1
Yeah, next week definitely looks like it will reveal some of the secrets that have been lurking since the first episode. I also have my own theory about
mysterious hooded figure at the bar. Could it be that the rumors of his death were slightly exaggerated?And, as always, the next episode is too far away...
Posted by: Siergen at May 19, 2012 10:28 AM (PuIGa)
They used the plural for "Kato", right? That implies more than one. Now, this could be Ririka, but she doesn't seem too worried about her own safety.
So, the idea is that the hooded figure is either Gozaemon or, what I'd actually guess, Marika's uncle. And if it was an uncle, if Marika died, he'd suddenly be pressed into service, right? Lots of interesting possibilities.
The council itself looked like it had military and government officials among them. That'd make a lot of sense. And maintaining the power & utility of a Pirate ship that bases there would be really important. So the truce, while always a very logical thing, finally gets confirmation of why it's operating. It's nice all of the speculation paid off.
Oh, Kane was riffing as "Coach" from Gunbuster. You kind of had to expect that send up to eventually happen in a space series like this.
On the episode as a whole:
Obviously, they're setting up Ai-chan to be a major player in the final story arc. She's still something of our Chiaki stand in, as someone at school with a level of skills that Marika can interact with. Yet, she's quite enjoyable. Seems both realistic and determined to do what she likes. Can appreciate that in an anime character.
Yeah, our "fan service" was Kane, ripped, in a speedo. The body shots of the girls were more revealing in the space suits. Which just kind of goes with this series and doesn't bother me in the least. Oh, and poor Lynn & company, haha. (That was another Gunbuster reference, btw. Running laps was used as punishment by Coach there.)
Plus, a wonderful cameo by Show. He's always trying to steal the show.
The last thing was a little moment at the end. After Kane had finished his whole run as "Coach", Marika corrected him and forced him back into addressing her as Captain. Really subtle moment, but one of those details that is actually really important. I liked that they were mindful of that.
Further thoughts on the "Fairy Godmothers":
It strikes me that the Truce has as much to do with future influence. Since Marika will have a considerable amount of local power when she goes full time, who she aligns with can have major repercussions. If she sides against a set of companies/organizations, she can do significant damage to them.
That would explain a lot of what is going on. And why so many people suddenly showed up in episode 1. They all wanted influence with Marika, but they were likely going to end up fighting each other more than anything else, so they made a mutual decision to let her get up to speed and just save the bidding war for later.
That and Ririka kept a not terribly small arsenal and could make their lives hell if she decided to go against whoever. At the end of the day, she's still Blaster Ririka and a notable pirate in her own right.
Posted by: sqa at May 19, 2012 12:04 PM (fYnLL)
4
If anything, the deferred conflict is even more stark now.
With the Bentenmaru now having the Silent Whisper, it has even more varied and more valuable abilities.
It's easy to see why various factions would want to be on Marika's good side. It isn't so obvious why any of them would want to kill her, unless it's because they fear she might align with their enemies. Bentenmaru's assets are potentially also a threat.
As privateers, and de facto mercenaries, Bentenmaru is a loose cannon.
Marika has already made some serious friends in high places, and I don't just mean Gruier and Grunhilde. The government of Sea of the Morningstar has already done well by her in a lot of ways.
But she's also already made some blood enemies. Taking down Robert Dolittle probably seriously inconveniences some people not to mention frightening them, and maybe that's the story with "The Bisque Company". I hope we find out more about that soon.
5
About the truce:
I think I understand it now. If the conflict was among different groups jockeying for future influence with her, then they must have realized that they were potentially killing the goose that lays the golden eggs.
Too much violence and/or intrigue too early might well have convinced her she wanted nothing to do with it, and in that case the game would be over.
The original truce term was until she got her Letter of Marque, but now it seems to have been extended to when she graduates from high school. And I think it's for the same reason: by that point she's going to be firmly committed to the job. Before then, she still might decide to chuck the whole thing.
