Just saying the title of this one, “Bodacious Space Pirates”, puts you in a certain kind of mood, doesn’t it? High-flying adventures! Laser beams! Who gives a clipped penny about actual space physics? But sometimes you can’t entirely judge a book by its cover. Bodacious Space Pirates is a lot of fun, with the sort of positivity you would expect, but it does have its own themes and tone that’s a less manic chaos and more warm contentment. And I for one welcome that.
Bodacious Space Pirates stars Marika Kato, an ordinary high school student in the bright and cheerful space-future of Tau Ceti. Well, I say normal, but she goes to what seems to be a fairly exclusive all-girls school and is a member of said school’s Yacht Club, full of young ladies learning their way around spaceships, so despite her playing some of the normal student notes like having a part-time job (waitress at a local cafe), I suppose she comes off as more of a well-to-do high school student. But, perhaps that’s just normal in Tau Ceti.
By the way, Tau Ceti is a real star about 10 light-years from Sol, long theorized to have a planetary system and, by its similarity to the Sun, long considered to be a good candidate for finding an Earthlike world near. We know now that it probably isn’t the case, but as locations go for your science fiction colony world, it’s a pretty respectable choice, probably above Alpha Centauri or Barnard’s Star. Why do I mention this? Because while we do ultimately get into some of physics taking a back seat to plot, the way the show is written I feel like the creators would be a little disappointed if nobody appreciated when the work was actually put in to have a little science in our fiction. And aside from that, the choice of Tau Ceti is not the only nod to how things actually work (or might actually work), and that in and of itself is a divergence from the expectations that the English title might have created.
In any case, Marika learns that her father has died, of food poisoning of all things. She’s not terribly broken up about this as he was basically a stranger to her. The bigger issue is that, as his only child, she stands to inherit the family business, so to speak, in the form of the Letter of Marque that allows the space pirate ship Bentenmaru, which her father was the captain of, to continue operating legally.
Having known absolutely nothing of this space piracy deal, Marika does some research, and discovers that the whole unbelievable story seems to be true. While she’s making up her mind on whether or not to take up the mantle of pirate captain, though, some of the quirky members of the crew ingratiate themselves as substitute teachers at school, and other interested parties show up, following Marika and at least at first making trouble over her and the value of what she might have. During this phase, Marika also makes a friend in the form of the aloof Chiaki Kurihara, the daughter of another pirate captain sympathetic to Marika’s present position.
This extends into the Yacht Club (with a lot of colorful characters, and Chiaki as a transfer student) taking their school’s ship out for a little cruise around the Tau Ceti system. With Marika still being targeted, it turns out to be anything but a peaceful excursion, and we get a taste of how conflict works in the future of Space. As it turns out, at least sometimes it’s more electronic warfare and cat-and-mouse positioning, as the ships attempt to hack each other and seize control (an arena in which schoolgirls are perfectly able to fight back) and careful decision-making. Marika proves to be smart, adaptable, and bold, taking charge of the situation and even managing to use the reflective properties of their ship’s solar sails to disable their foe when it starts actually shooting at them, at which point the Bentenmaru and Chiaki’s father’s ship swoop in to clear up the formerly “phantom” enemy. Upon returning home after such an adventure, the Yacht club seems to have had fun, and Marika is ready to commit to becoming a Pirate Captain, having gained a taste for adventure. There is one stipulation, though – she may be doing piracy now, but she’s not going to quit school for it.
This turns out to be fine, so what does Piracy here actually entail? Regulated with Letters of Marque, they aren’t exactly going to be going around robbing and murdering whoever they please. Well, it turns out that for the most part Pirates in this setting seem to act as mercenaries and odd-job ships, but there’s a particular niche that the Pirates of Tau Ceti serve – raiding cruise ships! It’s all basically theater, though, showing the idle rich of the greater Galactic Empire (a power structure that technically owns the lesser governments of Tau Ceti and other systems, but seems rather hands-off) some exciting local spice and making off with valuables in exchange… which all end up reimbursed by the insurance companies, who are in turn paid off by the liners, which are specifically catering to clients clearly suffering from more ennui than sense. Suffice to say that for all but the passengers (who are more excited than frightened by far), the “raids” are arranged in advance and more or less scripted, making much of the day-to-day bill-paying piracy work basically a weird sort of dinner theater. And for that, having a cute schoolgirl as your captain is a mark in favor.
