(L) Mouretsu Pirates

[Kanon]

I wish this series would spent as much time explaining crucial plot points as it does detailing the technologies. I managed to get the gist of it, but was quite confused about a few things. Thanks to the novel posters who helped clear that up.

"Everything turned out alright" in the end, but I feel that was mostly thanks to luck. What if there had been plenty of genetic samples left inside the rose? Marika would have effectively screwed Gruelle over by surrendering the rose to Grunhilde's faction. In the first place, Marika had no reason to go behind Gruelle's back before even knowing anything about her intentions. Incidentally, Marika shouldn't be so quick to trust random old men, even if they look nice. She definitely betrayed Gruelle's trust. Marika's actions seems to make a lot more sense in the novel since she negotiated with Yotof after she saw the rose and understood what Gruelle's true goal was. At the time, they were in a deadlock and that was the only way to avoid needless bloodshed.

Since I haven't read the novels, I can't know for sure, but I'm under the impression the anime messed up quite a bit.

[Dark Wing]

Originally Posted by Kanon

Since I haven't read the novels, I can't know for sure, but I'm under the impression the anime messed up quite a bit.

I wouldn't say it messed up it just got that one event out of order but of course these things happen when you are under a time constraint.

[wontaek]

Originally Posted by Kanon

I wish this series would spent as much time explaining crucial plot points as it does detailing the technologies. I managed to get the gist of it, but was quite confused about a few things. Thanks to the novel posters who helped clear that up.

"Everything turned out alright" in the end, but I feel that was mostly thanks to luck. What if there had been plenty of genetic samples left inside the rose? Marika would have effectively screwed Gruelle over by surrendering the rose to Grunhilde's faction. In the first place, Marika had no reason to go behind Gruelle's back before even knowing anything about her intentions. Incidentally, Marika shouldn't be so quick to trust random old men, even if they look nice. She definitely betrayed Gruelle's trust. Marika's actions seems to make a lot more sense in the novel since she negotiated with Yotof after she saw the rose and understood what Gruelle's true goal was. At the time, they were in a deadlock and that was the only way to avoid needless bloodshed.

Since I haven't read the novels, I can't know for sure, but I'm under the impression the anime messed up quite a bit.

Disagree . I believe that last minute lip talking thing sounded unbelievable to the animators since much communication would have been needed in such a short amount of time. Also, it would have been in Bentenmaru's interest to establish what dialog possible with ALL sides, since there was much potential for trading of live gun fire. Marika is supposed to be a pirate, which means the end justifies the mean, not a knight for whom proper due course is more important than results. You would expect a pirate to constantly search for better deals, although in this case, better in sense for everyone and not just Bentenmaru.

Gruelle is still a child. While she would firmly believed in need to destroy the rose, I doubt she had heart for any bloodshed. What she truly wanted was an end of unnatural continuation of 'royal cloning'. The objective of Hilde seems less clear, as I don't think she wanted to make the colony ship be viewed by the public. By making the colony ship accessible to public, much of past stories by the royal family would be exposed as lie. Furthermore, the fact that Royal Family used the ship as sort of piggy bank instead of sharing the wealth with general populace wouldn't likely be accepted well by the public. I don't know what the LN says, but as far as I can tell, moving the colony ship to Serendipity seems like too dangerous a gamble for staunch traditional royalist like Hilde.

I think bringing the colony ship to Serendipity is a very good solution. It is an invaluable historical artifact, which deserves to be preserved, studied, and visited by general public. This act has merits that should go beyond whatever the interest of the royals

Lastly, I wonder whether that rose plant indeed has ran dry. Even now, you can artificially create some DNA sequence and soon they will try to insert the artificially created sequences into cells to genetically modify them. As long as organic chemicals are available, all you need to clone someone is stored memory of the DNA plus accompanying protein information ( note : this protein information is very complicated, but still you can save them in database ). If you refill needed chemicals, that plant should work indefinitely barring some malfunctions or degradation of parts, which should be replaceable. If this was something in reality, I would suspect that people made up the story and deliberately sabotaged the plant a little after getting one more children from it, a children that may help in reconciliation process as well as making Gruelle be more favorable to preservation of the entire colonyship including what is left of rose plant. I may be bringing too much of 3D reasoning into this fiction which I haven't fully read, but as far as I can understand it, other than all of them being incredibly lucky, skilled, and too much goody-2-shoe, the sequence of events and resolution of the incidence mostly feels satisfactory for me.

[Wild Goose]

So, quite impressed with how the Bentenmaru's boarding team actually knows its shit - and keep their helmets on at all times, and are ready for trouble: when the lights hit, every single crewman is covering their six with overlapping fields of fire, and they're maintaining dispersion as they proceed inside the facility.

As for Gruelle, my impression is that she'd steeled herself to destroy the Rose, and has been viewing this through the interpretation of "This is my mission to accomplish, for the good of the Republic."

