Well, they survived it. And then we got a whole lot of reveals. Yikes! Looks like they're going to give us one hell of an ending for the series.

Marika really does have guts. She's really becoming a major league pirate captain; there's no way she would still be considered a "trainee". Her command presence during this battle was superb; she was constantly thinking, and reacting to the situation in intelligent ways.

Bentenmaru engages the Grand Cross. It's obviously an uneven fight; Grand Cross has the firepower of a major fleet. So Marika doesn't intend to slug it out, because she'll lose that and everyone will die. Rather, she wants to find a way to escape. It's a tense battle, but eventually she does manage to escape.

Bentenmaru takes a lot of damage, but apparently no one is killed, and the ship is still operational. They reach the location of the pirate council, and it turns out to be a pretty substantial installation. Among other things, there are space docks, and Bentenmaru uses one because it needs a lot of repairs.

Marika also decides to spring for a bunch of upgrades. (By the way, I believe this. Between their reward from Gruier, and the fact that money is starting to flow in from Jenny, right now Bentenmaru's bank account is in pretty good shape.) The only thing specifically that we heard of is vastly increased communications equipment, sufficient to permit command of a fleet. But I assume there's more to it than that.

The gorgeous blonde babe was indeed Courier. When she needs to flirt, she's damned good at it. (And she seems to have a different voice. Which was good; Courier's normal voice doesn't fit the blonde bombshell image she was trying to present.)

Meanwhile, they started tossing all sorts of X-files plot developments at us. There's a spy aboard Bentenmaru. Misa figures out who it is and neutralizes the spy. (With extreme prejudice. Misa is a good shot.) As previously leaked, Kane does have a twin brother. Like as not, the other one works for the Parabellum. He's the one with the ahoge; that's how we tell them apart.

And at the end we see that Ririka has taken the job of pilot on the Parabellum, which I expected. I'm willing to bet money now that "Ironbeard" is Gonzaemon. (There's going to be a confrontation between Ririka and Ironbeard next episode, and I think we'll learn a lot from it.)

The strangest event in the episode was a visit by the captain of Grand Cross. She identifies herself as Quartz Christie. She was impressed by Marika, the first pirate captain whose ship survived a fight with Grand Cross.

Next episode is the council. Marika is going to address it, and present a plan. And it may be that Quartz Christie will be there, too. It's going to be interesting. (To say the least.)

(What I want to know is why the next ep preview shows Chiaki hiding under a blanket. It isn't like her.)

UPDATE: It seems to me that Grand Cross let Bentenmaru escape at the end. If Quartz Christie is looking for challenges to test out her prototype battleship, then I think she was impressed enough with Bentenmaru that she decided to let them escape, repair, upgrade (potentially) and then try for a rematch.

Bentenmaru fired on Grand Cross, but there's no way Grand Cross took enough damage to prevent it from continuing to fight.

None of which takes anything away from Marika's performance in the battle. It was brilliant.

Something that bothered me: Misa seemed pretty cavalier about shooting a fellow crewmate. The evidence she cited for her suspicion seemed a bit weak for such a drastic step. I hope it comes out later that she had surreptitiously taken a scan of the spy in sick bay, and confirmed the swap. (I wonder where the original is?)

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in General Anime at 09:07 AM | Comments (19) | Add Comment
Post contains 657 words, total size 4 kb.

1 Is Chiaki hiding from her true feelings towards Marika?  As I recall, they do share the same cabin when's she's aboard.  Probably not, but I can always hope...

I wonder what happened to Luka, and when?  Maybe while they were in the hospital...

Posted by: Siergen at June 16, 2012 09:20 AM (PuIGa)

2 I imagine that is the story with Chiaki. It sure isn't fear of violence. Chiaki is solid as a rock when the shooting starts.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at June 16, 2012 09:47 AM (+rSRq)

3

"Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result." -- Winston Churchill

I think that's why Hyakume was so cheerful when Bentenmaru was in the space dock. He was almost giddy.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at June 16, 2012 09:57 AM (+rSRq)

4 Marika is short a crew member now. If Marika proposes a pirate fleet action against the Grand Cross, then I bet she uses Chiaki as her navigator during that action.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at June 16, 2012 11:48 AM (+rSRq)

5 There's so much that needs to explained/resolved, and only two episodes to go!  I don't see how they can avoid leaving dangling plot threads when this season is over.  I just hope they do well enough in Japan to get picked up for a second season...

Posted by: Siergen at June 16, 2012 12:31 PM (PuIGa)

6

I have confidence in Sato. His story telling has been sure and careful all along; I don't think he's going to botch it up.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at June 16, 2012 01:06 PM (+rSRq)

7 But, well, you're right. Really does seem like there's going to have to be a huge block of exposition some time soon. Making an android duplicate of Luca and making the swap some time was a huge effor on someone's part. Why was the Bentenmaru, in particular, treated this way?

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at June 16, 2012 01:32 PM (+rSRq)

8 Regarding Luca: up until the last attack on the Bentenmaru, all the pirate ships seem to have been attacked while on their way to an insurance company-sponsored job.  That made them easy to find.  The Bentenmaru was en route to a supposedly secret base, so they would have been harder to find without a spy on board.