After such a raid, though, Marika discovers a much more dramatic plot that begins with a stowaway on the Bentenmaru. When eventually located, the stowaway, who was looking for Marika’s father, is revealed to be Gruier Serenity, princess of the nation of Serenity (another star system under the Galactic Empire). After some initial disappointment learning that Marika’s dad, who was a friend to her, is gone, Gruier moves on with the reason for her surprise visit: she wants to hire the Bentenmaru to find a legendary Golden Ghost Ship belonging to her people. Now that sounds like a job for space pirates! Especially since other forces are racing to find the Golden Ghost Ship first, and are willing to make the race for treasure into a shooting war.
For this trip, the Bentenmaru actually goes FTL (a conceit that isn’t used casually in Bodacious Space Pirates. The first cruise even did a good job with its orbital mechanics, which is a far cry from the usual “space ship goes wherever” in scifi) and enters the nebula storm where the Ghost Ship, in actuality a first-generation colony ship that seeded all life on Serenity, now lurks, evading other pirates and Serenity Military all the way. The conflict continues even as the Ghost Ship is located and boarded, with Marika and Gruier’s forces clashing with the Serenity forces led by Gruier’s younger sister, Grunhilde.
The great treasure of the ship turns out to be its gene vault, and more than that the titanic artificial womb charged with creating the royals of Serenity. Gruier wants to destroy the device to end the tyranny of a genetically engineered monarchy over her people, hoping to transition towards democracy, while Grunhilde wants to preserve their traditions. Ultimately, the conflict turns out to be moot, as the ancient machine itself is finally giving up the ghost, weaving one last infant sister for Gruier and Grunhilde into existence before expiring, leading to a peaceful resolution to the conflict, and two princesses at least a little taken with the life of the pirates of Tau Ceti. They even decide to spend some time there, after leaving the Golden ship in orbit over Serenity as a historical relic for all its people rather than royalists or populists alone.
The next arc, now in Marika’s next year of school, starts with most of the crew of the Bentenmaru getting sick from some monkies they were transporting and being quarantined while Marika was planetside. This is a problem as the quarantine could drag on, and the Bentenmaru needs to complete contracts regularly in order to keep its Letter of Marque in good standing. Marika’s brilliant plan (after some advice from Chiaki’s father about what really makes a good crew)? Sneak the rest of her Yacht Club fellows aboard the Bentenmaru in the guise of club activities, do an easy cruise ship raid with nothing but schoolgirls, and that will be that. The raid goes off… not exactly without a hitch, as the girls aren’t quite as good at piloting an eccentric old ship as its pirate crew, and decided on completely random cosplay rather than anything like pirate outfits for their attack, but the passengers were enamored with the situation and the contractors pleased with the performance all the same. However, one of the Yacht Club members seems to have a secret, running communications after hours in a rather suspicious way.
The reason for this turns out to be that she is, in fact, plotting something – the rescue of her girlfriend and the graduated former president of the Yacht Club, who will otherwise be forced into an arranged marriage by her corporate family. While Marika is at least a little miffed that her friend felt the need to sneak around, she ultimately accepts the plan to bring said former president to a Galactic Empire university she was accepted to, which will be neutral ground on which her family has no leverage. This initially horrifies the Bentenmaru’s insurance contact, who would be liable along with Marika if the girl’s parents cry kidnapping and grease enough palms to have it believed, but the promised pay of an extremely valuable prototype fighter and a large share in the girl’s own up-and-coming shipping company are enough for all involved to approve taking the risk of doing the right thing, and the race is on.