6
sqa, in the first episode Misa said that only the
previous captain's "direct descendent" could become the new captain, so if the new face is Marika's uncle, he sounds as though he couldn't become captain.
By the way, I just rewatched the first episode, and there's a lot going on that I missed at first. Little glances and facial expressions that hint at things only revealed later. It also seemed that
the way that Misa and Marika's mother greeted each other was some sort of pass-code. I also got the impression that they were sharing some secret that Kane was not in on.
Posted by: Siergen at May 19, 2012 01:44 PM (PuIGa)
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I don't buy the idea of
an uncle. It's way too late to be introducing previously-unknown relatives. It's also lousy storytelling, and this author seems to be better than that.
8
I've always thought the
"food poisoning" bit was a little hard to -- ahem -- swallow. Also, as much as I like Marika's ability to solve problems peacefully, if she's going to continue on as a pirate, at some point she's going to come up against the necessity of using genuinely "deadly" force. I've wondered if they would deal with that in this show, given the fairly light tone it's maintained. But it looks like we might see some of that play out next week.
Posted by: Dave Young at May 19, 2012 03:30 PM (ZAk0Z)
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Dave, nice choice of words there. I only wish I'd thought of it first. As to the use of
deadly force, I've been wondering that myself. Marika seems to understand that her decisions could put her and her crew (and fellow students) into grave danger, but I don't think she has yet needed to "fire in anger". As I recall, it appeared that the ship that she "flashed" with the Odette's solar sails was left disabled, then driven off by the arrival of other ships.
I can't wait to see if she needs to face that, and if so, will it change her? Will she still be light-hearted and innocent afterwards, or will she become more her like mother?
Posted by: Siergen at May 19, 2012 03:51 PM (PuIGa)
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Based on the preview,
Marika may go into a killing rage next episode. Basically, someone will be shooting at one of her friends in an unarmed dinghy and Marika will be flying the Silent Whisper, which I assume has rapid fire lasers or some equivalent. The look on Marika's face in one clip was terrifying, and the voiceover suggested she might be in a killing mood.
I don't think a member of the yacht club is doing to die. And I suspect that Marika won't actually kill anyone herself. But she'll try, and then afterwards she's going to do a lot of thinking.
Which parallels Gruier's "I almost killed this baby!" moment, and I suspect Gruier is going to talk her through it, having already been there.
And so, in this episode, we meet the princess and prince. They send their doggy-girl maid to the bakery to get some bread:
Her name is Rouna and she's a dojikko. In fact, the other characters call her that after she stumbles and falls one time. But she's also very handy with knives -- in more ways than one.
She delivers a very special order, which has to be specially made, and she helps them prepare it, and it turns out she's very good in the kitchen. Afterwards, all five go to the castle to deliver it.
The princess seems nice enough, but the prince comes off as being a little dark, like maybe he's a villain. He's a bishie, so he has to be a bad guy, doesn't he?
At the very least he clearly has an agenda of some kind. (The kind of show this is, he probably isn't a bad guy and his agenda will probably eventually be revealed as being praiseworthy.)
The law on the island is that anything that come from the sea that isn't edible -- or alive -- has to be turned over to the castle to be evaluated. When Rick was washed ashore, the castle invoked that rule to take his armor and his sword. That's why he hasn't had them until now.
Seems that the castle has been getting robbed. Security there is very tight, with lots of soldiers patrolling, but the thief is way too good for them and they haven't caught him (her). They rather telegraph her identity; I guessed it immediately. Anyway, the prince talked Rick into helping. Rick is a master swordsman. The prince knew this from the stuff he was wearing when he washed ashore. The prince gave him his armor back, plus gave him a standard-issue sword.
Neris turns out to be a master archer. And even though she's clumsy, Rouna knows the castle and is extremely skilled throwing knives. So the three of them patrol the castle that night, and damned near catch the thief. She escapes just at the last moment, but Rick saw her clearly and knows who it is. (He kept it secret; next episode he's going to confront her.)
