1 Steven, I bought a Kindle Touch for Christmas, and as much as I like it, the page turning gets a little twitchy now and then (jumping ahead two pages instead of one, jumping back seveal pages, etc.).  Doesn't happen often, just enough to be annoying.  Have you encountered anything similar on the Fire?

2

No, not really. You can turn the page by swiping across the screen, and that's completely reliable. You can also do it by tapping on one side or the other, and if you were to double-tap, I suppose you might get two pages.

Tapping is easier, and that's what I've gotten into the habit of doing. But if you were having problems, the swipe would be more reliable.

3

I'd like to be able to charge it off my computer, using USB. IIRC the documentation says that's possible. They didn't include a USB cable, though. I dug into my cable drawer and found what I thought was the right one, and it didn't fit. Wrong size.

I may have to take the charger brick with me to the store next time I go and see if I can find a USB cable with the same connector on it.

4 It's a standard micro-USB connector. Just buy a cable that clearly labeled as micro-USB (as opposed to plain USB and mini-USB). I don't know whose brilliant idea it was. They absolutely had enough space to use a mini-USB socket in the Fire.

5 Apparently the detachable-brick adapter that comes with the standard Kindles didn't have enough amperage for the Fire, otherwise you'd already have the appropriate cable. The EU requires Micro-USB for cellphone-charging, so it's probably become slightly cheaper to use instead of Mini-USB (technically Micro B and Mini B; some of my old cameras have deprecated, incompatible mini/micro connectors).

-j

6 Not only has the EU mandated the micro connector, pretty much everyone is moving to it anyway:  even cheap dumbphones were using it two years ago.

7 The charger they gave me doesn't have a lot of juice. It's 5V, 1.8A, and it took several hours this evening to recharge, using it. It'll be even worse using USB, because it will be limited to drawing 0.5A.

8 That's much higher output than the standard Kindle AC-to-USB minibrick, which offers only 0.85A, or Apple's at 1A.

-j

9 It probably only pulls 1A from the standard charger, so a USB charge will probably only take twice as long, assuming it actually pulls the 0.5A max.

1 Among other things, I've started using mine to watch Crunchyroll. I have to admit, it is pretty nice to not need either PC or discs for anime. I find the app a hell of a lot more pleasant to use than their website.

2 I mostly use mine to listen to Japan-a-radio.com, because Fire has built-in speakers. I used to use PSP for that purpose, but the software on it was rather inadequate.

Crunchyroll works ok on Fire, but I need to take screencaps for blogging, and I'm too lazy to investigate a good capper (e.g. shake-triggered).

Another thing is, Crunchy does not keep streams forever. I still need to download what I stream or buy on medai.

3 How do you download from Crunchyroll? I didn't think they supported that.

4 I don't download from Crunchyroll. But this comes to what some commenters mentioned a few posts down the line. As long as I have the media, I feel entitled. Streaming... maybe not so much.

5 Crunchyroll's Android app is pretty primitive at the moment.  It can remember where I left off watching a specific episode, but not simple things like "which series I was watching". I have to navigate from the top-level menu each time and wait for the full list of series to load.

I'm only using it for MouPai right now (an abbreviation that doesn't exactly flow off the tongue...), but I've thought about finding out just how horrible Steel Angel Kurumi Zero was.

-j

6 This is a freebie from Amazon. If the credit card info is invalid, they will "cancel" the order later. I don't know if they go into your Kindle and delete the book though. Technically they have the capability, possibly even on a rooted Kindle if it kept their services. In case of MP3s it's just free MP3s. I "defrauded" Amazon this way by accident before, then made up by buying some Miku Hatsune tracks or whatver.

7 I just entered my new credit card number at Amazon, so I hope they haven't done their billing cycle yet. We'll see how it goes.

8

It really is pretty astounding that this thing can be sold for only $200.

This is a bit like a game console, I suspect. The real money for those is in the games. Or like a cell phone, where the real money is in usage fees. Game consoles and cell phones are routinely sold at a loss.

Since the Kindle is pretty much a slave to Amazon's electronic store, the real money is in selling books and music and games for it. So I wouldn't be surprised if Amazon is breaking even on these, or maybe even losing a bit on each one they sell.

Especially when they're sold through retail outlets, like the one I just bought from Fred Meyer. Maybe the ones Amazon sells directly from their web site are slightly profitable, but I bet they lost a lot on the one I just bought.

Because this is really well made. It's quite impressive.

9 I bought a Motorola XOOM when they were brand new, and have loved it.  For a while I was using my PC to convert fansubs into something it could play, but that got tedious enough that I stopped using it for that.  I had not considered that I could stream anime onto it from crunchyroll.  How well does that work?

10 I got a Kindle Touch (with ads) with my Christmas money; I like it a lot.

Though I don't have the complex home network setup you do, I had zero trouble getting it on-line.

It's a good solid product.  And yeah, it's an amazing bit of technology, esp. for the sticker price of $99.  Not quite "indistinguishable from magic", but only because I was born in the latter third of the 20th century and took a degree in electronics....

11 I am not sure how much Fire costs for Amazon. However, I know that OLPC came very, very close to the $100 point for a system which was far more potent (for its time), which ran x86 code, and had a very large array of peripherals. They claimed that the retail distribution would add 50..70% to their cost point. Their issue was to get a committment to large enough run, so that the truly efficient manufacturing can be amortised. Based on that knowledge, I would say that an ARM tablet with minimum of peripherals and connectors, relying on Amazon's efficient distribution, and backed by Jeff Bezos' guarantee of minimum purchase of a few million units may quite possibly break even at $200 point these days, even retail. Even if it does not, the loss is not great. Note that Amazon is a public company, and we're going to learn a lot about it once Q-10 comes about.