They do not, however, just go straight for Space University to make the drop-off. To make sure any charges against the Bentenmaru or any of the Yacht Club members don’t stick, Gruier (who tagged along for this) advises they make sure the wedding is called off. After a little hacking to dig up dirt on the fiancee involved, they find he’s been a very naughty boy, and manage to board his ship and broadcast a little speech from him that outs him as a space Nazi plotting to overthrow the government. Oops. After that little revelation, there is of course very little standing in the way of the young lady heading to university, which her kohai/girlfriend intending to work hard to follow her in the coming year.
The next arc after that sees some members of the Yacht Club sign up for a dinghy (small ship) race that, unbeknownst to them, their school had been banned from for the last several years due to a prank gone wrong resulting in a much longer and more treacherous course than was planned. The Bentenmaru, meanwhile, is hired to provide security, with many of the race runners suspecting that the academy is going to engage in some other heinous cheating in their grudge match return, not realizing that the captain they’ve hired has ties to the very people they (wrongly) fear the most.
Everything that could go wrong during the race seems to – the frustrated host, eager for revenge, has recreated the insanely treacherous route, believing that after years of grueling practice to raise the level of competition, they can beat Marika’s school “at its own game”. A group of thugs, meanwhile, outright attack the race course, and the most vehement of the organizers finds out Marika’s connection at the absolute worst time, resulting in her trying to chase Marika down across the race course. After some very tricky in-atmosphere stunts, the race is mostly salvaged, Chiaki is the winner, and the cute Year 1 Yacht Club member who was getting a lot of the spotlight does some impressive day-saving even if it costs her the race. The criminals are captured and all other involved names are cleared. It’s a nice, basic little arc with some drama, some action, and some character to go with it. Almost surprising that it’s also the penultimate arc.
The finale arc comes right out of nowhere with a mysterious ship using unknown technology to hunt down pirates. Marika has a run-in with the mystery pirate hunters and their weird crystalline ship, and as the situation goes south, a masked foreign space pirate called Ironbeard appears with another giant ultratech ship and drives the hunters off, warning Marika that the pirates of Tau Ceti will be wiped out unless they do something major about it before disappearing.
From this, Marika manages to arrange for all the pirate captains to be called to council, for which she needs to both locate “The Legendary Chef” whose cooking is good enough to keep such rowdy sorts in line, and broadcast a pirate song that all the Tau Ceti captains will hear on antique to ancestral radios and know is calling them in. Using her mother’s contacts as well as her own, Marika manages to set up the rallying call.
Before Marika herself can make it to the meeting, she and the Bentenmaru are targeted by the pirate hunters. Having seen their tricks before, Marika manages to get the better of the engagement, and albeit at the cost of significant damage, make it out on her own merits. The meeting at the Pirates’ Nest doesn’t go smoothly either; there are an assortment of imposters to be rooted out, everyone has secrets and tempers, and both Ironbeard (who Marika’s mother is apparently now working for, little does Marika know) and the pirate hunter captain, Quartz Christie, show up to parley or something like it.
Despite this, Marika manages to hatch a plan to take on the pirate hunters properly. Even when three of their ship show up instead of one, they lure the enemy into a debris field where it can’t use its advantages as effectively as normal, shoot down the two drone copies, and then ram and board the hunter flagship. Marika and her team fight their way through the ship’s security, unmanned as it is aside from the captain, and ultimately confront said captain at the heart of the ship. She gives a pretty good speech about how even as things are, the pirates aren’t as obsolete as Quartz called them, and Quartz seems impressed enough to bail, give the classic “We’ll meet again” antagonist exit line, and admittedly self-destruct the ship so that Marika needs to get out rather than getting away with the prize.
In the epilogue, it’s revealed (to the audience and Gruier) that Ironbeard is actually Marika’s believed-dead father, now working direct for the Galactic Empire, and that Chiaki will be attending school with Marika and her friends full-time (or full minus piracy time, at least), seeing how she’s learned to actually have friends rather than being a complete stick in the mud like she was at the start. All in all, the final arc was at least bigger and more dramatic than most of the others, with more on the line, and we’re in a show where “the adventure continues” is very much a good ending. There is a film that follows up on some of that, but that’s beyond the scope of this review.
