Mouretsu Pirates – review

Mouretsu Pirates is a 26 episode long anime, adapted from the ongoing light novel called Miniskirt Pirates. This anime was produced by Satelight and aired from January till July 2012.

The story follows the not so daily life of Katou Marika, a cheerful and dilligent high school girl.

The anime takes place in a distant future, 100 years after the war of independence, piracy in the universe got restricted quite a bit. Only family descendants are allowed to inherit the right to command a pirate spaceship. Marika lives together with her mother which she just calls her Ririka, her father was mainly absent from home, I would say he is a bad father XD. After he passed away Marika is faced with a decision that will change her life into an exciting and funky space adventure.

Next to school and yacht club activities Marika starts to work as the Captain of the Bentenmaru. Out of convenience members of her crew infiltrate the school and the yacht club to teach Marika the basics and advanced techniques she has to know to become a bodacious pirate ship captain.

Mouretsu Pirates successfully does the balancing act between the shoujo, slice of life and adventure genre. Good comedy and nice action can be found in this anime. The first few built up episodes felt a little slow paced to me, for others this might be an advantage but I prefer it a little faster. Anyway once things are explained and set up the pacing improves a lot and Mouretsu Pirates becomes a very entertaining, nearly addicting, shoujo, slice of life, adventure anime show.

Piracy business changed dramatically from the past and mainly degenerated to a mere attraction for rich passengers of cruise liners. But piracy business offer a variety of different other jobs.

At first Marika seems to be overstrained with the two overlapping tasks, but as the hard worker she is, she manages to pull through through and does a good job as captain. She is liked and respected by both her club members and the pirate crew. Her crew consist of funny and eccentric members, if Marika runs into trouble mainly Kane and Misa, lend her a helping hand.

This show portrays it’s main and supporting characters very well, all of them have interesting and well developed personalitys, even the ones which had less screen time are very well fleshed out.

There are many female characters in the cast of Mouretsu Pirates with all kinds of peronalities and ages, tomboish girls, tsundere girls, lesbian girls, mature girls, tanned girls, nerd girls and, small girls with cute hats. But don’t be scared this is no harem and there is next to zero fanservice.

The main character Marika is portrayed in a very likeable way, she is cheerful, smart and a hard worker, but also has her silly moments and a clumsy side, she is a down to earth character.

When looking at my twitter userpic you might know which character I liked the most, it’s Chiaki.

She is also the daughter of a famous pirate. Unlike Marika, she appears collected most of the time, Chiaki somehow acts like a princess as her hime cut hairstyle implies. She is easily offended by goofiness, her cold and harsh attitude would actually result in a lonely Chiaki, but her tsun mask always falls of easily, so that she is liked by most of the yacht club members and Marika who thinks of her as a friend. Chiaki has respect of Marika’s skills as Captain, but she would never tell.

Mouretsu Pirates offers a good looking and smooth animation style and nice characterdesigns. The vivid colors give the whole futuristic space setting an appealing space opera flair.

I wholeheartedly recommend this anime, it’s one of the better 20+ episode animes I’ve seen recently. The build up process takes a few episodes, but after that the show speeds up and offers a lot of entertainment in a very creative setting. It also offers fleshed out and likeable characters.

A Moretsu Pirates Movie has already been announced, more details will probably come soon.