Archive for the Bodacious Space Pirates Category


Bodacious Space Pirates Anime, Disk 1 (English)

January 22nd, 2013

“In a world where pirates are hired by collateral insurance companies….”

High school student Katou Marika learns that she is the only child of a Space Pirate Captain and, additionally, learns her mother was a famous pirate. Simultaneously showing natural talent at leadership and decision-making and working her ass off to learn how to be a space pirate, Marika makes it look like any of us might be able to do it, if we just apply ourselves. And who among us hasn’t wanted to be a space pirate?*

Joined by the experienced crew of her Father’s ship, the Bentenmaru,  and assisted by the members of the “Yacht Club” of her elite high school, Marika takes on any number of surprisingly fun adventures.

For anyone who has not yet watched this series, let me address the title issues: The word bodacious was probably a 19th century neologism formed from “bold” and “audacious.” Linguistic drift has added the usage of voluptuous, or even more crudely, large-breasted. The original definition certainly applies, but the latter definition is rather more inapplicable. Marika is indeed bold and audacious. This series has some, but not very much, and relatively mild fanservice. With a name like that you’d be sensible to think it was far worse than it is.

In short, this is a fun space opera that stars high school girls taking control of their circumstances, learning to make decisions, carrying out plans and building a future. All things that guarantee I will enjoy a series.

Several people have pointed out Sentai Filmworks’ salacious and irrelevant marketing copy in their reviews, but as this is the company that has always insisted on translating “Yuri” as “girl-on-girl” despite many protests, I feel that complaining that the copywriters and translators are Fanboys is redundant. Yes, they are, and that will not change because we find it annoying. As I said recently, being critical about translation choices is the least clever thing you be on the Internet. It’s Sentai, it’ll be skanky. If their ad copy makes you sad,  write them – again – and give them guidance on how to be better at their jobs. ^_^

I purchased the Blu-Ray for the series because it was a mere $4 more than the DVD. Clearly I am broken, because I genuinely do not see the difference. Well, occasionally the CGI looks worse than I remember it being when I watched it at lower resolution. ^_^

For fans of space opera, I strongly recommend this series. It’s just a whole lot of fun. ^_^ Available on DVD, Blu-Ray or legal online stream for free (region-blocking may apply.)

Ratings:

Art – 7
Character – 9
Story – 9
Yuri – 1…for now
Service – Despite every effort, a mere 3

Overall – 8

*Well, okay, actually I haven’t ever wanted to be a space pirate, because I’m pretty sure I’d get sick in zero-gravity. ^_^;





Light Novel: Miniskirt Space Pirates, Volume 1 (ミニスカ宇宙海賊(パイレーツ))

August 8th, 2012

When I was in Tokyo last December, I found, picked up and put down the same one novel over and over. I’d see the cover and think “Oooh!” pick it up, see that the title was Miniskirt Space Pirates and put it down again. I must have done that half a dozen times.  Well, I sure felt like I had dropped the ball on that when I started to watch the Bodacious Space Pirates anime. ^_^;; So, later that winter I added the first volume of  Sasamoto Yuuichi’s novel series, Miniskirt Space Pirates (ミニスカ宇宙海賊(パイレーツ) to my Amazon JP order.

It’s taken me a few months to get through this book, but right off the top, I have to say that it was totally worth it. I am glad I had seen the anime first, because a great deal of the kanji in this novel is above my reading level. Having context for what was going on meant that I missed less than if I had been reading this cold.

The story is pretty much the same as it is in the anime. The first novel is covered by the first 5 episodes of the anime and there is strikingly little changed or cut out. I expected long, lingering obsessive descriptions of ships or technology (as one gets in military and gun-fetish manga and novels) but…no. This is classic Space Opera – the technology takes second place to the people. The only semi-major fact that was changed for the anime (and I have no idea at all why it was…) is that Marika’s mother, Ririka, in the anime was a Bentenmaru crew member who was nicknamed Blaster Ririka. In the novel she was a captain in her own right and was known as Captain Ririka (a name she puts quickly aside when it’s brought up in the story.) The scene where she teaches Marika how to shoot in a combat situation actually is a rather touching mother-daughter bonding moment. ^_^

Other than that, I felt no major changes were made. Which was all to the good. One of the key things I liked about the anime was that the girls of the Hakuoh Jogakuin yacht club were left to find their way through various situations on their own. Neither Misa nor Kane, Bentenmaru crewmembers acting as faculty advisors, stepped in as the Odette was being tracked or hacked into. Jenny, Lynn, Chiaki, Marika and the members of the yacht club are allowed to make their own choices. They are given the opportunity to be as brave and competent as they can be  – and they rise to the challenge.

