Review for Bodacious Space Pirates: Part 2

Introduction

Bodacious Space Pirates begins on the planet Sea of the Morningstar around Tau Ceti. In the future, mankind has colonised outer space, spreading across the stars, and as with any such expansion there came a fraught period of confrontation and consolidation. When Sea of the Morningstar became a target for a fledgling kingdom of worlds, they naturally raised a military to stop them. To bolster their ranks, they issued Letters of Marque, recruiting pirates to their banner as privateers, legal pirates. And then along came the Galactic Empire, absorbed the lot and put a stop to all that nonsense. But after the conflict the pirates remained in business, passing down the letters of marque from generation to generation.


100 years later this is all ancient history, especially for high school girl Marika Kato, whose sole concerns amount to passing her exams, doing her part time job, and partaking of her school’s yacht club, which affords her the chance to go into space. It turns out that how she performs in the yacht club is of interest to certain people. When a knock on her door reveals her new homeroom teacher and the new school nurse, she learns that they aren’t who they appear to be. They’re actually the medic and helmsman of the pirate ship Bentenmaru. What’s more, her mother Ririka also used to be a pirate. And the father that she never knew was actually the captain of the Bentenmaru. He’s just died, and since she’s his sole offspring, and since the captaincy of a pirate ship can only be passed down through family lines, they’re here to offer her the job. And time’s running out. If they don’t engage in some legal piracy soon, they’ll forever lose their Letter of Marque.


In the previous volume, while piracy and captaining a space ship may have been unexpected challenges for Marika, by far her toughest test was to somehow keep her life as a high school student and her life as a pirate captain separate. At the start of this second half of the series, events conspire to make such a separation impossible.

The concluding thirteen episodes of Bodacious Space Pirates are presented here across two discs from MVM.


Disc 1
14. Marika Goes Recruiting
15. Smuggling, Leaving Port, and a Leap
16. The Hakuoh Pirates’ First Job
17. A Surprising Client
18. We’ll Have Juice at the After Party
19. The Bonds Among the Four
20. The Captain Rides the Waves

Disc 2
21. Final Battle at the Nebula Cup
22. Pirate Hunting
23. Head for the Pirates’ Nest
24. The Wounded Benten
25. The Pirates’ Council Begins
26. There Go the Pirates

Picture

Bodacious Space Pirates gets an excellent transfer in this collection, indicating that Hanabee are starting at the top of the learning curve when it comes to releasing PAL anime. The image is clear and sharp throughout, and obviously sourced from an HD master to make full use of the 576i resolution of PAL SD. It’s a quality animation from studio SATELIGHT, with familiar, but memorable and well animated character designs, and future world designs that really bring across the atmosphere of the show. Most impressive are the spaceships and vehicle technology, brought to life with CGI that blends in seamlessly with the 2D animation. On top of that, space is beautiful in this show, and we get nebulae, planets and stars and all sorts of astronomical phenomena that take the breath away. Of course Blu-ray would have been preferable, but this DVD should not be sniffed at.

Sound

You get the option of DD 2.0 English and Japanese, with translated subtitles and a signs only track to go with the English dub. The discs default to the Japanese audio option, which makes me happy at least. The subtitles are in a nice discrete white font with a bold black outline, making them easy to read. They are timed well and free of error, and once again Hanabee get things right on their first time of asking. Of course with an action packed show like Bodacious Space Pirates, a 5.1 surround track would have been preferable, but given a little Prologic magic, the stereo does give a sense of dimension to the show.


I went with the Japanese audio with subtitles and was very happy with the choice, the dialogue was clear throughout, and there were no problems with dropouts or glitches. The cast are well suited to their roles, and the action is conveyed with impact but without overwhelming. I had a go with the English dub, and found it to be a curiously lifeless effort from Sentai, certainly lacking the energy and individuality that would better serve this show. It sounds much like your average anime dub.


Bodacious Space Pirates gets a music soundtrack that does full justice to the premise, giving it the full pirate. Mandolins, accordions and violins make their presence felt, and the show has a very piratical and nautical feel without ever becoming a parody. It also has a couple of great theme songs to go with it. Bodacious Space Pirates gets one of the best music soundtracks an anime has seen in quite a while, one which may not see a lot of play in a CD player but suits the show down to a tee.

Extras

Both discs get nicely done animated menus, while the only extras are on disc 2, the clean credit sequences, the opening theme and what it says on the disc are two closing themes (but they look like the second closing repeated). You also get trailers for Arakawa Under the Bridge, and its sequel, Arakawa Under the Bridge x Bridge. These are Hanabee titles, and aren’t available in the UK at the time of writing.

One thing I noticed missing from the Hanabee release, something that Sentai usually make pains to add on their releases is a translated English language credit scroll after the main ending theme on each episode.

Conclusion

Did I mention that I love Bodacious Space Pirates? I watched the show on Crunchyroll last year, after the simulcast hype, when I could marathon it at my leisure. I quickly realised just why people were rating it so highly, and now watching it again on DVD has merely reinforced my initial opinion. Bodacious Space Pirates is a rare example of a show that is enjoyable merely for the sake of being just so damned good. This isn’t about catering to any specific genre, it isn’t about pleasing otaku fan service expectations, despite being adapted from a light novel named Mini-skirt Space Pirates, it’s about good writing, great characterisations, and about having fun. I get the same feeling from watching Bodacious Space Pirates that I did when I watched Birdy The Mighty: Decode. This is a show made by people who revel in telling a story. As it is, it turns out that strength turns into something of a weakness in the final arc of the show, but it’s really a small criticism, and certainly not one worth dismissing the series over.


