Bodacious Space Pirates #8

Warning: This article may contain spoilers. We recommend watching the episode first.



So it turns out that our stowaway from the previous episode is a princess named Gruier Serenity from the Serenity System a revelation that catches the crew of the Betnemaru even more off guard than they were before they knew who their stowaway was. After introducing the princess to the crew, some of whom are just now getting proper introductions, the princess gets down to brass tax. She’s got a mission for our motley cast to which I rejoice in excitement. Finally, we now have a mission where the stakes aren’t fixed and events aren’t choreographed. Her mission for Marika is to investigate and locate a golden ghost ship that has been detected around the borders of her system.


A situation erupts when the princess is reported as missing and appears to have run away from her home. Wait a minute, timeout, did I forget to take my heart medication again or am I accidently watching re-runs of Tenchi Muyo? We got runaway princesses, piracy, spaceships, and young girls. Am I going crazy for thinking this? Anyways Marika then smuggles the princess to her home planet and has her attend a middle school next to her high school using her real name and not an alias.

After a couple of scenes where Marika’s peers marvel at the princess at school Marika gets called to do another emergency mission, but this time the princess is going to join them. It appears that a mysterious ship is in Tau space and the pirates have been asked to investigate because the job needs to be done discreetly. Also thank you plot point for confirming my hopes that not every pirate job is about providing entertainment for cruise liners, this revelation is one of the many highlights for this episode. Anyways when the Bentenmaru gets a location on their target they find a damaged Serenity ship being attacked by other Serenity defense ships, and on that cliffhanger the episode ends.

Verdict

Finally things seem to be picking up after a couple of boring and asinine episodes. Other than ending on a cliffhanger that necessitates me watching the next episode this episode did a lot to regain whatever goodwill I had towards this series. Goodwill that might have been lost with the prospect that the entire show would have been about people pretending to be pirates and use their talents for the purpose of acting. Anyways I enjoyed this episode immensely and am back on board for the series.