Well, it's farce. Turns out that everything you think you know about the Cthulhu mythos is a little bent. Or maybe it's this show that's bent. Nyarlathotep is actually the name of an alien race. Our girl Nyaruko is one of them. R'lyeh is the city of insanity? No, it's the name of a theme park. Cthugha? Another alien race. One of them is named Kuko, the Living Flame. She and Nyaruko attended kindergarden together and fought all the time.
Nyaruko is now a member of some sort of interstellar police force. Earth entertainment, specifically Japanese otaku entertainment like manga, anime, and in particular H-games, are prized all over the galaxy. There are some bad guys who are making money by smuggling the stuff, in excess of certain legally-defined limits on how much of it can be shipped off planet. They also are kidnapping kids to sell as toys to the particular rich.
The police force has gotten wind of a plan to get our hero, Mahiro, particularly. Nyaruko has been sent to Earth to protect him.
So how serious is this? Well, does this eyecatch give you some idea?
I'll give 'em several points for that one. I'm still chuckling about it. (And double points for it being a good English pun, committed by Japanese writers.)
Nyaruko is the girl that genki-girls look at and say, "Wow, she sure has a lot of energy!" She's the suupa-genki girl. She's also in love with Mahiro; she says it was love at first sight, when she was shown his picture and got assigned to the case.
I spotted several call-outs (e.g. Pokemon, Steel Angel Kurumi), and a couple of times Nyaruko broke the fourth wall. At this point, I would say that the show is intended to be a send-up of Magical Girlfriend shows.
Do I like it? I enjoyed it, mostly, but I really don't like it when Mahiro stabs Nyaruko with a fork, or is otherwise violent with her. That reminded me of the guy with the baseball bat, and it's also kind of an inverse homage to Dokuro-chan.
On the other hand, Mahiro isn't a wimp, and that's all to the good. And despite seeing some of the things which, according to the Cthulhu mythos, should have driven him insane, he is in fact pretty level-headed about it all. (On the other hand, it appears that Lovecraft misinterpreted a hell of a lot, and his reporting wasn't all that accurate. YMMV.)
Before it's all over, Kuko is going to be a regular, and there's going to be a blonde girl with power over air, who hasn't shown up yet except for in the OP.
Nyaruko is an interesting one. The second night-gaunt that she fought, she began the fight by kicking him in the balls. After that, the rest was easy. She ain't no angel, that's for sure.
Since this show is pretty much farce and satire, there isn't really going to be any kind of long term plot -- I would assume. The real question is whether it stays as fresh and witty as it was in the first two episodes, or gets stale and starts repeating the jokes. I guess only time will tell.
3
Based on the uniform the kid in yellow is a boy. Hmm... who in the Cthulhu Mythos is known for wearing yellow? (Insert SAN loss here)
I was surprised at the number of Cthulhu Mythos references that actually seem to be fairly true to the source materiel. While Nyaruko and company are... different... the descriptions of the Nightgaunts and the Shantak-bird match pretty closely as to what we see (minus the poke-ball, of course).
Posted by: Civilis at April 20, 2012 06:33 PM (OtPKt)
5
Well, I think it's fairly obvious that the reason Lovecraft was so inaccurate was that his first encounter with majou shoujo moé resulted in a total San loss.
TVTropes looks to have grown into something beyond the wildest dreams of the guys who created it. I just found a cool entry there: "Russian Proverbs and Expressions"
Remember with Reagan used to say, "Trust but Verify"? Turns out that's a Russian proverb: Doveryay, no proveryay
I was looking for "Trust but Verify" because I wondered if it was a real trope on its own. I wanted to add it to the Bodacious Space Pirates entry to describe the situation on the bridge of the
Golden Ghost Ship at the end of ep 12.
I've been adding a lot to that one. It's fun. What's perhaps more fun is to add an entry, and then to come back and see that someone augmented it. For instance, I added "Playful Hacker: Lynn Lambretta". And someone added Courier to it -- and they were right!
I also added Lethal Chef, and White Haired Pretty Girl, and Funny Afro, and Large Ham, and Mood Whiplash.