12 By the way, I principally bought Kindle Fire to run Naviator. That idea was an abject failure, because Naviator turned out useless without a GPS receiver. I know how to work around it using WiFi, but having two devices around, both of which have to be backed up, sort of put an end to this. Also, the Arrow that I fly the most received a beautiful glass panel upgrade in the late 2011, and that took a lot of wind of Naviator-on-Kindle sails.

Basically Fire is no iPad. But I only understood it now.

13 The only thing I want the Fire for is to allow me to read certain books. The first one is "The Golden Spiders", by Rex Stout.

14 There is something to it, in my case, too. I bought The Soul of The New Machine for Kindle, which I would never get otherwise. I prefer not to expand my paper library, if I can.

15 The project management classic Peopleware was out of print for years, and at one point used copies were selling for more than the cost of the Kindle edition and a Kindle to read it on.
I'm still waiting for screen improvements, but the Kindles are cheap enough now that I'm likely to buy one while I'm waiting.

16

It actually looks quite nice, and the characters are large and well formed, at least on the book I just got. It was originally a paperback, but the Kindle's screen is larger yet, so it's easy to read for and old guy like me whose eyes are not as good as they used to be.

On the other hand, when I loaded Chizumatic it was almost impossible to read. They resized it to fit the screen, which in portrait mode is only 600 pixels wide. (You can click on it to blow it up, and you can scroll it back and forth, but even then it was a bit tough.)

17

I got a Kindle Touch early this year and have enjoyed reading a few books on it. The whole e-ink thing is a dream to read. I think it's great that books like Peopleware are now available in an electronic format, though it seems like roughly half the books I want to read aren't available. Strange. Or perhaps I have obscure taste.

How is the color screen for reading? It seems like it would wear on my eyes... but I have some sensitivity in that area that other folks don't seem to have.

18 Just now I found a new item on the bookshelf that said, "There was a problem with your purchase." Using the web browser I was able to tell it to use my new credit card instead, I think. The "problem with your purchase" thing is still there, however. So I think I'm going in with the browser on my computer and see if I got it fixed.

19 The bookshelf is pretty cool looking, but right now I only have 6 items on it. I wonder how it looks when there's something like 50?

20 Oh, I see. The bookshelf scrolls up and down!

21 My wife has the launch hardware, square whie Kindle with e-link. I played with it and I also think that it's very impressive as a book replacement. Like I said I wanted to tinker with my Fire as an application platform. If I wanted a book reader, I would've gotten an ad-free e-link Kindle. But I am not going to presume that Steven would be better served by an e-link Kindle. It is very personal.

22 I hate the bookshelf launcher. I tap on top, "Books", and select from there.

23  They had those at Fred Meyer too, and Iooked at one, and decided I wanted the Fire. The main reason is that the Fire has more memory.

24 Somebody did an OEM price breakdown of the components around Christmas, and based on the information they could find, the Fire looked like it cost ~$205 or somesuch, not counting final assembly, shipping, marketing, etc.

That said, yeah, it's exactly like the console business model, on overdrive.

I'd like one... but, I can't really justify it right now.  To be honest, I've really got my eyes on the bow wave of Win8 devices I keep hearing about.  If I can get a small-but-full-powered laptop that can serve as my primary machine, but has a form factor and low-power mode that allows it to serve as a decent tablet, then I don't need to keep up with and replace two devices.  I don't mind a tablet-sized screen and keyboard so much, because it ideally would have several ports that I could use to hang "real" ones off of while at a desk.

25

Of course, it's part of their business plan to make it as easy and convenient as they can to buy stuff, and it's working on me. I just bought my second book.

I'm going to have to be careful about this. I remember how I used to be in book stores.

The billing is all straightened out, and I've gotten payment acknowledgements for both books.

I'm a bit surprised at the pricing, however. The first book was $5. The second one was $6. It only would have cost about $2 more for each to get paper copies. (Which I don't want, because I have no room for them. But anyway...)

There's very little overhead cost for electronic distribution. No warehousing, no printing cost, no money gambled on buying units which don't sell. An electronic copy of a book  gets created microseconds after it's ordered, and it's made of electrons.

There's nontrivial infrastructure for Amazon itself, in creating all the computer systems which do this, not to mention selling the Kindle at a loss, and that's all got to be paid for. But when I bought these, I got told that the price was set by the publisher, and it looks like they're trying to set the price high enough so that it doesn't threaten their dead-tree book business.

They're just like the other old-wave information distribution companies (e.g. RIAA, MPAA) who don't understand that their old business is rapidly becoming obsolete.

26 Yup, after all those years of explaining how increases in printing costs were driving up the cost of books, publishers finally reveal that the printing and distribution is no more than 10% of their cost, and insist that ebooks should cost the same as dead trees, if not more. 

Someone needs to teach them the difference between "cost" and "value", and Amazon seems to be taking the lead. Baen seems to be the only publisher with a firm grasp of the concept, and as a result I often buy their printed books from Amazon and DRM-free ebooks directly from their site. (not to mention the Baen Free Library, which padded out my Kindle and Sony Reader nicely...)


-j

27 Amazon seems to be doing the same thing to the publishers that Apple has been doing to the record companies, dragging them kicking and screaming into the 21st Century.

28 Now if we could just get the anime companies there... Of course, they have to deal with translation if they're going to sell it outside of R2.