The fight scenes were pretty cool, and Rick really does seem to know his stuff. I suspect it will turn out that he's the best swordsman on the island, especially once he gets his own blade back. It's pretty clear that the prince thinks he is.
At the end our heroes got some sort of reward from the Prince, which we didn't get to see. Whatever it was, the girls liked it. My guess is that it's money and they'll be able to pay to get their oven repaired. Hank the Dwarf is in the next episode, and I bet they hire him to rebuild it.
UPDATE: The princess, on the other hand, is presenting a nicely calibrated zettai ryouiki, so obviously she's not a bad guy. Right?
I think I need to buy this. A rip of it came by and I took a look. The second BD is four episodes, 03-06. That covers the Lightning 11 arc, and I was curious about something. Spoilers below the fold.
1
DiGi said they fixed up iM@S in weird ways too. It seems like the thing they do. I remember that Rocket Girls were changed quite a bit as well.
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at May 17, 2012 09:30 PM (5OBKC)
2
Yeah, home release corrections like this aren't particularly uncommon these days - I mean, they actually spelt Materialise wrong in the first broadcast episode of My-ZHiME if my memory serves me correctly...
Posted by: DiGiKerot at May 17, 2012 10:01 PM (PTuw/)
3
Another thing they did: I listened to some of the audio. Some parts of that sounds a lot cleaner. There were places in like ep 3 in the Odette II when they originally put a bit of reverb in, but on the BD they took that back out again.
4
I wonder if it's the result of feedback from the American translators, or just from Japanese fans nitpicking it on message boards?
Posted by: Boviate at May 18, 2012 11:19 AM (63JPq)
5
We're not sure which systems on the enemy ship she was attacking, nor
how. If she was able to set the mobile phones in their pockets to
"vibrate", that screen display may in fact be spelled correctly...
Posted by: Siergen at May 18, 2012 05:45 PM (PuIGa)
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I knew someone would go there. I just knew it. Bleah.
One time I decided to watch Mai HiME, and I think I got up to ep 7. But it just seemed too silly and strange, and somehow I never got back to it.
It had a lot of omake when it was released on BD. 28 of 'em. But they aren't fully animated. Mostly voices over still images, sometimes with camera motions. Tonight I went through them all. The vast majority of them are either fan service or angst, if not both. But there were a couple which were weird.
Presented without comment:
Even weirder is that Arika makes a cameo appearance in one of them:
Which has me confused. Mai HiME came out before Mai Otome. Were they in the planning stages for the latter when they were working on the BD release of the former? How could Arika Yumemiya show up, not to mention Mashiro Blan de Windbloom? (Also, how is Arika flying without her robe?)
As to the show itself, I have a feeling I'm not going to watch any more of it. It just doesn't appeal to me. I am vaguely curious about what the heck is going on, but not enough to invest the time to find out.
1
IIRC, unnamed Arika originally showed up in the closing scene of the final episode as a new student. Speculation at the time was that she'd be the protagonist of a direct sequel.
-j
Posted by: J Greely at May 16, 2012 08:52 PM (2XtN5)
2
When Mai Hime came out, BluRays weren't common at all. It's a 2004 series, after all.
If the specials are BluRay-only, then they were made after both series. If they were on the DVDs, the DVDs weren't finished releasing when Mai Otome released. (There was only a 6 month gap)
Still, nothing quite beats the Black Lagoon omakes.
I haven't seen those. Right now my nominee for champion omakes is the ones from Fight Ippatsu Juuden-chan. Tremendously ecchi, but also very witty. The second one gave us tentacles. The fourth one gave us nude food. The fifth was a nude catfight. And the sixth? well, they pulled out the stops for that one.
I just found the first Black Lagoon omake on youtube and took a look at it. No thanks!
