Marika gets her letter of marque and the real fun is about to begin.
What They Say:
Marika has decided to become a pirate captain. She fills out all the forms, but there’s a clause she didn’t know about: She has only 50 days to do an actual piracy mission, or her Letter is invalid.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
After the fun that was the Odette II storyline in the past couple of episodes, it’s a bit odd to be back on the planet again with Marika being very girlish in a high school kind of way. While she excelled at what she did in space, it didn’t quite register to her what she was actually doing in a way to become a pirate captain. While she had hoped to go back to a bit of fun, she’s ctually got a lot of things to go through to become a legal pirate captain. Paperwork is the bane of everything even when you’re a pirate and that means lots and lots of paperwork, places to go and people to see. It’s a cute little montage piece that works nicely to showcase a bit more of the world and to imprint on her the overall seriousness of it and that it is very much a legal thing once she gets her letter of marque.
Marika also finally starts to work with the crew of the Bentenmaru to some degree as she begins to go through the real training aspect of it. Simulated training of course only gets you so far, but they know how she handles pressure from the Odette II adventure and what they need to see is more of how she handles this ship and her crew itself. With only seven weeks to get things fully underway and running, she has a pretty good run here where over time we do see that she’s doing things less by instruction and what’s expected and more by what she thinks and feels herself, letting instinct take over. And she gets an added boost when Chiaki is brought on to undergo the training for a bit as well which makes it a bit more fun for Marika but also for the viewer.
Marika gets a good bit of training beyond just the ship itself as we get some physical combat material and more, but it’s all leading towards her actual debut. Which is admittedly a little comical as it gets underway with her reading from a manual, and the sense of humor that starts to come from it, but eventually it all does start coming together in a really amusing way. There’s a certain romanticism to pirates in this time and place of history, especially with the legal side of pirates out there, and seeing that does just feel a little weird. But she has a pretty good crew on her side and watching her first mission become a realized event and handled well brings a smile just like the series has from the start, even as Marika deals with the issues of what Ririka would have done herself in this position.
In Summary:
The stagecraft of being a pirate with a letter of marque is a lot of fun to watch here and seeing the way Marika goes from a simple schoolgirl – not a ditz, a problem child or just a wallflower – to someone with a chance to have a command and to do it in the right way is just right. While we’ve had some exposition on what a pirate is like in this time period, we get a full on proper look at it this time around as she takes on the role with gusto after much training. It’s surprisingly fun in a way that surprised me as I wasn’t sure exactly how they’d handle this kind of position when you get down to it. It has solid execution and a real sense of fun and adventure here and a great sense of play as well. The series is definitely picking up, but it has so many ways it can go from here that it still leaves you wondering exactly what direction it will take.
Grade: B
Readers Rating: [ratings]
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Sony KDS-R70XBR2 70″ LCoS 1080P HDTV, Dell 10.1 Netbook via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.