29 The anime companies are coming around. In that case, it's Crunchyroll that's doing the leading.

30 Oh, I didn't say that they weren't coming.  It's just that, oddly enough, I find myself having the problem of trying to remember if I was watching a given series on CR, or torrenting it. 

Terrible issue to have, isn't it? 

As for Kindles, I recently gained access to one; my cousin loaned nii-san one and he had me do the setup and figure it out so I could explain it to him.  I was interested to see that when I re-registered it under my name/credit card, all the books she had bought stayed with it instead of being dumped.  I was not able to get a Baen ebook to load properly from Lyar though, even though it was the Kindle version.  Not sure what I did wrong.

31 I've been following e-books and how the publishing industry is dealing with them for interest for some time.  And yes, it is funny how the industry claimed for a long time that printing, storage, and distribution were the cost drivers, and now they claim that it's all in editing, marketing, typesetting, etc.  I've read many articles and reports from the author's perspective saying that it's very rapidly getting to the point where the value-add of a large publishing house simply isn't there, and they can accept the lesser sales of indie publishing, but sell at a much lower price and still make more money in their own personal wallets.
As with J. Greely, I'm a huge fan of Baen and their approach to drm-free books widely and cheaply distributed.

32 Oh, and on the anime side, Funimation does NOT get it.  Commercials, pitiful resolution, and a front-end server that is sheer torture to deal with, it's so slow.  Upstart CR looks like the pro here, not Funi.

33 David, there isn't any credible explanation for the prices I just paid except "what the market will bear". Both books were originally published in the 1930's and have been available for sale off and on ever since. Any cost of editing and suchlike has long since been paid for.

34

I must say, the battery life is impressive. On a single charge I read the entire first book, and I'm probably a third  of the way through the second one, and I also have been doing other kinds of messing around, including some web browsing, and the battery still shows 26%.

I'm planning to keep using it until it complains, because it's good for lithium batteries to run through a full charge and discharge cycle once when new.

35 For pre-digital-era books, there's a one-time cost to scan, OCR, and proofread the text to turn it into an ebook, but unfortunately for the publishers, they can't convince us that it's a huge expensive effort, because we've seen Project Gutenberg, Aozora Bunko, diybookscanner.org, etc. I forget which SF author it was who decided the simplest way to prepare his backlist for ebook release was to download illicit copies and clean them up.

It is expensive to convert books with complex formatting requirements and interior art, but those are easily justifiable to potential customers. Charging the same price for an SF novel from 1972 as one from 2012 is just "we have expensive offices in Manhattan". And Amazon is delighted to point out that it's Random House, et al, who insist on those prices.

-j

36 One type of book I've seen cause trouble is coffee table books.  The large page size means you have a tradeoff between seeing the whole page versus being able to read it. . . and if you zoom in to high resolution text, you end up loading high resolution *art* which brings things down to a crawl.

37

I'm a big e-book fan, but art and other "coffee table" books are the one category I still buy in paper.  Trying to view those on any reasonable portable device seems to kind of defeat the whole purpose of the book:  viewing large, colorful grpahics.  Until the coffee-table itself can display color images of any desired size, I'll stick with paper for my nudie-books...errr, I mean my flower-garden books.  Yeah, that's the story.

Off topic:  FYI, I did see that Asobi ni Iku Yo is getting a domestic DVD/BD release in May, and it includes an OVA (which I've never seen).

38 And nobody mentioned the manga yet?

39 Please try to avoid topic drift.

1 If it is the GE (as seems likely) it's an interesting datum that they're responding covetly at this point.  Are they just being reasonably circumspect, or are they uncertain of their strength?  In order for a revolution to make sense, one would guess the later.

2 Making the GE the enemy, or at least the enemy responsible for what we've seen happen so far, seems too simple to me.  Just going on how Shingu went, I'd say it's some third party looking ahead at how events are going to unfold between the GE and the local/human entity, and decided to stick their finger in the pie to manipulate the outcome.  Of course that third party could be a faction within either side instead of someone completely new.

3 Although the cruise ship raid appears to have been staged, I think they also attack non-cooperating targets, How else would her mother have so much experience with weapons, and be able to speak of her previous experiences deciding on whether or not to shoot people?

If I'm right, then whoever the privateers have been raiding might be trying to curtail future losses by reducing the fleet of privateer ships by one.

4 That just doesn't seem romantic enough for this show. There needs to be some sort of series-level story line, the way there was for Shingu and Nadesico. And "Dammit, stop raiding us!" isn't enough..

5 Oh I'm sure there will be more powerful enemies down the road, er, space lanes.  However, the first enemy that our young captain bloods her blade on might be fighting her in self-defense.

6 If it is the GE (as seems likely) it's an interesting datum that they're responding covetly at this point.  Are they just being reasonably circumspect, or are they uncertain of their strength?  In order for a revolution to make sense, one would guess the latter.

Not always the case... sometimes, you just need a farm boy that hears voices to get a revolution going.

7 Sorry for being historically illiterate, but I don't get that reference.

8 Well, if he'd said girl, I'd have guessed Joan d'Arc, but I'm stumped too.

9 Wow, the geekery is weak today.  I assume WonderDuck is talking about a certain kid who grew up in the desert maintaining irrigation droids, meets a mysterious older man who gets chopped in half a few days later, and after that appears on occasion to talk to the young boy as a glowing blue spirit that nobody else sees.

10 That was, indeed, the nub of my gist.

11 You know, I thought of that, but I didn't think of his visions in that context.  Especially since he didn't get the revolution going; that was Mon Mothma, Bail Organa, and Garm Bel Iblis.