1
If they had a Japanese equivalent, I might be interested. There should be more than "gouni itte wa, gouni shitagae".
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at April 19, 2012 12:14 PM (5OBKC)
2
How funny you post this. When I was working in suburban DC for a FEMA contractor back in the late eighties, a buddy at work gave me a little two-sided thing like a nameplate that sat on your desk. On one side was "Trust but verify" in English, and on the other side it was in Russian.
Good times back then...
Posted by: Tex Lovera at April 20, 2012 03:07 PM (DvLEA)
On the other hand, the word intelligentsiya has the
opposite meaning: cultured, educated, sophisticated persons involved in
creative or scholarly professions, in other words, Gentlemen and Scholars. These are likely to speak classical Russian. Though some use this word to denote posers and use the word intellektualy for the real [ McCoys]. Lenin, for instance, meant the posers when he
said "Intelligentsia is the crap of the nation, not its brain".
It's also a borderline curse word for a stuck up snob who
thinks himself better than "the common people". An exchange of
"nekulturnyy" - "intelligent neschastnyy" can be common.
It's also Older Thanthey Think. For example when Anton Chekhov, a famous Russian playwright, was asked: "Are you an intelligent (that is, a member of intelligentsia)?", his reply was: "God forbid, I have a profession!" — he was a practicing physician up to his death.
Nowadays this word almost invariably refers to an ivory-tower
intellectuals so engrossed in their high and noble ideas that they often
forgot what they mean, until those ideas turn into their exact
opposite.
obrazonanets, roughly translates as educationated person and is a term introduced or popularized by Alexandr Solzhenitsyn
meaning someone who has formal education (usually a university graduate)
but has very little actual knowledge; originally this term referred to
graduates of 'political faculties' who were taught the communist
ideology and not much more, now it usually refers to graduates of
'diploma printing shops' or people posing as intelligentsya with evident lack of actual knowledge or sometimes even basic education.
This reminds me of a certain former law professor who didn't know anything about Marbury v. Madison.
Posted by: pgfraering at April 23, 2012 05:40 AM (icN4a)
4
Ironically, nobody but "intelligentzia" uses "obrazovanetz". It just never caught on.
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at April 23, 2012 09:26 AM (5OBKC)
5
Hmmm, Is Lilly Bell a "White Haired Pretty Girl" or a "Dark-skinned Blonde"?
Posted by: Mauser at April 23, 2012 11:07 AM (cZPoz)
6
Her hair isn't blonde. It's kind of pale violet, which is what they use for white hair to distinguish it from blonde (yellow).
7
Well, the entry says Dark Skinned Blonde includes white hair as well. But we really haven't seen enough of her to see which other trope characteristics apply to her, so it's hard to sort out if the white hair or the dark skin rule the sorting.
Personally I just like the combination.
Posted by: Mauser at April 24, 2012 02:59 AM (cZPoz)
One of my favorite games in the old days was Super-hero League of Hoboken. For those not familiar with the US, Hoboken NJ is just across the Hudson river from Manhattan. This year's US F1 is going to be run there.
I've been hoping GOG would acquire that title, but it hasn't happened. It's a DOS game, and I bet it would run under DOSBOX. But my copy is long gone, and them's the breaks.
Hoboken's name is obviously funny, and as a town it's strictly bedroom. Most of the people who live there work somewhere else, particularly in Manhattan, to which they commute on the PATH (Port Authority Trans-Hudson) subway which runs under the river.
One of the PATH stations used to be under the World Trade Center. I'm not sure if it's still in operation.
Anyway, Hoboken is one of those places like Poughkeepsie which pretty much brings a snicker when mentioned, even if unjustly, just because the name is so strange.
And that's why it was used in this game, which is completely tongue-in-cheek. It's full of topical jokes which probably haven't aged well.
One of them is that at one point in the game the League goes to one particular place, and Dick Clark is running a concert, "...and he still looks young!"
