Stowaway Princess sounds like the name of a whole other interesting series.
What They Say:
The stowaway has come aboard the Bentenmaru in search of Captain Kato to ask a favor. It’s a simple favor, which puts Marika and the crew in a new battle that can’t be solved with piracy.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
With the discovery of a stowaway on the ship, Marika and the others go through a fairly simple process to get to the revelation point as it’s not filled with pointless violence or extended dialogue that doesn’t get anywhere. Within the first few minutes we discover that the stowaway is actually Princess Gruier from the Serenity royal family and she’s gone missing recently. With her now on board, Marika takes the right approach by being friendly with her and trying to work a solution that will make everyone happy. Unfortunately, there’s a battle escort fleet that’s looking for her, so all Marika can do is work a little bureaucratic magic and brings her back to her own home world where Gruier gets to enroll in school.
While this does happen a bit too quickly and easily for my tastes, it is a fairly logical thing for her to do as it gets Gruier out of the main spotlight and as is said later on, hides her in the middle of a forest of trees. Gruier may stand out in the school and people know who she is, but it’s not something that the Serenity royal family can do anything about in the short term without going through channels themselves. This lets Gruier have the time away from things to get acclimated and for Marika to start to get a bit more information about what’s going on and what organizations may be manipulating things in order to get their hands back on Gruier.
As events spend their time on planet, we do get to have a bit of fun as both Marika and Gruier spend some time together and it brings in som eof the simple kind of humor that has marked the series well so far. There are light moments of levity that are appropriate and situational rather than being the main focus or going over the top. It helps to make Gruier a bit more personable without going to deeply into things, humanizing her simply and quickly. And it’s important to do as events start to pick up in regards to the Serenity military fleet that’s coming to deal with the situation. With Gruier having to spend some time with the crew until things are resolved, they do a nice job of easing her into the situation without having her become the complete and utter focus. And she doesn’t cause problems either which is a very welcome change of pace.
In Summary:
Moretsu Pirates has a pretty good episode here that does advance the story a couple of increments without making it seem like it’s dragging its feet. It also doesn’t feel like it’s trying to get through it quickly either. The series pacing has been one of its stronger points for me, even though I suspect it’ll play out better in marathon form, and this episode is no exception. The introduction of Gruier is pretty well handled and she seems like an interesting superficial character that we won’t know well but may have a bigger role down the line. The interesting parts to watch is how Marika handles the situation when they discover who she is and what’s at stake and how the crew works the situation on her orders to get things accomplished. The crew is really coming together well as Marika gets familiar with things and this bears it out nicely.
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.