Ok, I admit I had to go look that last one up, my memory failed me.

12 Please avoid topic drift.

13 It makes me wonder if such a light-hearted series will have us have to watch as Marika is forced to actually kill someone.  And what will happen in the aftermath of that Moral dilemma.

1 Don't necessarily need a full flush--I hate doing that.  In Chrome, Shift+F5 will force-reload the whole page including the flash.

2 Ctrl-F5 works in Firefox.

And crossing the streams:  Hitting 'play' got me a grey image!

Total # of images 994
Random Choice 519
Seconds since midnight 58599
[Calculation] 472
Title 10
Choice 21

3

Thanks, Douglas. I think that must have just been a server glitch, a load fail. I have seen that particular picture:

4 Same thing happened to me, btw:  gray image with play.  Random choice 7, seconds since midnight 67591, mod 6, title 0, choice within title 7.

5 I see the image flash momentarily before the frame goes grey upon "Play".

6 Yeah, sometimes that'll happen. It isn't really something I can do anything about, and it doesn't strike me as being a problem, particularly.

7 Sounds like I should put the "reload" button back in, given what I'm seeing here.

8 I'm seeing the grey image every other time I hit play or the button on the upper right. I don't need it to work, but I work in software so I'm filing the bug report out of habit. If no one else encounters this behavior, chalk it up to my machine being wonky and move on.

9 I'm getting the same behavior.

10

That's very peculiar, because I'm not having any such problem. I don't have any idea what the problem might be.

As long as you get an image the first time, when you first load the page, then it's doing what it's supposed to do. I guess I would say.

I don't know what to do about this -- except maybe to suggest that you update your flash plugin.

11 It worked fine at first for me, but then it started getting wonky. Now it's the same as benzeen and muon.  I tried closing the browser and reopening it, but no such luck. Literally, every other picture is gray.  Using Firefox 10.0.1, Flash 11,1,102,55 installed (most recent)

12 Well, I get an image every first time so you may not consider this a serious issue but I might as well report it: every time I click it (whatever is it in the upper-right corner) I get no-pic/pic/no-pic/pic/no-pic/pic/... and so on, regardless of the picture. I thought it may have been my firefox but I got the same issue with chrome (addon-free)

13 Curiouser and curiouser...If I run the swf by itself, everything works fine. If I save the main page, swf, and css to disk, everything works fine. Its only when I load the page from the mee.nu servers that I get the alternating gray image. I am perplexed...

But anyways, yes, the first image always works, and that's all I'll ever actually use (although now that I think about it, might the every-other-image-is-gray be useful for quickly hiding a less-than-work-appropriate picture? Call it a feature!)

14 Grey image.  numbers were: 994, 49, 28437, 654, 14, 18.  

15 Alright, already.

1 I didn't see any of the new pics until I emptied my browser cache.  Now they're showing up fine.

2 Yeah, you have to do that, or force a full reload, in order to get the new version of the flash file.

3 You know what's funny, I just received a frame from Infinite Stratos that I _never_ saw before. What are chances?

4 I've noticed that, too. Despite my including the time-of-day in the randomizer, I think it still isn't as random as I'd like. Unfortunately, there probably isn't any good solution to that.

5 Of course, it could just be chance. With 708 pictures before, then if they were being randomly chosen, it's highly unlikely you ever saw them all -- unless you spent your entire day reloading this site, and presumably you have more important things to do.

6 Sometimes I sit in a meeting on a muted speakerphone...

7 Maken-ki came out very well, nicely dynamic pictures. I think I saw about 10 by now.

8 What I just noticed is that I hardly ever get pictures from Sengoku Otome, despite it having 48 entries. Yet more problems with the random number generator not being all that random. It doesn't seem to be a code bug on my part, as best I can determine, and there probably isn't anything I can do about it.

1 As a neat little easter egg, that script she's given is the same as the episode script for the show.  Same yellow folio cover, same font, same picture on the front.  So the voice actress would've been holding more or less the same thing that her character was holding when she read those lines.

2

I can tell that the seiyuu was having fun with that scene. She sure was chewing the (virtual) scenery, but that's what was called for, because Marika was hamming it up.

3

There's a character named "Otou-san", who is shown in the credits dressed as a cook. I bet he runs Bentenmaru's cafeteria, and I wonder if Mami ends up working for him?

It's a job, and someone has to do it, and she knows how. Why not? Besides which, having a friend on board seems to help motivate Marika -- which is all to the good.

4 One moment, near the end: Marika sits alone in a fancy office. And she says, "This is my father's office?" And I said, "No, it's your office."

5 And we find out what the "surprising end" to the war of revolution was.  Veddy interestink, no?

6 Er, um... "revolutionary war of independence."  Pardon useful Engrish for me. 

7 So nice I watched it twice. The new character I expected didn't show up, but perhaps next time; I certainly wasn't disappointed with what we got.

I approve of Chiaki  leaving the ship for now. They needed to compete once as pirate girls, but now Marika needs to bond with her crew, and Chiaki needs to make some decisions. She's the cover girl for book 3, by the way, so she won't be gone too long.

As for Mami, I think she's going to come aboard as the captain's personal assistant, giving Marika someone outside the chain of command that she can confide in. I assume from the end credits that she'll keep the maid costume.

The history lesson and first mission fleshed out the universe without being dull exposition. Misa is becoming my new dream girl, although a nice Ririka flashback/comeback episode could still dethrone her.

-j

8

Misa has the same voice as Takei Hisa in Saki, and it's perfect for her.