UPDATE: Another joke was that at one point the League finds a bunch of corpsicles. They revive two of them, and it turns out to be George Steinbrenner and Billy Martin. Steinbrenner hires and then fires Martin twice in the ensuing conversation as they exit.
The League also visits Yankee Stadium in the Bronx. Sadly, it isn't there anymore. It was torn down last year.
1
A wonderful game, played two decades ago or more. I never played it as much as, say, SimCity I or Civ I or Pirates!, but fun nevertheless.
I don't have the love for "The House That Ruth Built" that you do, but reportedly it was pretty much an unsafe dump that hadn't been authentic since the 1974 renovation when it closed.
And I'm not trying to nitpick, but the US GP will be in Austin, TX this year; the Grand Prix of Weehawken starts next year.
Posted by: Wonderduck at April 18, 2012 03:43 PM (PVVuW)
I never saw Yankee Stadium. Never been to the Bronx at all. I've only visited New York City about three times, not counting changing planes there. But the joke from SHLoH stays with me:
The sign says, "This is the house that Ruth built", whoever she was.
I think the most difficult common word for subtitlers to translate must be sasuga. There isn't any single word in English with that meaning. There isn't anything even close, yet it gets used all the time in anime.
"Living up to our high expectations" is about what it means, but that's way too clumsy for normal use. "Just what we expect from..." is how it's often translated, but that feels stilted in English.
I noticed that in Mouretsu Pirates ep 15, at one point the translator made it "Way to go!" And that's really good. It obviously isn't literal, but that's about what Hyakume was thinking when he said it. (At 20:04.)
1
That's the way to go in translations, sometimes. You don't translate what they say, but what they mean. "Know the story; know the characters" is one of my mantras.
Posted by: Toren at April 18, 2012 02:07 PM (aq2MN)
2
When it comes to sasuga I've always thought "As expected..." was a good way to translate it in most circumstances.
...depending on those circumstances, of course. But that's true of translating any language.
Posted by: atomic_fungus at April 18, 2012 02:23 PM (vq4t5)
3
The problem with "As expected" is that in English that can be praise, but it can also be snide. But I think that sasuga is always praise.
4
I've heard some non-praising sasuga; the first one that comes to mind is the line "hayari no umi wa sasuga hito darake", roughly "the fashionable beach was, as expected, really crowded". (darake itself is generally negative, but not always)
-j
Posted by: J Greely at April 18, 2012 04:31 PM (fpXGN)
5
Not always, but you have to lay the sarcasm on pretty thick with that term.
"Way to go" is a good way to translate the normal sense of the word. But a lot of it depends on the tone of the speaker. A more literal meaning would be better from someone who otherwise speaks very formally (and from such a person, the slightly-stilted effect ought to fit right in with the rest of their speech), and something like "way to go!" is perfect for an informal speaker.
Posted by: Avatar_exADV at April 18, 2012 04:43 PM (pWQz4)
Yeah sasuga is one of those terms that just sounds horrible translated literally. It sounds stilted and awkwards most of the time.
Posted by: tellu541 at April 19, 2012 01:35 AM (Nu03Y)
7
I have a feeling that the opposite to "sasuga" was discussed at Chizumatic 5 years ago. "Yappari" was brought up as "living down to it" equivalent. Time flies!
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at April 19, 2012 09:59 PM (5OBKC)
8
I can't pick out many Japanese words on the subs I watch, but I do notice that I frequently see the phrase "As expected from (character name)" or "as expected of..." rather frequently. I'll have to keep my ears open for that word...
Posted by: Tex Lovera at April 20, 2012 03:17 PM (DvLEA)
The other Japanese construction which is painful to translate is the -tachi particle. A lot of English translators have settled on "and them" for that, which I always hate. At the very least I'd like "and the others" or "and the rest", if they can't come up with anything else. I know it's longer, but no English speaker says "and them".
Sasuga and -tachi are probably responsible for more stilted English in translations than anything else.
10
I'd add the attributive form to the list of things that frequently produce stilted translations; it can produce literal translations like "there's a song that only the me who selected one from there can sing" (Hana no na, by Bump Of Chicken; fansubs for this song are either hilarious, confused, or both).
