Mouretsu Pirates

Even though Mouretsu Pirates doesn't deliver on the potential of its first few episodes, it still ends up being an enjoyable and light hearted show, even if it suffers from incredibly slow pacing and the loss of its seriousness and realism.

Despite the silly premise of a high school girl becoming a space pirate, the show was originally very grounded, the technology was not too farfetched and along with the bureaucracy of getting the Letter of Marque and the electronic warfare, it impressed me with just how realistic it was. Everything seemed to have procedure which compared to most futuristic sci-fi shows was impressive and a ... welcome change. However, we come here to our first problem; part of the director's job is to edit out the unimportant sections from the original light novel to make the series concise, but in Mouretsu Pirates nothing was removed. Therefore there is a large amount of dialogue consisting of unnecessary technical talk which soaks up a massive amount of time, leading to episodes where very little is achieved. If you are impatient, watching this will be painful at times, particularly towards the end you start hoping that they'll speed everything up.

This pace also means that there is very little characterization and no character development, which is a pity because you'll want to find out more about the crew of the Bentenmaru who are instantly likable and are often a joy to watch. You'll wonder about the backgrounds of some of the side characters, but will never find out anything about them, at the end you may even wonder what they even contributed to the show. Of the two main protagonists, Marika was a pleasant surprise as I was expecting some moe character trope, and instead got a level headed protagonist that thinks things through, is responsible and has a flare worthy of a pirate, although things go her way far too much. Chiaki is a lovable tsundere who's love of parfaits will usually get a smile on your face, usually acting as the straight girl in the various frivolous situations at school and at the cafe.

As you get further into the series, the series becomes much harder to take seriously, not so much with the plot or the enemies, but conveniences like a major corporation not having good security on their data and recorded phone conversations, or a machine gun being fired at a bunch of high school girls but conveniently missing everyone, or even the fact that Marika has better pirating skills than those with many more years of experience. Nothing that the plot throws at the Bentenmaru feels threatening because you know Marika will come up with some plan and the situation will all resolve itself without much difficulty. This is problematic for the last arc where there's supposed to be danger and tension and you can't feel it at all, let alone take it seriously. This makes it all incredibly underwhelming, and without the music it would have been even worse.

In regards to the music, it really grabbed my attention in the first few episodes, having some really notable tracks in a selection that really suited the setting of both space and the school well. I doubt I'll forget the lead track used in the preview and recap for some time. The animation is very good, with one of the best uses of CGI I've seen to date, as for the consistency occasionally the faces are slightly off model but other than that it's very stable, with no episodes that aren't pleasing to the eye. The art is very good, particularly that of Marika's home town, making me wish that more scenes had taken place there, as I feel it's a pity that it was mostly limited to the Bentenmaru's interior. The OP is energetic to say the least and you'll either love it or hate it, I liked the ED "LOST CHILD" by Momoiro Clover Z, being glad that it stayed for both cours.

Whilst it suffers from very slow episodes, on the whole the series is very enjoyable, and there is plenty to keep you amused, from high school girls pirating whilst cosplaying to surprise yuri, and dynamic battles to flashy outfits. There's plenty of funny moments, and many times where you can't wait to see how the arc will end, so overall, whilst Mouretsu Pirates is a very flawed anime, it's a lively and boisterous show that you'll appreciate so long as you have the patience to get through the slower episodes.

This show suffers from two major problems. First, it's ridiculous. While it manages to be pretty watchable anyway, a better show would been more believable. Prime example: the way the letters of marque work is completely nonsensical. That alone could kill the whole thing for some people. Second, as everyone knows, space opera is far more exciting if it ignores most of the boring realities of (possible) space travel. Most people are not that thrilled about ships using solar sails to favor energy efficiency over speed. It's the difference between Star Wars and 2001: A Space ... Odyssey. While both are very good films, these days people are not willing to sit through something like 2001. (I've seen 2001 more times than I care to count though, so don't think I quit this show because I decided it was just slow and boring.)

As RevanFanatic said, in this show "the government allows piracy for some stupid reason". Well Revan, the reason you can't remember why is because they never explained it. Or so I'd like to say, but actually they did with some throw away line about the galactic empire respecting individual systems' autonomy. You probably missed it because it was short and, frankly, just plain stupid. That whole part was so ludicrous I actually laughed out loud. To my knowledge, there has never been a government that issued letters of marque for anything other than the express purpose of damaging its enemies. Even if you had such a letter, attacking vessels that were friendly to the government issuing the letter made you a pirate. Your own people would kill you. If the empire was any sort of sensible government, it would shut down the pirates immediately.

Or so I'd like to say. The piracy in this show is also ridiculous. They basically just take things. That sounds very piratic, but there is no threat at all. The whole show is just happy and amiable, and so are the characters. From what I can see, there is no effort to develop things further than that. You never get to learn why the characters are out there doing this job, and it probably doesn't matter anyway. It all seems about as threatening as a declawed kitten. When pirates board a ship I'd expect a conversation something like: "Give us all your stuff and we'll kill you!" "um, don't you mean or?" "Yes, yes. That. Give us your stuff!" instead of "Oh boy! You're in for a real treat!" "What's going on?" "We're going to get raided by pirates!" followed by "Okay, we're gonna take all your stuff now, but don't worry. The insurance company will compensate you."

