eventual encounter has been great from both a tactical and strategic perspective. In the process, I’m getting a real sense that Marika is a lot more qualified to be a pirate ship captain than she seems, which is undoubtedly the main goal of these exposition-filled episodes. She’s shown that she can analyze a situation and quickly come up with a course of action — something that even Chiaki has taken notice of. It comes as no surprise that Kane and Misa are pleased, but it does come as a surprise that Jenny (Satou Rina) and vice president Lynn (Hikasa Youko) are already aware that Marika’s up for captaincy of Bentenmaru. Things get rather interesting from that point on, as Jenny proves to be just as curious about Marika’s leadership abilities as the space pirates who are eagerly waiting for her to inherit the captain’s seat.
The incidental fallout from that revelation is more reason for Kane and Misa to start scouting the members of the Space Yacht Club, which is one possible direction that things are headed. The other possibility of course is that Jenny becomes the captain of Odette II and revives it as a fellow pirate ship that works alongside Bentenmaru. Between the two, I’m naturally hoping for the latter, because the only thing better than a spaceship preparing for an unknown enemy are two spaceships working together to do the same. Judging from the preview, I gather I’ll get a good taste of that in the very next episode, as it looks like Marika may have bitten off more than she can chew and the Bentenmaru may have to lend a hand. To make things interesting, the crew will likely encounter a scenario that Marika hasn’t taken into account, so in addition to whatever help the Bentenmaru may provide, I’ll be looking forward to how Chiaki supports her. I gather it’s only a matter of time before she takes the spotlight again, seeing as she’s been made out to be Marika’s reliable and level-headed vice captain.
* Full-length image: 02.
Preview
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This episode felt a bit too slow for my liking. But at least it’s setting up for an exciting next episode judging from the preview.
Love that episode… but the ending is such a tease. The build-up was nicely done, but it HAD to cut when the battle is about to start. Man I hate when series do that.
I wonder, based on various comments made in this and previous episodes, if this is not the
ship she’s to captain, and these girls are her (future) crew… They’re always hinting
about the ship being very old, the systems unexpectedly advanced for a sailing ship, etc.
Is this really the Bentenmaru and we’re (the audience) are being trolled?
I enjoy the pace and the technical explanations, but I hope this is all foundation laying and that
this series doesn’t turn into an Anime lecture.
I really like this series so far, though…
Bentenmaru is the red ship seen in the opening sequence. Its crew is also seen in the OP.
yeah, the Bentenmaru was all in go faster red and pulling zero-g skid turns through solar flares.
but on a similar conspirital note,
Did anyone else think that the ghost ship profile looked like pretty much exactly like the bentenmaru when marika pulled up the spec? – (i know it turned out to be a tiny capsule with a large digital cardboard cutout but even so!)
pacing enjoyable. – side note – how come no blokes want to join the yaught club. Spending a week in outer space with a crew of space fitties! EPIC WIN.
I got the impression that it was a girl’s school (unless I’m horribly mistaken), hence the lack of boys.
That said, I avoided this series purely because of that title for far too long. Seriously, this is the year’s most embarrassing title yet – and it really isn’t all that bodacious. I’m glad I picked it up.
I think this pacing is nice enough or else people will suffer from technical shock if they didn’t explain technical and scientific terms. Hence, this anime will suck if everything wasn’t explained. We don’t want an anime with a battle that is hard to explain right? :3
I also think the old pirate crew are testing Marika’s ability to handle things.
Completely agree.
Explain everything now so we can enjoy the fast paced action later on even more.
It would really suck if this became some series where battles last twice as long and lose their raptness because they were interrupted by out of place explanation.
This episode, and last one, totally didn’t feel slow to me. Now I think I’m getting older LOL. I was a bit disappointed at first when I started to realize the battle won’t start this ep but I was excited all the time, and was pretty concentrated to get a good understanding of what was happening. Also, what Croos said.
It would be totally awesome if what you’re saying about Marika and the club president each captaining a ship becomes true.
“The episode title sure is deceiving, as the leisurely exposition continues in the fourth episode of Mouretsu Pirates. At this point, the pacing will likely feel slow to a lot more people (myself included) since there was no immediate conflict — not even in the form of a stuck mast.”
The previous episode felt much slower than this one, in my opinion. Last time I was thinking “I like this series, but it’s starting to lose me,” while this episode grabbed my attention again, having picked things back up in exactly the way I like. Stuff happened in this episode: stuff that feels like it matters.
Also, Jenny displayed an impressive degree of competence, and some good leadership skills that Marika would do well to pay attention to and learn.
Everything that happened in this episode felt important, which is why you won’t find me currently criticizing the pacing.
Damned html tags… why can’t they all use the same format everywhere?