Holding that baby in her arms, though, it drives home a fact that hadn't occurred to her: destroying the Rose would have meant killing that baby.

Originally Posted by LoweGear

It technically isn't "selling out" if both parties do the same thing for a goal that is mutually beneficial to both. It's more like Yotof and Marika knew a resolution favoring one party or the other would end in much bloodshed, which both of course would know isn't pretty, and yet both wanted their respective goals to be achieved. It would only be selling out if Marika acted with intent of throwing her lot with Grunhilde, which didn't happen.

Marika does continue to impress with her super-competency though, without appearing convoluted or contrived. Give her a few years and she'll do Bruce Wayne proud

Marika took the Paragon options when negotiating with Yotof, and then went for a rather spectacular Paragon interrupt... or maybe it was a Renegade interrupt... ah, call it Paragade and leave it as be.

Also, next episode has more Jenny, which is always good. XD

[Utsuro no Hako]

Originally Posted by Trajan

When Gruier wakes up, Marika tells Gruier that the rose was drained dry of genetic samples. Gruier looks pained and responds with a soft cry of "No . . .". This would imply she wanted there to be genetic material in the rose (which she was going to destroy). But then when the baby is brought in, Gruier tears up and says "I almost killed this child?" This would imply she didn't realize there was any genetic material left. As someone from a family born through this process for generations, it seems likely she would consider genetic material in an artificial womb to be the equivalent of an in utero embryo.

So my question is, did Gruier initially want to "kill" the genetic material, but then once she saw the baby, she changed her mind, or what? I guess you could just chalk this up to a pre-teen princess not really considering the consequences of her acts, but I was hoping there is a better explanation.

I don't think the Rose was running out of genetic material but rather the resources necessary for a fetus to gestate -- amniotic fluid, nutrients, etc. Remember, Marika said if they hadn't come along just then, the baby wouldn't've been born. That doesn't make sense if the machine was running out of genes -- once you have a fertilized embryo, you don't need further genetic material -- but it does if the machine didn't have enough nutrients to keep the fetus alive until it was supposed to be born. Gruier probably wasn't privy to the Rose's schedule and didn't figure there'd be a fetus inside when she showed up.

Originally Posted by Trajan

But in the end, didn't Marika effective side with Grunhilde? Marika and crew were hired by Gruier for a mission they knew to be dangerous to find and deliver Gruier to the Ghost Ship, so that she could then go on alone and destroy the rose. At some point Marika decided that the risk of further bloodshed wasn't worth the payoff she was getting from Gruier. At that point, Marika could have just told Gruier that the Bentemaru was off the job. Instead, Marika secretly contacted Yotof and made another deal: you gas your royal, we'll gas ours. We don't know if Yotof told Marika what Gruier was planning to do aboard the Ghost Ship or not, but either way, Marika knew she was working against Gruier's stated interests, without telling her.

You're assuming that if the Rose had been working, Yotof would've sided with Grunhilde. I'm not so sure of that.

[MeisterBabylon]

Also, helmets help one save animation budget. So it makes sense even in our world... *shot*

[Random Wanderer]

Originally Posted by Kanon

I wish this series would spent as much time explaining crucial plot points as it does detailing the technologies. I managed to get the gist of it, but was quite confused about a few things. Thanks to the novel posters who helped clear that up.

"Everything turned out alright" in the end, but I feel that was mostly thanks to luck. What if there had been plenty of genetic samples left inside the rose? Marika would have effectively screwed Gruelle over by surrendering the rose to Grunhilde's faction. In the first place, Marika had no reason to go behind Gruelle's back before even knowing anything about her intentions. Incidentally, Marika shouldn't be so quick to trust random old men, even if they look nice. She definitely betrayed Gruelle's trust. Marika's actions seems to make a lot more sense in the novel since she negotiated with Yotof after she saw the rose and understood what Gruelle's true goal was. At the time, they were in a deadlock and that was the only way to avoid needless bloodshed.

Since I haven't read the novels, I can't know for sure, but I'm under the impression the anime messed up quite a bit.

I don't think Marika actually planned ahead of time to hand the ship over to Grunhilde. What was negotiated was "These two girls are going to be running with very high emotions when they meet. If they can't come to an agreement, rather than let them push us all into killing each other, we will knock them out and negotiate this situation ourselves in a less emotionally volatile atmosphere."

Thus, I don't believe Marika ever intended to betray her employer. She simply acted to prevent the high-strung girls from getting everyone killed, and then took the time to more fully analyze the situation. Once they discovered that the Rose was failing, she realized the whole argument no longer mattered, and so with the knowledge that the royal family couldn't continue the way it had been regardless of what either Gruelle or Grunhilde may have wanted, they worked out what should be done with the Queen Serendipity now.