The first half of the series introduced Marika Kato, happy-go-lucky schoolgirl, and unlikely pirate captain, after she inherits the Bentenmaru from her late father. In that first collection of episodes, it was something of a crash course in piracy and captaining a starship, made more complicated by having to live two separate lives. At the start of this set, those two lives collide when the Bentenmaru crew come down with a mysterious virus and wind up quarantined. The problem is that the quarantine period is so long, that the Bentenmaru will lose its piracy licence if it doesn’t engage in some piracy. As Marika was the only one not infected, she’s left alone to run the ship, and she winds up desperately looking for a crew. It turns out that crew was under her nose all the time, when she’s reminded that they ought to be people that she trusts. And so the Hakuoh Academy Yacht Club become space pirates.


Their initial attempts at piracy are as comical as you would expect, especially as Marika’s friend Mami has some odd ideas on what pirates’ uniforms should look like. But things become more serious when they receive an emergency communication from the former Yacht Club President, Jenny Dolittle. She wants to hire the Bentenmaru for a job, on the surface a simple transport mission, but Jenny is heiress to a powerful business empire, and her uncle is making moves to oust her father and take control. One of those moves is to get his niece married off so that she can’t inherit the company, and he’s got a fleet of warships to enforce his will.


I mentioned in the previous review that one of my favourite side characters in the show is the cute, bear-hatted Ai Hoshimiya. This is the first story where she gets to shine, as she’s a fair pilot, and she gets a baptism of fire when she has to pilot the Bentenmaru through some dangerous waters. But it’s in the quiet episode between the arcs that she becomes my favourite character as she discovers that the Odette II training vessel that the Yacht Club use has some dinghies aboard. In this space going future, dinghies are single person craft that can transition from space to atmosphere, and are piloted for fun and in competition, and it turns out that dinghies are Ai’s forte.


It’s why the next arc is devoted to the Nebula Cup, a competition where school clubs gather to race dinghies, and a race which Ai is keen to enter. It’s been several years since the Hakuoh Yacht Club last raced, and when they turn up at Planet Calmwind the truth is revealed as to why. Hakuoh has a reputation that precedes it following a race that got them banned for five years. The ban ended, but it’s only now that Ai has shown an interest that they have entered again. The other competitors and the race organisers have been dreading that day, and have prepared accordingly. One of the things they have done is hire some pirates as security. Only they hire the Bentenmaru before they learn that Marika is a Hakuoh student as well. Of course the real danger doesn’t come from Hakuoh, rather some unsavoury characters that are targeting the Captain of the Bentenmaru. Bodacious Space Pirates is a great show, but the episode Final Battle at the Nebula Cup may just be my favourite episode of anime full stop. It is just perfect, the story, the characters, the way the race develops, the action, the twists and turns, and a brilliant dramatic action sequence. It is also just the most magical, charming story, in no small part because of Ai Hoshimiya.


The final five episodes in this collection conclude the series with what ought to be the most dramatic, edge of the seat, action packed arc to date. Sure enough the stakes are raised when the Galactic Empire makes its appearance, and an all powerful pirate hunter appears, driving the pirates of the Stellar Alliance region to work together in an unprecedented Pirates’ Council. That the Bentenmaru is outclassed is made immediately apparent when they take on a job to serve as guards for another pirate. That they are vulnerable becomes clear when they attempt to make it to the Pirate Council. With the advent of two new major players on the scene, the pirate hunter Grand Cross captained by Quartz Christie, and Galactic Empire pirate Ironbeard and his ship the Parabellum, it becomes apparent that there is a bigger story to be told, and that the Bentenmaru in its corner of the galaxy is really just a big fish in a small pond. This final arc serves as a graduation of sorts for Marika the Pirate, to finally determine if she is a worthy successor to her father.


The problem here is that the tone of the show undermines the drama of the conclusion. So far, Marika has been sailing through whatever challenges she has faced. Even the toughest of opponents has been met with eagerness and optimism, and that’s no different here. It means that at no point during the finale, despite the overwhelming superiority of her foes, does Marika seem vulnerable. The show is all about fun; it’s about the joy of life, and seizing every day and squeezing it dry of all the enjoyment it has to offer. This isn’t a world where heroes die; this isn’t a world where danger really makes the adrenaline surge. This is a world where the good guys always win. It renders what should have been a thrilling finale somewhat tame. But as I said, Bodacious Space Pirates is all about the fun, and if we have to sacrifice a sense of peril to keep hold of that fun, it’s a small price to pay. It would have been weirder to suddenly interject a note of darkness into a Technicolor universe, although Birdy The Mighty: Decode did manage a better balance.


Bodacious Space Pirates has been one of the best series of recent years, partly because it has broad audience appeal without pandering to fan service elements, but mostly because the characters and the story are so good. It definitely leaves you wanting more of Marika’s adventures in space piracy, and the ending certainly promises as much. We’ll have to wait a while though, as the Bodacious Space Pirates movie is scheduled for a 2014 release in Japan at this time, and a subsequent Western release will take even longer.