-j
Posted by: J Greely at April 20, 2012 06:27 PM (fpXGN)
In baseball, sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, and sometimes it rains.
In a computer game, sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, and sometimes Windows pops up a box saying the game has executed an illegal operation and will be terminated.
And that's happened to me the last two times I tried to play Heroes of Might and Magic 3. It rather takes the fun out of the game. Yeah, the game auto-saves, though I don't have the slightest idea how often, but that's no answer. The second time I was only about three turns into the game when it died. It isn't worth dealing with something that unreliable. (I'm also really tired of the game locking up for a second or two every time it decides to play a special sound. At least that's what I conjecture it's doing; I play with the sound muted.)
The crashes may not be the fault of the game; they may be the fault of the "high definition" modified-version of the game that I'm using, which permits me to run the thing at a reasonable size on my 1920*1080 display.
If I run the standard version, it goes into full screen mode, and the aspect ratio is crap so it looks weird. If I hit F4, which is supposed to switch it from full-screen to windowed mode, it tells me I can only do that if my Windows desktop is set to 16-bit graphics mode.
And I'll be damned if I'll change my display settings just to play this SOB.
There's one last chance here: I also have HOMM4. It was created later, and maybe, just maybe, it plays nicer with modern Windows computers. But I'm not really very enthusiastic about trying it. I'm feeling just a bit gunshy at this point.
1
If you have XP Mode, it might circumvent these problems.
Posted by: RickC at April 17, 2012 07:07 PM (WQ6Vb)
2
I actually remember the game being pretty unstable when it was released. Of course *everything* was unstable back then... If I'm remembering right, it was pretty picky about a lot of things such as video driver version, certain processors, etc. There was a period when XP was fairly new that I had three computers, and some games would only run reliably on one of the three, and which one it was varied from game to game. I don't know how you'd correct for those kind of issues when trying to run such a game on a modern machine, although XP mode might help, and certainly couldn't hurt. But I certainly wouldn't jump through that level of hoops when I could just move to the next iteration of the game.
Posted by: David at April 17, 2012 07:22 PM (Kn54v)
3
Sorry to hear about the stability problems. I suspect you are correct about the HD modification being the problem. I run the GOG version of HOMM3 in fullscreen with a lower resolution (which is how I remember the game anyway, so it does not bother me) and have had no stability issues at all.
Which as David noted is certainly a nice change from the original release, which was quite buggy way back when. HOMM3 had at least 4 patch versions that I remember and maybe more. (Just checked, and I still have the patches! )
I am not sure if HOMM4 would be more stable or not, as I have not tried the GOG version of it.
Posted by: haphazard1 at April 18, 2012 10:33 PM (9yBYR)
I finally got my download, so now I can take frame grabs.
Hmmm... Five girls, four beds. Hmmm....
Think Lilly and Maki (both standing) will share one? There have already been hints that there's something between them. (Lilly stole Maki's bra in ep 3, for instance.)
More likely one of them is just visiting. (Rats.)
Actually, this post is about the layout of the bridge, and I've got some pictures and discussion of it below the fold.
1
There are several pictures where the gap between the two decks is much smaller, and I noticed in the last episode a segment where it appeared that the upper deck was moving downwards. There are also shots where someone can be seen standing next to the command chair, which would be just as impossible as Chiaki standing where she is.
As far as how you move between the sections, I agree that it's not something they considered.
Posted by: David at April 16, 2012 10:44 AM (+yn5x)
2
The slaughter of catgirls in this post approaches genocide! *grin*
Posted by: Mauser at April 16, 2012 12:37 PM (cZPoz)
3
As for the bunks, could there be four more closer to the viewer, off the frame edges?
Posted by: Mauser at April 16, 2012 12:39 PM (cZPoz)
4
I'm not sure it's the upper deck, but it almost has to be. The princesses are stationed there, but Chiaki's standing on the lower deck (see 2nd picture). David's got the right of it; the upper deck moved down, because Chiaki was standing next to the engineering console, and now she's just barely lower than they are
when they notice the camera. No 8-foot legs for Chiaki, and there's never any hint that the bridge is in zero-G.