I've been bored to tears with most of the anime space opera in recent years, so I had high hopes for this one based on the title alone. I'm okay with all the slow-moving space travel and ship-to-ship combat stuff, but let's face it: you can't have much of a pirate show without lots of Errol Flynn swashbuckling adventure. I thought there might be some real fights coming when her mom was showing her all those guns. I was wrong. When they board a vessel, the whole thing goes pretty much as I described in the previous paragraph.

There really is no part of this show that is very exciting. In fact, I can sum the whole thing up as "happy and amiable". Therein lies its strength. I could probably enjoy it they way I enjoy slice of life anime if I wasn't having trouble with the more ridiculous bits. I am having trouble with them though. If I wanted to watch a slow-moving sci-fi anime right now, I would probably rewatch Geneshaft. It actually requires that you have a brain to watch it. Someday, if I'm in the right mood for this kind of fluff, I may come back to Mouretsu Pirates, but probably not.

Story:
I have to say this Anime has everything a good sci-fi show needs, so it seems. A political unstable situation, kingdoms, empires, pirates, a talented new captain, companies and battles. But.............................. . . . . . . . . .
The story evolves around a teenage girl who one day is all of a sudden faced with the decision whether she wants to take on her deceased father's job as a captain of a pirate cruiser or if she wants to remain an honor student ... at an elite high school. She takes on her father's job and becomes a so called legal pirate. The story is very slow paced and there isn't much development and no serious storyline. The next 18 episodes you will wait and wait and wait for a serious turn of events or a deeper story but this will never happen, instead you will see "the pirates" taking on one ridiculous job after another.
If you have seen Irresponsible Captain Tylor or Legends of the Galactic Heros and you expect something like that, you will be disappointed.
This story is about a crew of people who label themselves pirates and take on some missions in the name of an insurance company and thats about it.

Art:
The art was okay, nothing special. It fits the story.

Sound:
The sound was refreshing and gives the show an easy touch, so you somehow can enjoy the flat storyline.

Character:
There are some enjoyable characters in this show but all in all u have your stereotypical Japanese anime characters. The main protagonist lacks deeper emotions and ambitions. She is talented and "a born captain".
But the show has no seriousness in it, it fails in showing deeper facets of the characters, there isn't any serious character development, because there arn't any characters only superficial stereotypes. The interaction between the characters is as if you were watching a big happy family.You have your typical anime stereotypical relationships.

Enjoyment:
If you are looking for nothing serious and nothing funny, than that's your show, you will have some interesting episodes and some u will probably skip.

Overall:
If you are bored and Anime addicted its a show you will probably enjoy, or if you haven't seen many shows yet, this show might be somewhat special...
Anyway I wont recommend this show to anybody, if you have something else you want to do, do it...

At the time of writing this show is at 12 of 26 Episodes

Firstly I feel I should put out a warning, if your here because Mouretsu pirates has PIRATES in the title, you may want to look elsewhere, in fact a more suitable title would have been "Mouretsu Privateers", however even this conjures more images of dastardly rogues then this show provides

Story 6/10
Mouretsu pirates is very slow, normally in a show like this there might be a forgivable trade off in terms of great action sequences, perhaps a long build up to a unforgettable action sequence, however this would imply that Mouretsu pirates has action. ... Short of the pirate outfit, this pirate show has suprisingly few elements that one would actually associate with piracy, in fact what the crew has done so far has often been above board and problems are often solved in a diplomatic peaceful way. Therefore i can say with certainty if you're looking here for action you're looking in the wrong place.

Secondly Mouretsu pirates has no romance or Fanservice, perhaps a surprise coming from a show where the premise is essentially schoolgirls crossed with pirates. Whether this actually works in the shows favor is debatable given it's slow pacing but again I can easily say if you are part of the crowd that enjoys these elements you're not going to find them here.

So who does this show cater to? The best i can come up with is fans of the space Opera genre, perhaps this shows strongest point is it's world building, something the slow pace allows considerable time to do. Even here though there is often unexplained factors, such as the way the characters move through space(which is often quite unnatural for a 0G environment when the characters have no obvious means of propulsion), whether this is some unexplained tehnology or merely a stylistic choice is unclear, but it seems to detract from perhaps the shows strongest point in it's favor.

Sound 8/10
I have pretty much no problems with the sound for the most part, the voice acting, background music and ending theme is fine, the only potential problem i see for many is the OP which for many may be quite irritating.

Character 5/10
Mouretsu pirates is primarily about Captain Marika and the show makes great strides in developing her character, we see her rise from a simple high school to be the captain of her own ship. There is simply no doubt, that as a character Marika is developed well, why then does Mouretsu Pirates deserve only a 5?
The answer lies in the other characters, a captain can only be a captain with a crew and thus the character development of the crew is important where theres going to be a large amount of interaction between the main character and these characters. So then, Why is that cyborg a cyborg? He wasn't born that way(or was he?) so why? Why does that navigator act like a fortune teller? What about the hacker/security specialist, whats her story?
These are all examples of where mourtsu pirates ultimately fails to deliver, while Marika is a very well developed character, many of the supporting characters are little more than scenery, we may get a sentence or 2 that provides an interesting tidbit about their past but beyond that little is explained about them, given the shows slow pace, this might be remedied in the second half of the season but having reached ep12 and still not knowing how these people ended up even being pirates isn't encouraging.

Overall 6/10
What you may like:
World Building, flashy space shots, Marikas character development
What you might not like:
Supporting cast with little to no character development, A complete lack of action for a show about pirates, slow pacing, no fan service, no romance elements