Miniskirt Space Pirates, Volume 2 Ougon no Yureisen (ミニスカ宇宙海賊 2 黄金の幽霊船) opens with a stowaway on the Bentenmaru and ends with two transfer students into Hakuoh Academy’s Yacht Club. In between is a centuries-old mystery, a gene bank in the form of a golden spaceship, and several space battles, all of which make for a rollicking tale of intrigue and space piracy.
If you are watching the Bodacious Space Pirates anime, this novel is the arc on Disk 2 of Volume 1. Seventh Princess of the Serenity Royal Family, Gruier Serenity, (with an uncanny resemblance to another princess named Serenity,) hides away on the Bentenmaru, in hopes of hiring the pirate ship to assist her in finding the Legendary Gold Spaceship.
Marika befriends the Princess and accepts the commission because who wouldn’t? ^_^
We get to experience Marika’s newfound confidence as Captain of the Bentenmaru and watch her crew rally around her with complete support of her decisions.
Nothing in the novel is significantly different from the anime, right down to the secret underground restaurant at the space relay station where Ririka works. (Or, I should say, if there were differences my Japanese wasn’t up to noticing them.)
The key point of the arc is that Marika has stepped into her father’s shoes and found that they fit rather well. And now we have a Princess or two on our side. ^_^
Ratings:
Overall – 8
Interestingly, this book series is getting links for Kindle versions which don’t yet exist on Amazon JP. I’d love it if they put this series on Kindle, I’d like to see if I could buy the next book that way. I bet there’s region restrictions, though. Oh well, on to Volume 3, however I can get it. ^_^
It’s only fair that some (so very few) region locks block out Americans ;)
I figured someone would say that. ^_^
On Kindle, most regions block out each other. A woman last year lost her account for buying Kindle books while in another country. Another obvious absurdity to add to the list of region-blocking absurdities.
Indeed, Kindle region-locks are among the most absurd out there.
I bought mine a year or so before Amazon opened a Kindle market on their French website. When they did so, they almost forced me to switch to the French website and now I cannot buy e-books from amazon.com… Funny thing is I was region-locked from plenty of content even before the switch.
Pure region-locks (by that I mean when there is no equivalent product available in the client’s region) make no sense whatsoever.
I must say, however, that the situation is clearly evolving in the right direction. I am banging my head against fewer region-locks as time goes by. Yeah for change!
I’ve been told that Amazon.JP region-blocks pretty much all Kindle content to outside regions. No surprise, really. ^_^;
Japanese publishers aren’t even happy with book exports, for some reason.
@dm00 Probably because they see piracy as a foreign thing. I will say this, Japan actually arrests people who upload and share other people’s IP. In the US, I imagine the police would stare at one blankly if one made that complaint.