Doesn't it strike you that there was an element of theater to the attack? The guys in the boarding party were wearing traditional, almost cliche, pirate costumes, things like colored scarves wrapped around their heads. And of course there was Marika's silly hat and tremendous coat. No one on the ship dresses like that, and she doesn't the rest of the time either. Plus the arranged sword fight, and the way that Kane was also overacting -- it was almost like street theater, like they were buskers.

Maybe it's because it helps to put the victims in the proper state of mind, i.e. to give up their valuables without a struggle. But it's curious that they should do that. What made me think about it was that Marika's curious performance, with mistakes and overacting, had the effect of turning the whole thing into a comedy performance. The victims were laughing and applauding, mostly. I think that Kane keyed into that and decided to play it the same way, right up to the shocking ending.

Those on the bridge listening to it all didn't seem too concerned about how Marika was behaving. It worked, after all; they got a good haul of treasure.

9 Speaking of voices, Marika's seiyuu is new. This is her first leading role. I think she's doing a fantastic job. This will not hurt her future prospects in the industry, especially since I expect this show to be a major hit.

10 Wow.  That episode really threw me off stride.  I certainly didn't expect them to go pirating against general civilian commerce for loot.  I expected their activites would be directed against some particular faction or group.  Nor did I expect them to play it for laughs.  The fact they didn't seem to mind beclowning themselves a bit is fascinating.  And why would this Galactic Federation think their activities were OK, sanctioned by a particular world or not?  I'm really confused right now.  Which means this show just got a Hell of a lot more interesting -- because I'm pretty sure there's going to be some logic underlying all this. They're just going to have some fun playing with our heads (or at least mine) before they let us in on it.

11 The political situation is obviously complex and important, and they haven't revealed much of it to us yet. It seems apparent that the government of Sea of the Morning Star doesn't just tolerate the Bentenmaru. They are actively enthusiastic about it and are willing to go to great lengths to help it continue to operate.

Even to the point where government agents helped Misa find Marika at the beginning of this episode. It's hard to believe that it's only because the government gets a percentage of the take; that planet is large and wealthy, and compared to its normal tax revenue, the income from the Bentenmaru must be in the noise.

Likewise, the Odette II is quite mysterious. Why is one of the original seven pirate ships assigned to that school? And why is it so up-to-date? Surely the school can't afford all that stuff; the government must be paying for things like an up-to-date EW system for it, and stuff like that. Why is the government so interested in maintaining it in mothballs that way? All they'd have to do is install guns on it, and it's ready to become a privateer again.

I wonder if there's another revolution brewing?

12 Which brings up another point: I really do wonder whether Marika's father really is dead.

If there's another revolution brewing, maybe his death has been faked, because he's gone underground to help prepare for it.

13 Yeah.  I thought the whole death by food posioning thing was a little fishy anyway.  Also, after finally thinking about if for more than two seconds, it seems obvious that the "attack" on the Apricot was arranged so Marika could fulfill the terms of the Letter of Marque -- which illustrates more of that cooperation between the authorities and the privateers.

14 Timing: Marika's homeroom teacher had an "accident" a week before Kane showed up, making it 3-4 days before her father's death. And no one seems to think it odd that the school nurse was also suddenly replaced at the same time.

Theatre: IMHO, pirates are romantic tourist attractions, and the cruise lines and their insurance companies are in on it. Everyone on the Princess Apricot (heh) who had prior space experience was thrilled to be attacked, and Kane told the first-timers not to worry because the ship's insurance policy would cover any losses. It's not a full-time arrangement for the Bentenmaru, but as a privateer with a reputation for putting on a good show without hurting anybody, they probably had no trouble arranging for The Dread Pirate Marika's debut.

However, I disagree about the costumes. The bridge crew and "away team" seem to dress in flashy pirate gear all the time; it's the ordinary support crew that are wearing modern uniforms. Maybe most of them are just merchant sailors.

Oh, and it's "Oyaji-san" in the chef outfit. Minor thinko.

-j

15 I've wondered about all that too The suspicious death, the rather obvious pirating set-up....  Especially the bit about the insurance.

Most anime is so illogical that shows like this are a treasure -- it's deep enough that the writer and director have obviously been thinking things through, not just assembling random tropes.  These are the fun shows because we can speculate like mad, not to fill in the gaps that aren't there, but to guess what is there that we haven't seen yet.

And on that score, could we be looking at a giant money laundering scheme, designed to funnel funds to the supposed revolution?   Could both sides have decided the Empire is the bigger enemy and have buried their differences?  And the next episode certainly looks like it's about to pick up even more.

I pity the folks that gave up after episode 3-4; I was getting pretty impatient, but I'm glad I hung on.

16 You're right about the chef. Seems like "Pops" would be a good translation of that, wouldn't you think?

17

This one has the same feel that Shingu did, in the way that there seem to be lots of things going on which we don't understand right now. In Shingu everything was clear at the end (though some people were not satisfied with the explanation regarding Muryou). I have a feeling it's going to be that way this time, too.

Sato likes to tell intricate stories. Martian Successor Nadesico was like that, too.

18 They didn't show it, but how do you think Kane got back on the Bentenmaru afterwards? My guess: After the guys collected all the booty, I imagine that he stood up, waved to the crowd, and left with them, wearing a great big grin.

19 Can anyone tell me why Mami walks so strangely in the first part of the ED?  She's walking with her knees turned inward while she's in her school uniform, but when they switch to their 'work' clothes, she walks normally.