In case you want to see the NSFW Juuden-chan omakes, here are my posts about them:
4
The problem with the Black Lagoon omakes is that I can't watch anything involving the vampire twins and really find it funny. Their arc set the standard for senseless violence and tragic brutality in anime.
Not to mention over the top. A loli who carries a BAR under her skirt?
6
The omake features were on the original Japanese DVDs, one per episode.
That scene with Mai and Arika wasn't on the main My-HiME DVD release,
though - it was originally released on the My-HiME Fandisk DVD that was
put out alongside the last DVD volume of the show, by which point ZHiME
had already been announced.
Posted by: DiGiKerot at May 17, 2012 09:44 PM (PTuw/)
It's clear now that Bentenmaru, and presumably the other pirates, get a fair amount of work because they are in a gray area legally. They offer "plausible deniability". They can, and will, take jobs for which there aren't really any more legitimate options. Bentenmaru also has a reputation for being trustworthy, and for doing quality work. And Marika is beginning to get a reputation for miracles...
Now Bentenmaru owns the Silent Whisper. It occurred to me that this opens them up for a lot of new kinds of jobs they couldn't do before. The Silent Whisper is a state-of-the-art spy plane, with terrifically sensitive sensors of various kinds. And word will get around, among the kinds of people who know and care about such stuff. Theirs is probably the one one in the galaxy not belonging to a government or a big corporation. Its services are now for hire, because that's the kind of thing Bentenmaru does.
1
The guy in the speedo was Kane? I guess I need to look at the preview a bit closer, but, honestly, I wasn't looking, haha.
While they might be windsurfing, I don't think we're going to get much in the way of fanservice. Though I said the same thing about Outlaw Star, and that series put every ounce of fanservice in 1 episode, haha.
On the episode:
I think, if you think too hard about the Key-Ring, there's a bit of problem about Marika not noticing it missing for a day. But, at some point, it didn't matter much.
This episode also spent a chunk of time further establishing Ai-chan. She seems to be the surrogate Chiaki "space" character, when she's missing. At some level, it just fills a space for character interaction, but Ai-chan is pretty fun. Shy but spunky type. Plus, it's hilarious watching someone pilot a military craft yet has to stand on a box.
I think the story on Ai is that
she's going to become Kane's protege. They're kindred spirits; he can already tell that just from watching Ai docking the Bentenmaru at the station.
It's not outside the realm of possibility that Courier
will end up with a similar relationship with Lynn. I was thinking this afternoon that during periods when Bentenmaru is idle, because Marika in school, that Courier and Lynn might engage in mock EW battles just for entertainment.
Yeah, I think that was Kane. Who the hell else could it be? It's a bit late to be introducing major new characters in the series. But we do have one coming:
They added a new one to the cast shot at the end of the OP: a little old man, on the left, with a big tall hat. No idea at all yet who he is.
6
About that new possibility
He's been there since at least last week; I noticed then how he blocked Show. With that regalia, I suppose he's from Serenity?
Random observation: Needs more Blaster Miko Chiaki.
If you pay attention to the words in the ED, it's about how scary it is to grow up and become an adult. The first picture of the three/five girls walking is in school uniforms. The second picture is of them wearing working clothes. It isn't cosplay.
Mami is wearing the maid clothes she wears at the cafe. Gruier is in her princess dress. Grunhilde is wearing the uniform she wore when she was in command of the Serenity task force. Marika, of course, is wearing her pirate uniform.
Chiaki is wearing the Barbarossa's work uniform. It's completely practical, and it's probably what she wears when she's working on the Barbarossa. Bentenmaru has an equivalent (worn by both men and women) but the color scheme is different. We saw it when
Bentenmaru's marines were preparing for the Golden Ghost ship.
Chiaki isn't going to become a miko when she becomes an adult, so it wouldn't make sense for her to be wearing one in that scene.
11
Couldn't she at least wear the thing on a chain around her neck? Sheesh.
I did get a little suspicious for a second when they talked about Marika's abilities being hereditary, and referenced the princesses. Please don't tell me that space pirates come from a cloning tank too....