That’s bbc code for discussion boards. 😀
Am enjoying this show so far, despite or because of its leisure pace.
It’s almost like a throwback to a classic scifi novel from the 70’s or 80s where each chapter is an episode. 🙂
Loved this episode and everything about this series. The pacing is PERFECT! At no point during this episode did I ever feel bored or that things were progressing too slowing, infact when it ended I could hardly believe that 25 minutes had passed I was completely engrossed in this episode – and to me thats a sure fire sign of an excellent series.
Officially 2nd best show of the season now behind Nisemonotagari.
I almost dropped this show after the third episode because it was pretty boring and very poorly made. However, this episode 4 was kind of awesome. This ship is full of badass girls, Honey Badger style.
For some reason I only noticed now that the Odette II bridge is painted PINK. I guess it adds to the bright mood. That’s what I got from this episode, it seems odd the crew seems relatively cheery when on the verge of battle. I guess this is how you do bridge command, always keep high spirits.
That being said I love all the loving care this show does to its technology and tactics. Its those little things that give it a great Sci-Fi mood. Its technology porn at its finest.
Anyone else find that the fact these girls coo and awe in unison over the most minute details terribly annoying? I mean seriously, they sound like middle school girls after finding out that one of their friends has started dating.
As for the pacing, it is a little slow but I guess any sci-fi show needs to slow down at the beginning a bit to get the technical stuff out of the way. I’m still expecting great things from this.
Marika is the pretty much the only character that doesn’t annoy me in this show.
All the important characters around Marika seem to suffer badly with Know-it-All syndrome. It’s one thing to show your knowledgeable on a subject and give technical explanations. It’s another thing to do it in an incredibly smug and conceited manner like everyone here is doing.
As much as I dislike generic stories where a hero saves a cowering populace, I’m kind of hoping everyone in the ship fails miserably, fall into a fetal position waiting for their untimely end, and force Marika to come up with some incredible last minute plan to bail them out.
The space ship design and the space chase scenes are so cool. It feels like a high school version of Legends of Galactic Heroes. Scifi fans should be proud of this anime.
High school version of Legend of Galactic Heroes? Why? Just because it has spaceships? Galactic Heroes is mainly about 3 things: politics, war and battles using thousands of ships. Mouretsu Pirates has none of these characteristics. Maybe it’s gonna become like Heroes in the furute, but right now it has nothing to do with it.
Show that are smilar to Galactcs heroes are Seikai no Senki/Monshou and Tytania.
This episode is a huge improvement from ep 3, IMO. Ep 3 seemed rather boring and irrelevant, but this episode kicked things off the in the right direction. Was considering dropping this after ep 3, but not anymore.
Nice to see them starting to develop some of the other girls in the club, as well as hinting that not all the girls are as carefree as they seem.
Finished 1-4. I must say this is how a serious sci fi anime should go. This series caught a lot of things that would have been missed in other shows. The bridge reboot, the auto tinting of the helmets (glare compensation), the check to see if anyone was not feeling well while the depresurrizing was still continuing. The presence of transponders and having them not transmit and active radar vs passive.
In terms of tactical planning, this episode was also very well done, including fall back recovery planning and worse case scenerio planning. The club leader was also showed good leadership, cutting in to tell the hacker to come clean if she had reservations on hacking the ghost ship. In a combat situation, you really don’t want someon to force themselves to agree to do something that they do not feel that they have a good chance in succeeding.
Ignoring the story and such, this anime gives me a feeling of realism in it execution and i’m really picky when this is mostly missing (such as in Gundam AGE’s engineering issues and tactical planning). Its been a while since i’ve been impressed, i’m thinking they have someone who really is a fan of space travel stuff helping to advise on the show.
Agreed, everything shown in this so far is well with the realms of scientific explaination; and its full of nice realistic touches, like you mention.
So far, nothing has required any applied phlebontium to explain how things work; putting it as a 5 on the Mohs scale of Science fiction hardness* right now. Very rare in anime; the last one that came close that I remember was Starship Operators.
The tactics are feasible too and don’t include any extreme Xanatos Gambits.
Its building a very sound Foundation (ha! hi, Asimov!) and I’m impressed.
*= http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MohsScaleOfScienceFictionHardness
I believe that, while this show has a very down-to-earth approach towards science so far, the scale is gonna go down a little bit since Show Spoiler ▼
I loved it when Jenny warns Lynn not to put extra shortcuts into the Odette II.
Not enough series try for the (pseudo)hard sci-fi approach to space combat, really digging this.
The fact that strategy and tactics were being used was also a bonus.
ep 4 is gearing into great direction. Hope they keep it up. God I miss Moonlight Mile.. these two doesn’t really have anything in common but the OPs share some chilling excitement that reflects the mood of the whole series!!