As usual when I complete a novel, my wife asked me “Did you like it?” Unreservedly, the answer this time is…yes. I will have to up my reading game for the next one.

Ratings:

Overall – 8

I have one small complaint. It comes at the very end of the book when Marika’s captain’s costume is described. We are told that Marika’s costume include a miniskirt for ease of movement. Dear men – miniskirts are not easier to move in. They are considerably *less* easy to move in than longer, looser and more flowy skirts or pants. Please stop using that as a reason to put the girl in a miniskirt, it just makes you look pervy *and* dumb.

Oh…the title? Editors decided to name the series that. So…yeah.





It’s A Woman’s World: Bodacious Space Pirates, Maria-sama ga Miteru and The Bechdel-Wallace Test

July 10th, 2012

Bodacious Space Pirates came to an end and I thought it delightful in every possible way. As I (over)thought how I’d approach a final season review, I started to think about the qualities that made the series stand out for me – and what, specifically, that meant in terms of storytelling. And, ultimately, I started thinking about how the series portrayed women.

Courtney Duckworth on Broad Recognition has a really excellent review of Pixar’s Brave, in which she discusses something that any woman in the corporate world knows…to be a successful woman, you have to be a man. I remember a conversation I had with a young executive who was being groomed for a CEO position in the company I worked for at the time. He was having a little crisis because, in order to be the man they wanted him to be, he had to give up his family life. It was expected, respected and demanded that he not be there to see his kids play in their first ball game, not attend recitals, because his company needed him. I watched him as he talked his way through this, as he justified letting his family drop off in importance and the company become the thing he would care about. In the end, he became a very successful CEO, and I remember this conversation as the saddest one I have ever had with another human being. For women, who are presumed to be primary caregivers, the stress of letting go of family in order to be successful as a CEO is almost insurmountable. Let someone else raise your kids? (Doesn’t matter if it’s your husband…it’s NOT YOU.) You’re heartless. Focused and driven? You’re a bitch. Want to take time off to see your kid’s recital? You’re not dedicated. There is no way to win, because you are not a man with a wife who will watch the kids in the background.

Merida, like Ermina (Paros no Ken), Safire (Princess Knight) and Lady Oscar (Rose of Versailles), excels at men’s skills, in a world that pretty much has one path to excellence – being as brave and competent as a man.

Let’s stop here and take a look at the Bechdel_Wallace Test for a second. As a reminder, the test goes like this.

1. [The media in question] has to have at least two [named] women in it.
2. Who talk to each other
3. About something besides a man

In a recent email exchange with Alison Bechdel, she and I discussed the idea of “would Mo watch it?” as an unwritten, extra factor to measure if a media property follows the letter, but not the spirit of the Test (that is, it fits the criteria strictly, but it’s still not the kind of thing that Mo is looking for in entertainment). ^_^

So what does this have to do with Bodacious Space Pirates and Maria-sama ga Miteru? Everything.

Let’s start with Maria-sama ga Miteru. In the rarified and protected world of Lillian Girls’ School there are no “men’s jobs.” The leaders of the student body are women, the Principal and many of the teachers are women. The presumption with which the entire series is presented to us is that Youko or Sachiko or any of the other members of the Student Council  will move into positions with decision-making power when they graduate – if not effortlessly, then they will certainly be capable of standing up for themselves, because they have been trained to be leaders. No one ever comments that they are as good as men, or that they run the student body with masculine focus. Lillian is a woman’s world and within it, women do jobs women can do, if they are give the opportunity to do them. (This is something that research bears out – given equal opportunity to excel, women will excel equally.)

In Bodacious Space Pirates, Marika is going to school in a woman’s world, but she isn’t thinking about it that way, any more than Yumi was. It’s just…school. Then something changes and Marika is indeed sent into a world that is traditionally inhabited by men – piracy. And here, at last, we get to the point. It’s true that Marika faces some trials based on the fact that she’s y’know, a high school girl, but her gender alone is less of a problem than one might have expected in a series like this. Being a woman doing “man’s work” is pretty much never an issue, except in one or two totally valid scenes. (Two young women trawling the back alleys of a pirate hangout is a completely reasonable use of that kind of tension.)