Posted by: Mauser at May 12, 2012 11:45 PM (cZPoz)
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I have this strange feeling that the next-episode preview is highly deceptive.
-j
Posted by: J Greely at May 13, 2012 08:44 AM (2XtN5)
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I hope so. Otherwise, it's going to be another filler. A bunch of fillers to end the season is not good.
No, Marika isn't a clone. It's a comment on being like your family. A well established truth, when it comes to personalities.
Marika has both Gozaemon & Ririka's personality traits and many of their abilities. With training and the proper environment, those abilities were going to come to the forefront. That's what they were talking about.
4
Chizumatic readers are moving the needle to 139 130 now. However, some of the howls of rage in the comments make me a sad panda. The whole excercise is unworthy now that we're taking it too seriously. The A&L is great anime blog and I follow them myself.
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at May 11, 2012 10:33 AM (5OBKC)
Posted by: Mark A. Flacy at May 09, 2012 10:52 PM (Zdi7L)
2
It's not just the tower, though that's probably the most obvious. But if the front of the front hull's in sunlight, so should be the front of the back horizontal hull.
3
Worse than the position of the shadows--that's just not the way light and shadows look in a vacuum. Without atmospheric diffusion things tend to be either all lit up or completely dark.
6
It was in fact stock footage. The same image was used a couple of episodes before, when it actually made sense. The "clue" above was in that earlier episode.
7
Wow, I thought that little purple thing was an image defect, but in fact it's the main pirate ship, name of which escapes me now. This station is HUGE.
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at May 10, 2012 11:28 AM (5OBKC)
The Bentenmaru has reserved docking as long as the crew are in quarantine, and the hospital ship is projecting a hologram at that docking point to hold its place. Just standard procedure.
My question is: Why don't we see anything of the rest of the crew in quarantine? The deputies for the main bridge crew, the engine room guys, Schnitzer's marines - aren't they in any contact at all with the bridge crew? Are they being told anything about what's going on?
I assume that they're not in on everything, but I'd be surprised if Kane or Misa weren't checking on them and telling them Marika has the ship and is conducting some form of piracy, else they'd worry about losing their jobs because of the Letter of Marque, the terms of which don't seem to be any big secret.
Posted by: jcm3 at May 10, 2012 11:31 AM (OU30d)
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Remembering that the crew is under medical observation and quarantine, it's logical to assume that mingling is somewhat discouraging. There is no doubt some communication by phone, etc. And the plot doesn't need for us to see that, so we don't.
I just received a shipment from RACS consisting of the BD versions of AsoIku and Infinite Stratos. I actually already have AsoIku on BD, because I bought the Japanese BDs for the whole series, including the OVA. So I'll look at that one later.
But I thought I'd try watching Infinite Stratos again, just to see if my attitude towards it might have changed since I watched it the first time.
But after two episodes, my opinion remains the same: the battles are really cool and well handled, but the characters are all one dimensional, if not even less dimensional than that. Chifuyu is still a bitch, who badly needs to get the crap kicked out of her. If Houki could get an IS which was powered by angst, she'd never run out of juice. (In fact, she might overload the damned thing.)
Ichika is about as reasonable a protagonist as I could reasonably ask for in a harem show, at least. He's a nice guy, and he's trying pretty hard, and he isn't a lech. He's got guts. He doesn't have a lot of brains, though, which is a pity.
But as a character -- well, he isn't one. He's a situation. He's completely determined by the situation he's in. His shape is determined by the plot hole he sits in.
I vaguely remember that things get better once Charlotte shows up. I don't honestly remember how long that takes. Sure hope it's soon. In the mean time, I recall hating Cecilia the most, and as of the second episode I still do.
Well, not the most. I hate Chifuyu the most. Cecilia comes in second.