20 Tom...there are some questions a gentleman simply does not ask of a lady!  For shame.

21 Maybe it's on purpose. Merlin Monroe did it in "Some Like It Hot" when she demonstrated how to walk on high heels.

22 I've been avoiding these threads because I hadn't had time to watch it all, but I just watched all 6 so far in one go.

I certainly didn't anticipate this last one to be played the way they did it, but it was fun.  And a nice change of pace from the submarine battle like previous arc.

I think the reason they show Mami in the end credits is that like in any other Anime, the main character must still go to school.  So I'll wager that her Pirating is going to be part-time until she graduates.  But I kinda hope I'm wrong.

(On the other hand, they're certainly not going to create and name all those school characters and then abandon them after 5 episodes in a two-season show.)

23 Marika said that she intends to keep attending school until she graduates.  Which it should be interesting to see how Marika's classmates treat her  -- I clearly recall no pirate captain was in my highschool, and I suspect it's going to be fairly uncommon to have even one, let alone the heir apparent to another in Morningstar's schools.(C'mon, you know Chiaki is going to be there too.)

24

In the series preview which was released before ep 1, there was at least one scene where a classmmate referred to her as "Marika-sama".

With everyone in the yacht club knowing about her, there's no way it stays secret, and it's pretty clear that by the time her classes start again, everyone in the school is going to know. Given that by then she'll have probably made several attacks, her prestige is going to be sky-high.

25 Theatre: One thing that struck me about the whole scene is how Marika and company enter the ballroom. It certainly looks like they came directly in an airlock from their ship, and it's a nice showy one to boot with a bonus dramatic descending staircase. Now, maybe there are other uses for an airlock in such a place (eg showy entrances for other important people), but it's certainly suspiciously convenient for pirate raid theatre.

26

Did you also notice the spotlight on Marika and on her opponent? Rather odd, isn't it?

Those lights could have been from the Bentenmaru. I suppose it's also possible that Courier was controlling lights inside the Princess Apricot. But it still seemed rather theatrical that it happened at all.

27 It was borderline "rule of cool" so I just went with it.  If you want one that's over the top, try ep.#15 of Macross 00, the double serenade of "What 'bout My Star".  That scene is so awesome (and funny, in a way) that I go back and watch it every few months.  Even without subtitles, you can see what's going on, and how it plays out excuses the silliness.

28 Theatre: Also the waiters carefully moving the pyramid of glassware out of the way and the band packing up their instruments, just before the lights dim. The icing on the cake is when they make the ceiling transparent so the "victims" can see the Bentenmaru passing overhead. And Kane knows precisely when that's going to happen, because he read the script. After the ship docks, you can still see its spotlights through the ballroom ceiling, but there are also some flashing lights coming from ceiling fixtures, and Marika's voice is being amplified. It's so well-staged that even Chiaki gets excited watching, and she knows it's fake.

Oh, and speaking of Chiaki, when Marika asks Schnitzer what her mom was like as a pirate, his answer applies just as well to Chiaki, and he knows that his other student is listening.

-j

29

Over at Random Curiosity, someone named "Sunflower" posted this:

The insurance company is behind all this.
They make insurance contract with the ship company and call the Bentenmaru.(They have a phone number for a reason, right?) The privateer ship provides the Disneyland-Pirates-of-Carribean surprise show and give some entertainment to all those rich and bored passengers on the cruiser. The ship company knows what's going to happen. They even fully expected all this when they made the contract. The Bentenmaru sells the things they get from passengers to the insurance company and the company sends those thing back to the passengers.

So…
The insurance company can get big contract and make good money out of it.
The ship company can make their "customer experience” a little more spicy and keep passengers happy.
The passengers can get happy with the entertainment and all the things they give to the pirates are going to get sent back later.(They can even decline to give away some stuff which is too valuable)
The Bentenmaru can make some money by selling the stuff to the insurance company and since it's still considered "pirating”, their Letter of Marque stays good.
Now see, everyone is happy.

What if some naive guy actually challenges Marika?
Thats when the big cyborg guy steps in and takes care of business without harming the poor guy.

Sunflower doesn't say where this comes from, whether it's speculation or from reading the books, but it really does sound plausible.

And it would make a good first-mission for Marika, wouldn't it?

30 I think I buy that idea, in fact. If the Bentenmaru has a rep for putting on a good show and not hurting anyone, they might get a lot of repeat business, too.

Having the captain -- i.e. the lead player in the melodrama -- be a cute girl just makes it all the better. There may be an element of "aidoru" mystique seeping into this show regarding Marika. Considering how good of a show she put on her very first time, she can only improve the Bentenmaru's rep in this regard. (Once she was on the Princess Apricot, she was in the groove and never missed a beat. She never hesitated, wasn't flustered, didn't make any mistakes. She was great!)

Sunflower doesn't include Ubu's speculation -- which I also buy -- that this is a huge money-laundering scheme to fund a new revolution, but that fits too.

Barbarossa is from a different planet, but it was one of those who joined Sea of the Morningstar in the revolution 150 years ago. It isn't much of a stretch to guess that both planets (along with others) are now involved in setting up a new revolution. And Barbarossa may also be involved in this pirate-attack-by-appointmeent business, funnelling money to the underground. Given how he looks, I bet Chiaki's father also puts on a hell of a good show, albeit a lot different kind of show than Marika did. All of which would explain why Bentenmaru and Barbarossa are on such good terms.

31

Remember Jenny? If the shipping companies are involved in this, then this may explain why Jenny Dolittle, future leader of the Dolittle Shipping company, was so interested in Marika becoming a pirate. She really does have skin in the game.