Both these series star female characters in a relatively female-heavy cast, and so they both fly through the letter of the Bechdel-Wallace Test easily. But…there’s more to them. In neither series is there a focus on turning a sexualized male gaze on the characters. It really doesn’t matter how “strong” a female character is – when we are forced to stare continually at their crotch or chest, there’s a different story being told – “Yes, she could kick your ass, but it’s okay, you could still have sex on her, so you’re still superior to her..”

Let’s think, for a second about the inevitable “beach episode” in Bodacious Space Pirates. In any other series, if I ask you, “What was the beach episode about?” the only real answer you’d have is “It was about reducing the female characters to a series of sexualized visual images.” Now think about the beach episode of BSP. What was it about? The plot was the trial run for the dinghy race, but it was *about* Ai-chan. In any other series, would there have been an entire episode about a relatively unimportant character like Ai-chan? Would there have been a follow-up episode about her? Would she have been developed as more than a name at all?  There was no attempt to turn Marika or any of the characters into a pair of jiggling boobs.  Yes, we absolutely saw the female characters in bathing suits…but we also saw Kane in a bathing suit. He was not ripped, but he was fit. We saw his ass as many times as we saw the girls’. I don’t care about *either* the girls or Kane in a bathing suit, but the service was pleasantly even-handed and blessedly low-key. It would have been hideously easy (and hideous) to simply stare up the Yacht Club members’ skirts all the time, as anime as a genre slides into a low place in which a majority of viewers seem content to huddle – but that does not happen here.

Both these series have female-heavy casts, but not female-exclusive casts. These are not reverse harems, not reverse shounen series. There are brothers, fathers, uncles, male teachers, colleagues and crew in these worlds, just as there are in the real world. A woman’s world in these series does not mean “the exclusion of all men,” as it might in a male gaze fantasy like Strawberry Panic!  These women have society, which is, in my reading of it, the meaning of the third and final criteria of the Bechdel-Wallace Test.

Maria-sama ga Miteru and Bodacious Space Pirates are about strong women as *I* understand the concept. Women who are perfectly capable living in a world populated by men and women; women who can take command of both men and women and be respected as leaders – and who are not judged by a set of standards that are skewed so they can only ever fail. Women who can find their own solutions to issues, not to have to excel at men’s thinking or men’s skills to be considered a success.

In these series, women are shown as being as brave and competent…as a woman.

Would Mo watch these? I think she might.





Bodacious Space Pirates Gets Film Project

July 1st, 2012

Not from Anime Expo, (and many thanks to YNN Correspondent Cryssoberyl for the heads up) announced after the final episode aired, Bodacious Space Pirates is getting a Film project.

Nice….!





Yuri Anime: Bodacious Space Pirates (English)

April 29th, 2012

Back in February, I was persuaded by longtime Okazu reader, Cryssoberyl, to watch a new anime called Bodacious Space Pirates. Due to the salaciousness of the name I was a little hesitant, but was quickly absorbed in what I consider to be a very fun story. I did my preliminary review at that time.

Another reader, Helen, pointed out that Jenny and Lynn were a couple and another longtime reader, DezoPenguin, pointed out that they are a couple in the novels…and when they director said there’d be no romance in the series, fans were devastated that that meant Jenny and Lynn too….

(These two paragraphs are a perfect example of why I value my Yuri Network so highly! I didn’t know any of this, and was glad to learn it all from you.)

The upshot of all of this? Well…the director lied. And gosh I am so happy to say that. ^_^

In episode 17, Jenny and Lynn are reunited in front of the Hakuoh Yacht Club, acting as provisional Bentenmaru crew…with a kiss. Actually two kisses, just to make the point. ^_^

 
And, as service-y as it was, Jenny is dressed as a bride because she was supposed to have been married and Lynn is dressed like Lady Oscar because the director is not a moron. ^_^
 
I have been enjoying the heck out of this series as it streams (free! legally! on Crunchyroll) and I had every intention of buying it when Sentai Filmworks releases it on DVD. (Can I be cynical again? Who wants to bet that Sentai licensed it because of the title and will be disappointed….?) ^_^ Now, even moreso, for obvious reasons.
 
In any case, Bodacious Space Pirates is now a Yuri Anime and has pretty much entered the race for Top Yuri Anime of 2012.
 
Ratings:
 
Art – Generally meh, exceptionally bad for this episode, but whatever
Story – Fun, with a light coating of awesome
Characters – Fantastic and getting better
Yuri – There’s Yuri! Squee!
Service – 1 and that’s why I say…
 
Overall – 10
 
Two anime ratings at 10 in a row? I’m getting soft.  ^_^