Of course, that doesn't explain the other pirates attacked on their way to the council.  Maybe knowing the final location makes it possible to predict places where a starship will be in normal space between FTL jumps.  Space is really big, and in three dimensions, but FTL physics might preclude certain areas as safe jump points.

Posted by: Siergen at June 16, 2012 02:15 PM (PuIGa)

9

Except that the spy has to have been planted a long time ago -- and that means that it has to have been planted even longer ago.

My guess is that Luca was replaced at the hospital, and that the early-release of the animals was intended to give the bad guys the opportunity for the swap.

That was long before the Grand Cross began its predation. So there's something <i>really deep</i> going on.

I'm entertaining this theory: It is Gonzaemon as captain of Parabellum. The bad guys know he's alive, and know he's involved in something the bad guys don't want. They're picking on Marika because they're trying to lure Gonzaemon out of hiding.

But it hasn't been working, because Marika has been handling all the crises herself, without any help from him. Once it became clear that she was that formidable, the bad guys decided they needed to know more about her, and that's when they decided to plant the spy.

One possibility here is that Sato really isn't going to resolve a lot of this. Maybe Sato, and Satelight, are planning a second series, and always were planning one. That's happened before.

After all, as best we know, we aren't even into the third light novel yet, right?

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at June 16, 2012 02:56 PM (+rSRq)

10 Rats. "has to have been planned even longer ago."

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at June 16, 2012 02:56 PM (+rSRq)

11 The last scene of the last episode: It'll be Marika making a pirate raid, and the last line will be Saa! Kaizoku no Jikan da!

Of that I'm certain. But I'm almost as certain it'll be Marika and someone else saying that together. I used to think it would be Marika and Ririka. Now I'm thinking it's going to be Marika and Chiaki. I think that Chiaki is going to become part of the crew of Bentenmaru. (Best case, Chiaki will be wearing the miko costume.)

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at June 16, 2012 03:23 PM (+rSRq)

12 "Send it to our lady on the outside."  Would that be Ririka?  Also, judging by the reacton of the guy in the booth when he saw Courier's ear ring, the Bentenmaru has gotten itself one HELL of a reputation.

Posted by: Dave Young at June 16, 2012 05:19 PM (ZAk0Z)

13 Hyakume was referring to Courier, who was outside the space dock.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at June 16, 2012 05:40 PM (+rSRq)

14 Yeah, that's logical.  The second guy repeating the phrase the way he did led me to believe there was some deeper meaning to it...but the simpler answer makes more sense.  Reading too much into a piece of throw-away dialog.

Posted by: Dave Young at June 16, 2012 06:40 PM (ZAk0Z)

15

Bentenmaru fired on Grand Cross, but there's no way Grand Cross took enough damage to prevent it from continuing to fight.

True, but Grand Cross does seem to need a cool-down period  and/or its dervish maneuver takes a huge amount of energy and can only be maintained for a limited time. Benten Maru's escape may indeed have been legit.

Regards Kane: In the first episode he seemed initially unimpressed with this part of space and Sea of Morningstar in particular, like he was slumming. Perhaps he's from the Parrabellum's stomping grounds and this is Hicksville by comparison.

In the preview: It does appear that Quartz Christie makes an appearance at the meeting. I don't think the fight is actually between Ironbeard and Ririka, it's a quick edit, however, on Crunchyroll @ 23:53 Ironbeard seems to be bowing before Quartz Christie (that does appear to be her posterior).

Regards Chikaki under the sheets, Siergen, you have...issues. It's obviously that she does not like Brussles Sprouts and the  Legendary Chef  has announced he is going to fix them.
^{(full disclosure: that last bit's not actually obvious at all)}

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at June 17, 2012 12:46 AM (EJaOX)

16 I have 2 things to say about this episode:

One: this came very close to being a "wham episode" and misses only because of the excellent foreshadowing.  That it wasn't such didn't lessen the enjoyment at all.

Two: I have obtained proof positive that inanimate devices have personalities.  Evil ones.

Posted by: ubu at June 17, 2012 11:50 AM (GfCSm)

17 On the Light Novels:

I believe the Yacht Club goes Pirating was the entire 3rd Novel, so they've knocked off Novels 1-3.  Since that ended, it's been anime original.  However, per information, Novels 4-6 are one entire story arc, just in 3 parts, and 7 & 8 operate in a changed environment from the end of 6.  (Though I have no idea if part of this story is out of Novel 7) 

So, there's a ton of content for another 2 course show (LN 4-6 or 4-7), if the series was profitable enough.  They're not really boxing themselves in, either.  Though events do diverge a bit between the LN and the Anime a decent bit.

Posted by: sqa at June 17, 2012 12:48 PM (/vL6w)

18 You're right, I just looked again. The second LN is Golden Ghost Ship. The third LN is Hakuoh Pirates.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at June 17, 2012 02:11 PM (+rSRq)

19 "It's obviously that she does not like Brussles Sprouts and the  Legendary Chef  has announced he is going to fix them."

It's most likely something of that general nature--something that pokes a hole in her aloof act.

Posted by: jcm3 at June 17, 2012 07:23 PM (OU30d)

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