[Ithekro]

Ah, but did Marika get paid twice? Remember Chiaki's ship is also suppose to be on this quest, yet they are playing Bentenmaru back home.

[Kanon]

Originally Posted by wontaek

Disagree . I believe that last minute lip talking thing sounded unbelievable to the animators since much communication would have been needed in such a short amount of time. Also, it would have been in Bentenmaru's interest to establish what dialog possible with ALL sides, since there was much potential for trading of live gun fire. Marika is supposed to be a pirate, which means the end justifies the mean, not a knight for whom proper due course is more important than results. You would expect a pirate to constantly search for better deals, although in this case, better in sense for everyone and not just Bentenmaru.

It turns out I had misunderstood when Marika contacted Yotof. I originally thought she did it after meeting him the first time, but after listening to her explanation again, I realized that happened only last week, after she noticed the Serenity ships approaching and delivered her speech stating the lives of the crew and Gruelle were her top priorities. I can only agree with you then. She knew the Bentenmaru and Gruelle were in danger and did what was in her power to protect them.

Originally Posted by Random Wanderer

I don't think Marika actually planned ahead of time to hand the ship over to Grunhilde. What was negotiated was "These two girls are going to be running with very high emotions when they meet. If they can't come to an agreement, rather than let them push us all into killing each other, we will knock them out and negotiate this situation ourselves in a less emotionally volatile atmosphere."

Thus, I don't believe Marika ever intended to betray her employer. She simply acted to prevent the high-strung girls from getting everyone killed, and then took the time to more fully analyze the situation. Once they discovered that the Rose was failing, she realized the whole argument no longer mattered, and so with the knowledge that the royal family couldn't continue the way it had been regardless of what either Gruelle or Grunhilde may have wanted, they worked out what should be done with the Queen Serenity now.

If that's how it went, then I have no problem. This raises the question of what they would have done had the Rose been fully functional, however. Gruelle and Grunhilde's goals were diametrically opposed: one wanted to destroy the Rose, the other protect it. There was no way to make both of them happy.

Maybe luck didn't play any role and they did destroy the Rose as wontaek suggested. While it would have been necessary to conceal such an action from Grundhilde, I don't see why Marika would have had to lie to Gruelle about that though. Furthermore, it would mean Yotof and his men betrayed Grunhilde and the Royal Family (I assume most of them did not agree with Gruelle). It's not impossible of course, but I don't think that's very likely.

[Kaoru Chujo]

Yeah, I was a bit confused, too. But it didn't affect my enjoyment of the episode. This show may not be a masterpiece, but for me it just works. Good little anime. Komatsu Mikako is doing a good job with Marika.

[Kyuu]

I conclude that Schnizer (or however you spell it) is a hybrid of Worf and Data.

[Ithekro]

I liked it. Though I would like to know more about the previous Captain Kato, and why Gruier knew him. In how she called Marika just like him...Devious...in a good way.

[Trajan]

Originally Posted by Random Wanderer

Actually, I would say yes, she would. Because the end result is what she wanted (no more Rose). She simply didn't get to destroy it herself. Gruelle won, Grunhilde lost. Marika did what she did to save lives, because the princesses were getting worked up enough that a fight would have been almost inevitable had they not been stopped somehow. And I am quite confident that Gruelle would not have been happy having people on either side die because of her.

I can accept that I guess. The anime gives us so little backstory on why Gruelle is seeking to destroy the Rose that any resolution works really. The only real problem is Gruelle's surprised/pained reaction to being initially told the Rose was nonfunctional. If her goal was simply to render it inoperable, shouldn't she be happy at that point? Anyways, I really enjoy this series, but I wish Gruelle's motivations had been fleshed out a bit more.

However, if we include the background information dahl_moon posted from the LN, I think Madoka comes off not so well:

Spoiler for Gruelle's LN motivation:

Originally Posted by dahl_moon

The novel itself is also pretty sparse on details. Marika (and the readers) are not told the full story, so I'm still quite confused about the political background. But here are a few things that the anime omits:

• Serenity is considered a poor and backwater state, but its royal family is considered very old and prestigious.
• Serenity is consisted of three star systems with seven habitable planets. The Golden Ghost Ship had brought the first humans to the tri-system. But they aren't able to invent FTL travel on their own.
• After submitting to the galactic empire, Serenity's royal family finds it increasingly difficult to maintain unity. Many call for independence (although still within the galactic empire). Tensions flare up and settle down repeatedly over the course of history, and recently the royalists are again at the defensive.
• The technology to reproduce the "Fountain of the Rose" is already common knowledge, but the symbolism is not. Serenity's royal family has been maintaining the illusion that the family is "natural born," not "engineered." Hilde (and many other royalists, I assume) want to continue that. Gruier (and her grandfather, the grand duke, who sent her on this mission), want to accept the flow of history.
• After the ghost ship's return, the Serenity people, being staunch traditionalists and still having a lot of affinity for their founding myth, rally around the royal family anyway.