My memory was that the high point of the series was the battle where
Ichika and Charlotte as a team took on Houki and Laura. The biggest pleasure was the way Charlotte and Ichika cooperated so well, and were able to leverage their abilities in order to defeat IS's more advanced than their own. Or Charles? maybe that was when Charlotte was still in drag.
But that was only about half way through the series. Then things picked up again, a bit anyway, once Tabane showed up.
I bought this North American BD release for guilt, but I really feel as if I should use them, having paid for them, and that's part of why I'm watching it.
On another note: I really wish they would fix one thing in MPC-64. That's become my regular player program, but for these I have to use Zoom Player.
Neither of them understands the BD's menu format, but that's not really very important. All the episodes are separate files, and it's obvious which ones they are. I can drag-and-drop them individually into the player program. The problem is that they have both English and Japanese sound tracks, and MPC only sees the English one.
Zoom Player sees them both, so I can switch to Japanese. so that's why I have to use it. Which screws me up, because the keyboard shortcuts are all different.
UPDATE: Oh, there was another thing. The internal drive on my computer won't register the first BD of Infinite Stratos. I had to use the external drive to play it. (I've had this happen before. The Plextor USB drive is a lot more forgiving than the internal drive on my notebook computer.)
UPDATE: Ubu got the same thing I did, only he wanted to watch the DVD rather than the BD. And he says the DVD is 4:3. (I haven't looked at it, but I will later.)
1
Not "want." "Have." And I did some experimenting with other DVDs; sure enough it's Sentai. Crazy -- Demon King was 16:9. Clearly they regard the DVD market as an afterthought now.
Maybe I'll invest in a BD player instead of a new computer. Definitely I'll scratch Sentai off my buy list.
2
An external USB BD drive is quite cheap. For instance, this one is only $70. (And Plextor is a good brand. They made my USB BD drive, which has served me well for several years.)
3
I've been mulling an entire new system build to replace Lyar, but haven't been motivated to pull the trigger. Remarked to Dr.Heinous that I'd spend $200 on the latest MTG expansion instead, only to be told, "Your priorities are amuck."
4
One thing I've run into with MPC-HC when playing DVD's is the inability to mimic the arrow keys of a remote. Sure, you can mouse-click on menu items, but certain image gallery features won't work. Unless I'm missing something.
Posted by: Mauser at May 08, 2012 11:12 PM (cZPoz)
5
Charlotte shows up in ep.5.
She's outed to Ichika in ep. 6, and to the rest of the school in 7 or 8.
The question is, just how advanced is Byasuhki (Ichika's mech). Ayako translated an early comment to make it sound like it was somewhere between 2nd and 3rd generation, but later, Tabane is referring to it as if it's better than most 3rd gen mechs. From later in the novels, it's referred to as being a hybrid 3rd/4th.
And the major key seems to be that Byaushki is powered by "Core #001" which only Tabane and Chifuyu know. It appears to be unique, so I'm assuming that Tabane has somehow obtained alien technology and reverse engineered it to produce the IS cores.
But here's what got me when I re-watched it. During the reveal in episode 12, Tabane and Chifuyu discuss the "White Knight incident" from ten years ago. It's been previously established that, ten years ago, over two thousand ballistic missiles were simultaneously launched from multiple countries at Japan for no known reason. Out of nowhere, a white mech shows up, destroys every single missile... and then disappears. The superiority of the IS as a strategic weapon was pretty thoroughly established by this. And Tabane as much as said the White Knight was Chifuyu.
When Chifuyu was having her "hypothetical" conversation with Tabane, after the Gospel incident, she said something to the effect of "hypothetically, this would be child's play for a genius who hacked military computers in 12 countries..." I had an Ichika moment; I thought, "why past tense, and why would she need to hack so many computers to make Silvario Gospel (the U.S.-Israeli mech) go beserk?" Then today, as I re-watched it again, it dawned on me what she was talking about.
Holy insane risks, Batman. Tabane is truly psychopathic, but my question is, did Chifuyu know it was a setup at the time?
