I am in love.

[kaigou]

Did I think my love for Seirei no Moribito and Twelve Kingdoms could ever be eclipsed? No -- okay, not really -- but damn, Mouretsu Pirates is coming very, very close, and if it keeps this up, it will definitely stand alongside quite easily.

I think I've rewatched ep5 at least four times, and I suspect that ep6 is going to get the same. No ditziness passed off as cuteness! Genuine humor that has nothing to do with gender (but lots to do with inexperience)! And some incredible team-work and a club president who may be blonde and blue-eyed but is also steely and capable of delegating and has a quiet slicing humor, too. And a buxom "medic" who may be dressed like the fan service but her lines are nothing but intelligence, and a cast of what looks like equally male/female roles among the pirates.

Holy crap, did I actually die and not notice? Or did one of us save the president in a former life? Because what did we do to deserve this, so we can make sure to do it again, as often as possible?



although with the way the roles are set up between Marika (the cheerful but terrifyingly ingenious newbie pirate-captain), Chiaki (the somewhat tsundere quasi-rival), and Mami (the perky and naive best friend), if these three were guys, we'd already be neck-deep in shipping posts. It has all the early hallmarks of what slashfans seek, just with genders switched.

Comments

[askerian]

... this sounds horribly interesting. What's the show about? Apart from pirates. XD

[kaigou]

The premise is very... well, shonen, for lack of a better word. I mean, you'd see it in shojo but usually with completely different implications. Anyway, our first introduction to Marika isn't as normal high school girl with part-time job (in a retro maid cafe, of all things), we meet her doing a flight simulation of landing a sail-based spacecraft. A much more action-based, competence-showing opening than the usual "giggly cheerful girl going to school before life changes dramatically". Turns out her mother's ex-husband (the never-mentioned and long-absent father, that is) is a space pirate. Or more precisely, a privateer, with letter of marque. Mom, incidentally, is a retired space pirate. Because letters of marque are hereditary, Marika is the only one who can assume the captainacy.

But she doesn't decide right away; it takes five episodes and they're character-displaying, relationship-building, plot-filled episodes. Wait for it, but my favorite line is the helmsman's observation that "in a few years, [Marika] will be terrifying." How often does a girl ever get described as terrifying -- based on her skills and intelligence? (She's already pretty terrifying.) Hell, even the scene in the retro cafe is used to subtly point out that she memorized the day's specials the minute she arrived and can already reel them off. It's little things, but I can adore the little things this time around, because there's just as many big things. The entire series so far is lots of awesome goodness big things. (Ep5 alone should be bronzed. IJS.)

In a way, Marika is cut from a similar mold as Duo Maxwell. Not in terms of his darkness, but in terms of being the kind of person with no problem coming across as easy-going, a little scatterbrained, somewhat self-effacing... who is also incredibly intelligent, gutsy, ingenious, and a little reckless. In Marika's case, it's a matter of just needing the training to get her from a state of ingenious ignorance to blazing knowledge that scares the pants off everyone. In Duo's, of course, it's that he (I think) knows he's good and has nothing to prove -- but Chiaki's reaction is very similar to Heero's (we have a trope, here, after all) which is annoyance from the person who works so hard with the person who seems to just, y'know, take it easy and not get that flustered over stuff, and laughs off mistakes.

Oh, and of course, the cheerful extension of friendship from Marika/Duo to the local tsundere, which is naturally greeted with all kinds of annoyance and suspicion. It's just that with Marika and Chiaki, it's more explicit, whereas with shonen series, you need to do more reading between the lines to decide whether there's genuine affection/liking or if it's just teasing the tsundere.

I know, it sounds a little wierd, and the first two episodes start kind of shojo-istic, but if you look, there are hints (like the opening scene) and if you can stick it out to ep3, trust me, it quits the "no, really, it's shojo!" and starts moving into paths you'd never see in shojo. Also, lots of hard scifi. Weeeeee.

[askerian]

it sounds really shiny actually! Am queuing up the first couple eps to exercise on. XD Thank you for typing up all that.