32

I keep having ideas. I sense Misa's hand in something:

Marika hasn't been wearing her school uniform on the Bentenmaru. (She's mostly been wearing sweat pants  and a sweatshirt.) But she was wearing it under her cloak, which you know because you can see the miniskirt. That seems like Misa's staging. I bet she told Marika to do that, because it would make for a better, more distinctive, show.

33 Misa being behind it would make more sense; I really didn't understand why she was doing that otherwise. It would seem to signal that Marika was holding on to her identity as a schoolgirl, and hadn't really committed to being a pirate.  But as theater, it's a logical bit of "rule of cool" that actually fits within the context of the show.

34

Misa's official title is "Ship's Doctor". I wonder if her unofficial title is "Theatrical Director". She's rather more glamorous than you would expect a doctor to be, for example, but a Director would be more flamboyant. (That jumpsuit she's been wearing is pure sex.)

If so, then it begins to make sense of why Misa has been in charge of Marika's training, doesn't it? Marika is her star performer.

Of course, this kind of thing isn't all that Bentenmaru does, and other kinds of piracy will be more serious. And sometimes they do get involved in shooting. But this kind of piracy-by-appointment is lucrative and relatively low risk, and it's probably a big part of their operation.

35

If what Sunflower says is true, then this is nine kinds of illegal for the insurance company and the shipping line. Not for the Bentenmaru, of course; their Letter of Marque covers it. But it's conspiracy and all kinds of other things for the shipping company and the insurance company.

On the other hand, if they're on one of the planets involved in the conspiracy, then the planetary governments are involved in it, too, and the law enforcement authorities will look the other way.

I can even imagine that the insurance company gets huge tax breaks on the liability, which would mean that most of the money that the Bentenmaru is getting (and funneling to the underground) is really coming from the government.

It just all makes too much sense to me. But I've built these kinds of castles-in-the-sky about shows like this in the past and had them tumble down in ruins.

Maybe not in this case; this idea about Mouretsu Pirates isn't any more farfetched than what was eventually revealed in Shingu, and likewise in Martian Successor Nadesico. Sato likes his conspiracies deep and dark and complex.

36 That was pretty much where I went with the idea, except that it might not be illegal under local laws.  It's perilously close to barratry under ours though.

There's one thing that puzzles me -- why is the GE so tolerant of local piracy?  From Misa's explanation, it seems their attitude is "Oh, it's legal under local laws, so it we're ok with it."  I see parallels with the Abh, except they'd never let local planets have space forces, no indeed!  Two things occur to me: 

One, it was sold to the GE as "theater" not real space piracy.  And if something happens that's "real" piracy, well, gosh, there was this debt collection that needed to happen, and they were in the area; see all these nice legal papers to prove we hired them as repo specialists?  I mean, they're flamboyant repo men (and women) but hey, they're effective!

Second, well is the GE a human empire or is it aliens that don't really get these weird humans anyway?  Haven't seen any evidence, so that's probably out there. Castles in the sky, indeed.  

Heh. Maybe they're Time Lords. 

*runs away quickly!*

37 Nothing more than an impression, but  the little blond standing on the balcony in the OP gave me a real "princessy" vibe.  If so, that would indicate the GE is probably Human.  That little scene is also as close to genuine fan service as this series has gotten, in my opinion.  Which is cool.

38 Dave, about the girl on the balcony, she's a princess, but not of the Galactic Empire. And I hope she shows up soon, because she's voiced by Tomatsu Haruka, who's always fun to have around.

Speaking of familiar voices, I checked, and sure enough, Ririka was Yuu in Daphne and Ryomou in Ikkitousen.

-j

39 By the way, did anyone else make a Princess Apricot - Princess Peach connection?

Another thing I like about the series is how individual the character designs are.  To the point that I think of Misa being an escapee from a Rumiko Takahashi flick.

40 J.G.:  Thanks for the info.  As far as I'm concerned, one can never have too many princesses.

41 With that voice, one can hope she'll be more like Princess Leia.

42 I've been holding off asking this, because I didn't want to spark stupid posts until I thought we might already be there, but is this now officially the longest thread ever on Chizumatic?

43 I have no idea. I'm not sure there's any way for me to check, short of manually searching 3900 posts. (Ick.)

44 Frankly, I'm surprised it's gotten this far without anybody mentioning "How Much For Just the Planet?" yet.

45 Well, Marika and Chiaki do have a Kirk/Spock vibe going, but Misa's floor show doesn't really have that over-the-top Plan C feel to it.

-j

46 Chiaki seems to have some issues. I think a lot of her apparent resentment towards Marika is really envy.

47 Idol Pirate Marika: 14 minutes into episode 1, Marika is searching online for information about pirates, and finds an obvious glamour pin-up of Ririka. The costume styling is also similar to Marika's new outfit. The video clip that comes right after the pin-up has her leading the boarding action, not Dad, so it looks like Blaster Ririka was the ship's poster girl back in the old days. In true idol style, Marika might suddenly find herself worshipped by forty-year-old men across the galaxy.

-j

48 That's an interesting concept. And based on episode 6, Marika's got what it takes to be successful at that.

Chiaki clearly doesn't. She's good looking, good enough anyway, but she doesn't have any charisma. She couldn't play up the way Marika does. If Chiaki had been leading that boarding party, it would have been a bust. The audience wouldn't have enjoyed it, and might even have fought back.

And that may be part of her resentment to Marika. When she begged Misa to let her train for the attack, she said that she'd never done anything official. Maybe she's been begging her father to let her try one, and he hasn't allowed it -- because he knows she would put on a terrible show.