When the Bentenmaru was powerless, we saw Grunhilde and Misa arrive on the bridge in a hand-cranked elevator, which looked to be located behind (or in?) the bulkhead with the ships logo -- the one behind the captain's chair. But the shaft would have to pass right through the lower hallway. Worse, the lower hallway would have to be collapsed by the upper section moving down. Finally, we see into the lower deck hallway several times, and it runs straight, except for a few steps going up into the bridge. No room for the doors to be on either side. So it has to be the upper deck, and even if the two are close to the same level, the sloped edge of the upper deck separates them.
So when the upper section moved down, did that hallway move with it? And where did the lower hallway go?
6
Speaking of the hallway with Chiaki and the princesses - I just noticed the hand-holds/ladder-rungs running down the middle of each wall. Those will be very handy if the artificial gravity goes out, or if the ship gets hit with enough G's to overwhelm their inertial dampers...
Posted by: Siergen at April 16, 2012 02:34 PM (3/gGt)
7
Then it's barely possible, based on your 2nd picture, that the elevator we saw Misa and Grunhilde get out of is located in the wall directly behind Marika in the picture in message 5. Except that looks like a solid wall, and I see no reason not to have a door to the elevator there. It would place the change of levels only a few meters behind the captain's chair.
8
Also of note in that hallway is the lighting ON the floor, right where you would expect it to trip people. And of course the shadows on the girls are not taking account of the fact that light is coming from both above and below. Oops.
Posted by: David at April 16, 2012 03:04 PM (+yn5x)
9
Ubu, that wasn't an elevator. That was the top entrance, which connects to that hallway.
13
Yeah, that makes sense. I rewatched ep. 10, and there's a scene in which Misa enters the bridge via the same route, only the door's working. I never realized that the "bulkhead" was only a few inches thick (and slanted!); I thought it was big enough to house an elevator shaft.
I'm really on a tear with only half-noticing things lately, I guess.
14
Yes Steven, I was referring to the shots which show the stairway leading down (away from the upper bridge though). I still think the timing was right for one of the animators to read your earlier posts and add the shots for this episode. Too bad it still doesn't answer how the crew can easily move from one level to another.
Of course, I recall seeing a painting of a an American Civil War-era wooden steamship that had a "bridge" running across the middle of the ship, several feet off the deck. The officers could easily walk from one side of the side to other in battle to get a better view, without interfering with the gun crews (and vice versa). Maybe the separation of the senior officers from the lower-rank bridge crew was a design feature of the ship when it was first built, before being converted to a privateer...
Posted by: Siergen at April 16, 2012 07:51 PM (3/gGt)
15
Don't know about the bridge layout, but the one blond girl is straight outta Sailor Moon...
Posted by: Tex Lovera at April 20, 2012 03:14 PM (DvLEA)
That's Princess Gruier Serenity. Guess who else is named "Princess Serenity"?
This series has quite a few callouts. The girl with black hair, draped over one of her eyes, is named Syoko Kobiyashimaru, which is a reference to the Star Trek "Kobiyashi Maru" test featured in ST2: Wrath of Khan.
So they're trying to do Saki again. Only they want to leave out the fireworks, the angst, the fan service, and all guys. Problem is, once you remove all those things, just what's left?
Well, the game, I guess, and some pretty ordinary girls who like to play it. But not really a lot of story potential. The original series was pretty watered down as far as story telling is concerned, and this series is very thin soup indeed.
I can't say it's awful; it isn't. But it isn't very compelling, either. In ep 2 the three girls from last episode are on a hunt to find two more players and a faculty advisor, and by the end they've got them.
The closest to a "tragic past" as was featured in the original series again and again is the teacher, who got trounced as a high school student ten years before and lost her nerve. She's hoping to find it again by proxy. So the girls are partly going to be fighting for Harue, their teacher. But the other goal for most of them is to play against Haramura Nodoka, now attending Kiyosumi High School.