I don’t miss the galactic feeling (coz I haven’t watch them) nor the Banners here.. but I do feel for the Stellvia… and perhaps Outlaw too!
Well, I am glad to see our amateur girls devise a workable battle plan, but I have feeling that enemy might be more serious threat and Bentenmaru will have to bail them out – and force Marika’s decision to take command of it.
https://randomc.net/image/Mouretsu%20Pirates/Mouretsu%20Pirates%20-%2004%20-%20Large%2029.jpg Looks like he’s staring right at her breasts.
Haha I didn’t even notice that because I was too busy staring at them myself!
<_<
This is science fiction. It is NOT space opera. The people who are looking for more action are those who grew up on Star Wars, which is space opera.
This series isn’t going to be like that.
It is more similar to Space Odyssey, or even Apollo 13! and I like it!
Still the space pirate trope is a staple of space opera, so I think we will get our combat action (and romance?) yet!
Science Fiction is a broad genre that includes Space Opera. And this show has elements that makes it a show of the Space Opera trope. First, there’s space. Second they all treat space travel like seafaring: masts, pirates(“privateers” for the Grammar Nazi), ships.
I love this episode and I love this show.
https://randomc.net/image/Mouretsu%20Pirates/Mouretsu%20Pirates%20-%2004%20-%20Large%2019.jpg
Highschool Girls Space Soccer!
… is the first thing that came to my mind when I saw this eyecatcher.
Anyway I really love this show.
They really look like a high school Lacrosse team since they all wear short skirts.
Space Lacrosse!
the best – there was Lacrosse series of spy satellites…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lacrosse_%28satellite%29
Divine and all you others, did you catch the similarity between the battleship that the ship computer said was out there one second and then gone and Bentenmaru in the OP?
https://randomc.net/image/Mouretsu%20Pirates/Mouretsu%20Pirates%20-%2004%20-%20Large%2012.jpg
https://randomc.net/image/Mouretsu%20Pirates/Mouretsu%20Pirates%20-%20OP%20-%20Large%2005.jpg
They actually look very similar.
That Battleship went missing about the time of the independance war so it looking similar to a pirate ship from that period isn’t too surprising.
And of course missing battleship, ho hum, pirates, ho hum, can’t be a connection there now.:)
Could be a standard design or something slightly more piratical.
This is one of my favorite shows this season. None of the characters suffer from plot-related stupidity, and, unlike a lot of shows (anime or otherwise), I don’t feel like the writers assume I have the attention span of a goldfish. The characters are likeable. The exposition is organic. The world-building is intriguing and doesn’t feel forced.
In an average show, there would’ve been at least one battle by now, with plenty of explosions and flashing lights. Electronic warfare would’ve been explained in a five second dialogue shouted over a pulsing electronica soundtrack. We, as an audience, would have no concept of radar, transponders, solar sails, etc. We would all be complaining more about how the animation is B-grade.
In an average show, the locker room scene last episode would’ve been a fanservice bonanza. Where were the slow-panning close-ups of exposed pantsu and conveniently obscured topless girls? Where was the Gainax bounce? Instead, we get a brief changing sequence and skin-tight spacesuits. Casual fanservice, interspersed with lovely world-building details.
Most importantly, in an average show, Marika would still be hiding her pirate candidacy from the rest of the crew. The fact that we weren’t subjected to some Scooby Doo-level coverup where Marika explains that the attacking ship is piloted by an angry ex-boyfriend or that the whole thing is an elaborate training exercise…I could not be more appreciative.
For one thing… I need to learn not to watch this late at night as it’s hard to watch because of all the technicality. Having said that though, I actually enjoy the show, especially when god forbid… I’m awake with my eyes wide open and actually taking into consideration everything that’s been said which is important. I can understanding why everyone is saying the pacing is slow… but this is actually good thing, especially for the first couple of episode. It explains background, details, how the world works. It’s sets everything into place like a novel. Just like in Fate/Zero where they explain the technicality of everything makes me appreciate the show so much more. I can see this becoming a great anime, once they get past the technicality, concepts, and world building, but you know, that’s just me. if you haven’t watch it yet, watch it now, 1-4 and make sure you’re not doing this right before you go to bed or something.
Finally got around to see this episode. I’m very impressed that the girls seems competent enough to handle the situation. Although the preview shows them in a bit of a pinch, I’m confident that they will get through.
Well, that’s to be expected since most of the yatch club has an impressive resume: daughter of a business tycoon, a hacker, candidate to be the next captain of a pirate ship….
Interesting indeed. Though bit slow paced, I really like how they actually explained things unlike other shows…