Marika did great. She stumbled a bit at the beginning, was a bit hammy, read one line twice, and her fiendish laugh was less than fiendish. (But plenty laughable.)

But once she was on the Princess Apricot, she did great. There was no sign at all of nervousness. She never flubbed any of her lines. She was attractive, but also intimidating. The evil grin on her face when she shot him was perfect, as was her apparent complete lack of concern afterwards.

And she really is nice looking, too. Bentenmaru is going to get a lot of business while she's the captain.

49 Think Misa was the previous poster girl? Between when Ririka retired (pregnant) and now, that's quite a gap. If part of Bentenmaru's rep is that its raiding parties are led by beautiful women, Misa may have been the previous ship's idol.

And that would be the reason she's in charge of training her successor in that job.

50 While Chiaki is clearly deficient in her charisma quotient, I'm guessing when it come to genuine action -- she'll be pretty formidable.

51 Dave, I'm not so sure. When the shooting started in ep 5, Marika handled it better than Chiaki did. (If they'd followed Chiaki's plan, they'd all be dead.)

52 That's most likely true, but I was thinking more of the serious boarding party/hand-to-hand kind of battle.  She already showed she seemed comfortable in that kind of situation in Episode 1.

53 You said that Sato said in an interview that he tried to scrub all romance from the anime, but how much was in the light novels? Your desc. makes it sound like there's little or no opportunity for it. Someone described this type of writing as "female shounen".

1 I think there's at most two scenes worth of material in the epilogue (including Marika coming up to the bridge wearing nothing but a bedsheet), but they might use the rest of the first half of the episode to introduce the ship and the rest of the crew.

I expect the mystery girl from the opening credits to show up before the end of episode 6. The show's web site makes it clear she's important.

Oh, and in her pirate days, mom was apparently "Blaster Ririka", which doesn't surprise me at all.

-j

2 You mean the little blonde with the fancy dress?

3 Yup.

-j

4 Where are you getting that it's based on an epilogue?
A LOT happens, and it's not the sort of thing you'd wanna toss into an epilogue.

I also have a question for Steven in anticipation of Saturday's episode, just for fun.  It said in the preview that Marika goes on her first pirating raid.  Who do you think her target's going to be, and how do you think it's going to work out?

5

J posted a lot of info about the books (spoiler).

Ep 5 was the last chapter of the first book. The preview of ep 6 shows Marika being trained on the Bentenmaru, and the epilogue is titled "Pirate Course". So I'm making a wild-assed guess.

As to who they'll go after, I don't have the slightest idea.

6 Oh, and I'm also making a guess that Sato has rewritten and seriously fleshed out the next segment. I don't think he's slavishly following the books.

1 Three things bother me.  First, I did not see Sakamoto anywhere -- I assume she'll have a cameo, but she has apparently been sidelined by age and loss of her powers. 

Second, there is not a single scene of Miyafuji flying.  This could be "hiding the big surprise," or it could be that the new, taller, Japanese girl is going to be the "POV" character.   In that case, Miyafuji is her hero and mentor (quite plausible given how the second series battles ended), which would involve an entirely new level of character growth for her.

Third is that I have to agree to one of the comments I saw on YouTube; the animation didn't look all that good, except for the ship pr0n.  Perhaps the clips were deliberately low quality, but it really just looked like a big episode.  If it weren't on the Kadokawa channel, I'd suspect someone strung together clips from the series.

2

Sakamoto is one of the characters in the poster art for the movie, and considering how central she was to the rest of the series, I can't see her being demoted to cameo for the movie. The fans would riot.

3 Yes, they would.  But I have three words in response:  Prince of Darkness.

4 Actually, Sakamoto is in the brief, early scene (at about 28 seconds) showing the SWs flying in formation.  Which is weird.  I guess that could be a flashback scene.  Although then you'd think Yoshika would be in it as well.

5 I think it's evident that they deliberately avoided any shot of Yoshika using magic, whether in flashback or in the present.

6 Entirely possible, re: 'hiding the big surprise'.  Also,  I went back and listened to the part where the tall Japanese girl is talking to Miyafuji and Michiko, and it tends to support that the girl at least looks up to Miyafuji.  While my Japanese skills are far inferior to others here, I noticed:
 - She's got only one chevron on her shoulder flash, meaning she's probably a corporal or PFC.
 - Her demenor suggests she's reporting to someone she doesn't just consider a superior, but someone that she doesn't want to even appear to offend in the slightest -- high respect or fear.
- She's introducing herself (I heard a "watashi wa" in there).
- She's being formal or old-fashioned (I also heard a "desu ka?")
- Her age is given as 14, despite her height.  I can't read the kanji with (I presume) her name.

7 She introduces herself as "watakushi wa ... ... ... Tattori Shizuka to moushimas". The spelling is tricky, but I looked it up at jisho.org: æœéƒ¨ 静夏.

8 Given what Yoshika did at the end of the second series, I would imagine that she's become legendary among witches by this point. It wouldn't be surprising if a new witch recruit was intimidated by her.

1 I can't wait to see his explanation of çœŸå©¿.

-j

2 I can't get the page to work, but that's hilarious. 

3 For extra fun, Majutsu refers to the word "magic" only in the western European sense.  It's technically incorrect to refer to any eastern religious tradition as majutsu.  Not, of course, that the guy who made that site has any idea of such things.

4 Hanzi Smatter still exists! (He let his domain lapse, and moved to Blogspot.)