It seems like Gruelle and her grandfather were in the "republican" camp, seeking an end to monarchic rule by destroying the symbol (the Rose) of the monarchy's power. Grunhilde, on the other hand, seeks to solidify the monarchy's power base by finding and bringing back that symbol to remind Serenity's people of their traditions and history as a monarchy. If that's true, then Gruelle definitely failed, Grunhilde won, and Marika's actions directly lcaused that outcome.

As I noted upthread, I think it would be fine if Marika saw the Serenity fleet and decided to tell Gruelle that the Bentenmaru was off the job because crew safety came first. But pretending to still be on Gruelle's side while in reality being league with Yotof is less defensible, especially when Marika didn't know what Gruelle was attempting to do.

Interestingly, Yotof may be the real mastermind here, if we assume he supported Grunhilde's goal of preserving the Rose. He got the Bentenmaru to ensure the safety of his own forces and Grunhilde, and ensured that the Bentenmaru would not allow Gruelle to destroy the Rose. Not only that, but he got Cooie to deliver the Ghost Ship to Serenity! He is a ninja butler after all![/quote]

[Ithekro]

The two Princesses hair style in the preview, the Serenity name, and the Rose motif really does not help get the picture of this being the decendants of Sailor Moon out of one's head. The Earth-Moon Kingdom spread after the 30th century it would seem.

[Kyuu]

Originally Posted by Ithekro

The two Princesses hair style in the preview, the Serenity name, and the Rose motif really does not help get the picture of this being the decendants of Sailor Moon out of one's head. The Earth-Moon Kingdom spread after the 30th century it would seem.

I knew, that I'm not the only one going crazy!

Originally Posted by Trajan

I wish Gruelle's motivations had been fleshed out a bit more.

Aye. We're getting some bit of "forced mystery", where things are kept hidden when we should be knowing some of these things by now. With the two princesses heading to the school in the next episode, we might get some light into that. Dunno.

TBH, I hadn't paid attention enough to realize that Gruier wanted to destroy the rose in the first place, and ended up relying on the "spoilers" from this thread to be aware of that. My attention had been more directed towards Marika during this "expedition". If anything, I'll just have to rewatch the series (which I plan to anyways).

This listing needs clean-up anyways:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...rates_episodes

[Random Wanderer]

In random news, folks on another forum made comments about Marika building her harem. It may indeed be true that Marika is looking like she'll end up with the two princesses and Chiaki in her harem, but that's just a subharem, really. All three of them, and Marika herself, are a part of Jenny's harem. Jenny is the true harem queen of the series!

[00Coyote]

Now that we've seen crew outside the Bentenmaru, I've got a better grasp of how big she is. Using the princess as a ruler (since she's been shown to be 140 cm tall and adding 5cm for the spacesuit) I get the following:

The port side docking bay is around 485 cm high
The main body of the Bentenmaru is around 19 m in diameter
The dorsal engine nacelle is 83 m long by 19 m in diameter
Overall length is around 154 m

For the (inherently flawed) comparison to a present day boat, that puts the Bentenmaru about the size of a Ohio Class SSBN, except with more protrusions and engine nacelles poking out here and there.


A pun was intentional.

[Ithekro]

The Bentenmaru would be dwarved next to Space Battleship Yamato at over 265 meters long.

[sa547]

The ship's compact size and more powerful engines, therefore, gives the crew an edge as far as the combination of speed and maneuverability is concerned, and thus appropriate for their mission requirements as fast combat privateers.

[AbZeroNow]

Originally Posted by Random Wanderer

In random news, folks on another forum made comments about Marika building her harem. It may indeed be true that Marika is looking like she'll end up with the two princesses and Chiaki in her harem, but that's just a subharem, really. All three of them, and Marika herself, are a part of Jenny's harem. Jenny is the true harem queen of the series!

If you think of it as Marika's harem, there are actually four in her harem now(The Princesses, Chiaki AND Mami).

I never considered that Marika could be part of a larger harem that was Jenny's. If so Jenny would have at least five in hers(Lynn, Marika, Chiaki, Gruelle and presumably Grunhilde based on next episode preview). I am of course very glad to see my(OK, our) waifu in making her return in the next episode. I do wonder why she's on a screen talking to Lynn though. Time skip?(Since I think it was posted that Jenny was a third-year) If Episode 13 is anime original, I take it as a good sign that this means more Jenny once we see more anime original material. Because I still want to see Chiaki dressed like Kuroneko and Jenny has the class to look great in a Victorian-style dress. I also want to have that beach episode where Jenny, Chiaki, Mami and Marika all wear their swimsuits. People with certain tastes can also have Gruelle and Grunhilde too.