The next ep teaser says that we're going to run into Miyanaga Teru, Saki's estranged older sister. But for the nonce, this team has to win their provincial tournament in order to have any chance of playing against Nodoka and Kiyosumi. The established MahJongg power in the province is Bansei, and we met a couple of their players in this episode. They're going to be playing the role that Ryuumonbuchi did in the first series: terrifyingly good opposing team, but our girls win anyway.
Part of the story in the original series was that as good as Nodoka was, Saki was better. But even more important was that she had a way of pulling out freakishly improbably good hands any time she needed them. Other teams referred to her as a "demon". (They also called Koromo a demon; she's that strange little blonde girl who played for Ryuumonbuchi.)
So as good as Hisa, Yuuki, and Mako are, Nodoka is much better and Saki even better than that.
I don't see any sign so far of any one of the girls this time being any kind of freakish player, but maybe that'll develop later. I bet not; I think that's another thing they're trying to leave out this time. But if you don't have that, either, then just what the heck is left?
Well, there is one. Kuro seems to have a knack for attracting all the red dora tiles. When she's playing no one else ever gets any. OK fine...
Based on the cast so far, my favorite is Arata, the one with black hair whose family runs a bowling alley. When she plays Mahjongg, she wears one of those special gloves that some bowlers wear.
I'll keep watching, I suppose, but this series isn't compelling me to watch the way Mouretsu Pirates is. Mouretsu Pirates is, "Is it Saturday yet? Is it Saturday yet? Two more days, I can't wait!" This version of Saki is, "Oh, is it Sunday afternoon? I may as well watch it."
UPDATE: Now a large part of Iowa and Missouri are under tornado watch. The area of vulnerability seems to be expanding east, heading straight for Duckford. Wise ducks will be keeping their heads down.
1
Interesting... the NOAA page is somewhat understated and concentrates on WI, but TWC rates KS and NE as having about a 90% chance of tornadoes today, and 70%-ish from the TX panhandle through IA.
2
While there is a chance for severe T-storms tonight here in Duckford, it's a slight one only, though the weather nabobs are saying up to a half-inch of rain overnight.
The real action is supposed to be tomorrow afternoon and evening, when a cold front from the north moves down and bangs right into all this stuff you're talking about heading up from the south.
Alas, the one thing Pond Central lacks is a basement. Still, I've hidden in the bathroom a couple of times... though not, I'll admit, because of weather.
Posted by: Wonderduck at April 14, 2012 03:10 PM (PVVuW)
3
Ooooh! Gonna tell us any more about the love life of ducks?
4
The real weather should stay south of me, too. We just get the big atmospheric changeover... too warm & humid to have the windows open today, and snow tomorrow night. A nice 45-degree drop in 36 hours.
Posted by: Mikeski at April 14, 2012 03:46 PM (1bPWv)
5
Ubu, be careful what you ask for. There are some things that you are simply better off not knowing...
Posted by: Siergen at April 14, 2012 04:40 PM (3/gGt)
6
It's raining here. The occasional roll of thunder. In other words, general springtime weather.
Posted by: Wonderduck at April 14, 2012 10:08 PM (PVVuW)
Don made a comment explaining my mistake. The forecast and map you saw were different from what I saw a few hours later. When I look at the map closely, it says
(in very small print, lower left corner) "Valid 15/1/1200Z –
16/1/1200/Z†and there are very small links to day 1 and day 3. So you wrote the article Friday evening, based on a different Day 2
map/forecast. When I followed the link in the early AM of Sat., it
had changed; Day 2 was now Sunday (today).
9
We've had just over 2" of rain since midnight here at Pond Central, with more possible. Nothing severe, though. The rainfall amount is higher than what you'd regularly expect, but not uncommonly so...
No complaints here... I've seen enough bad weather to last a lifetime.
Posted by: Wonderduck at April 15, 2012 04:03 PM (PVVuW)
More gun pr0n, less pr0n pr0n. This episode was mainly for gun otaku, and they kept the sexual innuendo to a minimum. Indeed, there was virtually no fan service (except for gun otaku).
