You folks ready for a space battle? Today we’re returning to Bodacious Space Pirates on the brink of the team’s first genuine combat engagement, with Marika having developed a daring plan in order to trick their adversaries. Taking advantage of the apparently elite skills of team hacker Lynn, Marika hopes to fool their attackers by letting them take over a dummy duplicate of their own ship’s systems, only to turn the tides when the enemy moves in for the kill. With both Chiaki and team leader Jenny Dolittle on her side, Marika is riding high at the moment – but the fact of the matter is, Marika’s skills have yet to be tested by anyone who doesn’t actually want her to succeed. So far this has all been a fun intellectual exercise, but clashing with real pirates can invite real consequences, and it remains to be seen how Marika will handle the pressure of mid-battle command, or accepting the potentially fatal consequences of her decisions. With her first live fire exam about to commence, let’s return to the starry seas of Bodacious Space Pirates!
Episode 5
“Marika Makes a Decision.” Presumably that means the decision – the decision to carry on her parents’ legacy
We open with a thorough explanation of what a ship transponder actually does: convey that ship’s name, heading, and all other key information to any other ships present
“When sailors understand each other’s ships, the quietness of space becomes a golden sea.” It’s a very romantic way of framing the transponder, but it makes sense. Space is by its nature a profoundly lonely place; in this era, where the far reaches of space have essentially become a new frontier, receiving a transponder signal must feel like seeing another campfire in the great expanse, or friendly sails on the horizon. They are beacons promising solidarity, and telling us we are not alone in our great journey
The ship’s solar flares look beautiful in motion, as they catch the light of the sun and reflect it at strange angles. This show has some of the most visually compelling CG ships I’ve seen
Marika is a natural strategist and leader. When Jenny presses her to explain a flight path change, she leaps up out of her seat to use the holographic model as an illustrative blackboard
Marika’s plan essentially just cuts their route shorter than expected, which limits their enemy’s approach options. I’ve never piloted a pirate ship, but I’ve played a good number of fighting games, and “limiting your vulnerability in order to coax the enemy into an unsafe or predictable attack” is a tried and true strategy
“And the extra sunlight would mean we’d gain that much speed.” This is a fun bit of worldbuilding. Their solar sails give them more or less speed depending on the visibility of the sun, which doesn’t feel particularly realistic (it’s not like you can’t store energy), but does a great job of evoking the classic seafaring drama of temperamental winds, and captains who are able to harness nature to best possible effect
More lovely shots of their ship floating through space. The ship’s fundamental design allows for some incredibly vibrant tricks with the lighting, as the sunlight filters unevenly across the panels and bow of the ship
I like this extended cut of Marika snooping along the hallway before floating to the bridge. There’s a lot of personality in her character acting
Kane and Misa seem to be having a wonderful time secretly monitoring the girls’ secret mission, though I wouldn’t be surprised if Lynn sniffs them out
The enemy begins their attack by jamming the radar with static, which fails to impress Lynn
“Honestly, even if they knock our eyes out now, it doesn’t matter. Even flying blind, there’s nothing out here to hit.” Marika is just absurdly good at staying cool under pressure. Most of her classmates are likely treating this more as a game than a genuinely threatening situation, but Marika is fully aware of the consequences and still unrattled by enemy actions
Marika’s so good at this! She just sort of apologetically explains her plans one measured step after another, consistently keeping in mind not just any unintended consequences of hasty action, but also the assumed perspective of the enemy. I love how she cautions her team to perform their responses slowly, as to not give away the fact that the whole team is on the bridge at midnight
This show is just so fuckin’ sturdy when it comes to illustrating hard scifi conflicts like this. It reminds me of something like Crest of the Stars, but it marries its understanding of classic space drama writing to modern slice of life comedy in a way that I swear shouldn’t work this well
Chiaki’s deadpan is so good. “They found the dummy system. I’m fighting back as hard as I can, but our ship’s default security options are terrible”
Marika wonders if their automatic systems would have held, and Lynn provides the fatigued tech expert response: no, because you idiots decided to show off our defense systems back at the relay station
Lynn is a good vehicle for exposition here; explaining the complexity of electronic warfare, even in a world with plenty of automated cyber attack programs, feels like a natural illustration of her pride in what she does. Exposition is often a necessary evil, but there are lots of ways to mitigate its obtrusiveness, like how this sequence turns it into characterization as well
They’re doing a very good job of conveying the thrill of “combat” that is largely decided through preparation, rather than in-the-moment showmanship. In action, it feels a bit like the “tumbling dominoes” sense of satisfaction you get from watching a heist pulled off
Their dry commentary on the situation is so good, as the team gets offended by the simplicity of their enemy’s methods. If there’s anything anime can teach us, it’s to never underestimate high school girls
Some nice, energetic readouts conveying Lynn’s counterattack, combined with lots of quick camera cuts and motor-mouthed commentary on the evolving battle. Turning a hacking battle into compelling visual drama has been a problem that’s bedeviled film and television for decades, but Bodacious Space Pirates is making a fine stab at it
Conveying an electronic system as a series of interconnected grids to be claimed or defended is a handy trick, one Evangelion also uses to great effect. A computer system is fundamentally intangible to people who aren’t tech experts (and tech experts would probably have their own complaints about fictionalized hacking), but framing it like this gives the audience something resembling a board game, where the flow of battle and severity of a situation are visually apparent
The Lightning 11, the ship they’re battling, responds to their hacking attempts by turning off their systems entirely. So are they just going to physically ram the Odette II?
Apparently they still have control of their beam cannon, though with their main computers off, it seems like they can’t really aim it. Still, the situation has rapidly escalated to potentially fatal, so Marika’s true test has come at last
Jenny seems genuinely offended by the barbarity of aiming a beam cannon manually
Chiaki actually cracks under the pressure before Marika – she recommends turning on their engines and fleeing, which Marika reminds her would give the enemy a clear thermal portrait of their location
What a neat plan. They don’t have any weapons, but by aiming their solar panels exactly backwards at the enemy, Marika hopes to both immediately blind them and slowly cook them
Oh shit, Chiaki’s the daughter of another pirate captain!
AT LAST, MARIKA ACCEPTS HER MANTLE
And Done
What a fun episode that was! Bodacious Space Pirates doesn’t have the luxury of relying on visually parsable action theatrics to convey its drama – instead, it’s built up a remarkably rich rapport across the entire bridge crew, which makes it inherently thrilling to watch the active drama bounce between Marika, Chiaki, Jenny, Lynn, and their many subordinates. It would be easy for this largely verbal drama to either lack urgency or feel too vague to invest in, but the show’s doing a fantastic job of articulating the key points of its conflicts in such a way that the quick thinking and boldness of Marika’s crew is always absolutely clear. Even before arriving on her ship, Marika has already assembled a talented and endearing group of bridge officers, and I’m eager to see her classmates meet their professional pirate counterparts!
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