Before I started watching, I expected I'd get grossed out and quit within the first couple of minutes, but it didn't turn out that way. It was actually quite fun. And if they keep going this way, instead of what we saw in the first episode, then I'll keep watching.
There was a nice sight gag at the beginning. Our main four girls went out for some long range target shooting, and each one was carrying an ammunition case. Which contained their lunches -- and if you think about it, isn't that the truth? An ammunition case carries food for guns, don't you think?
Anyway, the whole idea for the show is idiotic, but if you just accept the stupid and roll with it, it isn't bad. Or at least I hope it won't be bad. If they go back to doing thong jokes, I'm outa here.
UPDATE: What I want to know is this: Why does Ichiroku wear an orange slice in her hair?
4
Well, they seem to be going for "cute girls doing violent things" style. And I liked the actual discussion of bullet trajectories, gram weights and the problems/benefits of bullet size.
Then we got tactical combat ranges, cover mechanics and combat tactics. All with cute girls. Accepting the fictional conceit needed for this series, this was actually quite enjoyable. As this was more in the vein of "Working out with Hinako" than in a fan service series.
Posted by: sqa at April 14, 2012 06:54 PM (orsHm)
5
Gack....
I didn't make it all the way trough the first ep.
Now this post...
I may to have to go back to that dark place.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at April 14, 2012 07:02 PM (EJaOX)
6
Unfortunately, from the previews it looks like next week goes back to fan service.
Posted by: Dave Young at April 14, 2012 07:25 PM (ZAk0Z)
In the second episode you kind of have to hold your nose and ignore the fact that you're watching cute girls firing live ammunition at one another. But with a sufficient degree of abstraction, it was pretty neat.
11
The best idea the Internet was able to produce is that the orange slice represents jam, because M16 jams. Except that in the anime they already have Eri to represent that. She probably came much later in the manga.
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at April 15, 2012 01:31 PM (nHxja)
Mouretsu Pirates -- ep 15
I think this was the best episode yet. And it was laugh-out-loud funny in many places. Plus the best bonus of all: Chiaki is beginning to smile, and not just for choco-parfait.
more...
I love that Chiaki brought the princesses along. You knew they were coming, but Marika, quite rightly, was doing them a favor by not having them along. I imagine their security detail wasn't too happy about this plan, though I'm guessing they put the safety on Chiaki's hands.
Lynn is definitely being setup to stay around, though she might also join the employ of Jenny, after graduating. It should be noted they changed Jenny into a dress in the OP/removed her from the card files in the ED, as well.
Oh, and Fake Kane was awesome, too.
Looks like they're waiting on Marika to start going full time before they put the ship in for some massive upgrades. I.e. they'll need money for that, which means a lot of jobs.
Was definitely a fun episode, and the preview hints at the problems with using high school girls for a pirate ship. They'll want to have fun, yet there will be serious business at hand.
It's going to be interesting
to see how they stage the raid, since a bunch of girl pirates showing up would pretty well give the show away. Dress 'em up as guys and keep 'em in the background, I'd guess. And I don't think I'd give them charged guns, either. Heh.
The visual of the Odette II's sails unfurling was pretty awesome.
Posted by: Dave Young at April 14, 2012 07:21 PM (ZAk0Z)
3
I think the people who are making this show must be readers of Chizumatic. In this episode they finally addressed Steven's question of how people get to the lower bridge deck - they even showed it more than once, just to make sure that he noticed it...
Posted by: Siergen at April 15, 2012 02:32 PM (3/gGt)
4
I didn't notice it. WhyNot's fansub hasn't come out yet, so I haven't rewatched since yesterday morning.
5
Dave:
They're going as girls, but in pirate costumes. We already know that because it's the cover of the third book. Also it was in the next-ep teaser.
Also, there isn't any "show" to give away. A pirate raid entirely by girls will be just fine with the shipping line; it'll be even more of a novelty for their passengers.
I wouldn't be surprised if later there's a throwaway gag where Shou asks Marika to do it again with all-girls. (And of course she refuses.)
6
Dave, as to guns:
I think that Marika and Chiaki will be the only ones carrying weapons. After the screwup of firing Bentenmaru's main battery, Marika isn't going to take any chances with an accidental disaster. Marika and Chiaki are both familiar with those weapons, and none of the rest can be trusted with them.
7
OK, I guess I'm a little vague, then on why
the Yacht Club went to so much trouble to hide their true destination. Was that just to keep the crew of the Bentenmaru from worrying? I was thinking if it came out that high schoolers were out pirating, there would be repurcusions. And it would seem pretty easy to put 2 and 2 together, given how famous Marika herself is. So, I'm confused...not unusual.
Posted by: Dave Young at April 15, 2012 04:59 PM (ZAk0Z)
8
Um,
the girls' parents? Not to mention the school officials?
Grace Hopper once said that it is easier to get forgiveness than permission. I think that's Lyn's attitude here.
If they all show back up on the Odette II when they should, they'll, theoretically, be able to go about their business like nothing happen. (We can assume that won't be true, but it should make for some laughs later)
But, you can't just take a group of high school girls on a Pirate raid without a massively pissed off set of adults. The mess it could put the school in is kind of insane. Especially now that you'll have 2 Princesses on board. That's exactly why it has to be hidden. You also have to get the idea that this is an upper-class school, given that Jenny was there and that they have their own sailing vessel. Those parents WON'T be happy when this hits the news.
And, oh, is it ever going to hit the news.
Ironically, Marika can get out of the entire situation. She's a pirate, after all.
Maybe not the way you're thinking.
It'll hit the news that someone made a pirate raid with all the raiders being joshikousei. It may even hit the news that the now-legendary Captain Marika led it. But it won't necessarily hit the news that it was girls from that particular school. Generally pirate raids aren't filmed, after all, and the girls are all going to be in disguise.
Everyone is going to know that Captain Marika is there, because she's going to announce her name. But how would they know who the others are?
So it may hit the news that an all-girl crew made a pirate raid. But I don't see how that gets connected back to the Yacht Club -- unless someone talks.
Shou won't. Kenjo won't. Chiaki won't. The princesses won't. And Marika's bridge crew sure as hell won't. And the members of the Yacht Club have demonstrated that they can keep their mouths shut.
After they all learned that Marika was a pirate, I thought that'd be all over the school. But it wasn't until she hit the galactic news.
My line of concern was that
since it's no secret that Marika is a member of an all girls Yacht Club -- which just happens to be out on a voyage at that time -- that it really wouldn't take a genius to put those two facts together. I was also thinking most of these pirate raids ARE filmed, by the "victims," as mementos, in the same way people are always filming things with their cell phones now. But disguises would work if the "all girls" thing didn't give it away. Seems like it would've been smart to leave one or two people on the Odette to stay in communication and maintain the illusion it was crewed, which would have provided good cover. But...perhaps they've rigged up more replicants, like they did for their departure? 'Cause all they really need is plausible deniability.
Posted by: Dave Young at April 16, 2012 08:06 AM (GxTMf)
12
I think the answer to most of this is the Rule of Funny. This is a comedy arc.
13
My interpretation of the whole thing was that there isn't any concern on the girls part about keeping their actions secret long-term, it's just that they wouldn't be able to get on the Bentenmaru conventionally. It's being held in an isolation area, presumably out of range of any transport that the girls could get access to, other than the Odette II. Perhaps they could have asked for permission and made arrangements to do it somewhat conventionally, but when have we seen any of these characters operate that way? It probably never crossed their minds. They'll probably make no attempt to hide their identities or prevent recordings of the pirate action, the whole thing is far too exciting and cool to try and keep secret.
Posted by: David at April 16, 2012 10:53 AM (+yn5x)
14
Yes, I think Rule of Funny is probably the best explanation. It doesn't appear this show is quite the tightly scripted work I was initially thinking. Which is disappointing only in that I REALLY like disecting those kind of shows, and they're few and far between. That doesn't make this any less a GREAT show...just different. Adjusting expectations accordingly.
Posted by: Dave Young at April 16, 2012 04:13 PM (ZAk0Z)
)