In all honesty, Bodacious Space Pirates is a breath of fresh air. It’s a lighter, more positive sort of show that’s not trying to be deep, meaningful, or painful and yet it doesn’t feel like pure fluff. There’s plot (if very arc-driven plot) and actually a lot of good character development for Marika, Chiaki, the Serenity princesses, and several of the girls of the Yacht Club. The pirates of the Bentenmaru are more static characters, but they’re also some extremely colorful and fun static characters, pretty much exactly like you’d want to see of a space pirate crew in a show with a light and fun tone rather than a serious one.
More specifically, Marika is basically your expected “good girl” protagonist. She’s open to being a Space Pirate, seeing that space pirates by in large don’t do bad things, but she also wants to finish her school career right and keep working her waitress job if possible, because those are things that are and probably “should be” important to a young lady. Marika is also smart, adaptable, and charismatic… but we don’t just see her as this perfect young lady. She has bad days, gets in over her head, and can be beaten down by tough circumstances. We even see that her burning the candle at both ends with school and piracy does catch up with her, and while she’s able to keep them both up she does have to pick her battles and take the consequences of her choices. If a younger crowd were to watch this (which I think would be totally fine) I’d say she was a good role model while still being human enough to be relatable.
Chiaki, meanwhile, starts out as the “jaded insider to the special life” that you get in a lot of fiction centered around introducing an initially unknowing individual to something bigger and more wonderful than the common life they knew. But while this character type is usually a senior and a mentor, Chiaki is a peer and a friend, and the fact that she and Marika can play off each other, influence each other, and help each other to grow does a good deal for both of them. Marika doesn’t take some things seriously enough, Chiaki takes everything too seriously, but they’re able to bond over shared goals, basic kindness, and amazing parfaits, allowing Chiaki to lend Marika her strength while Marika lends Chiaki her flexibility.
The Serenity siblings, to an extent, play out a lot like the pirate heirs, with Gruier in the role of Marika and Grunhilde in the role of Chiaki. But while it’s the same basic contrast, the difference in their core relationship comes out a good deal in how they interact and play off each other, along with the fact that while Gruier and Marika have a lot in common, Grunhilde is more steely while Chiaki is more sharp. And, of course, they have very different circumstances to their life that do inform what they do.
As to the minor characters… there are quite a lot of them, and a surprising number of them get a good deal of time. We really do get to know the corporate scion original president of the Yacht Club, her hacker girlfriend, and the starry-eyed new recruit who shines in the race arc. Many of the other space-filling faces of the Yacht Club are at least given a personality note to make the group, which can’t be as insanely heterogeneous as an eccentric pirate crew, feel like it’s properly a group of people Marika knows rather than faceless and interchangeable extras. In a sense, it’s a shame we don’t get more out of the pirates, but on the other hand we do get enough so that they have one or two notes. Helmsman Kane has a lot of lines, enough that you can tell when he’s being impersonated by his identical twin. Ship’s Medic Misa is usually pretty insightful and serves as a good voice of reason. Others, like the electronic warfare specialist Coorie, the cyborg soldier Schnitzer, or the chuuni Navigator Luca might have less of a presence, but still manage to leave enough of an impression that I could at least say a few things about them and could tell you if something would be in-character. When you’re dealing with a cast as expansive as a pirate crew, some folks are better off being memorable than developed, much like the button-pushing maniac from Gurren Lagann never really got much of a dive into his psyche, but also didn’t need one.
If there is one bother, it’s that the episodes tend to have a very strange pace to them. The arcs as wholes and the show overall are decently paced, but within each arc the episode cuts seem pretty much arbitrary, even random, with big climaxes often happening around the first ad bumper rather than at episode ends. This isn’t exactly a problem, but it’s a quirk notable enough that I wouldn’t feel great if I didn’t mention it.
The show, as a whole, is warm, inviting, and charming. If you sit down with it, you’re probably going to have a good time. Perhaps not a great time, but a good one. Even now, just thinking back on the show, there’s a pleased contentment that comes with its content. In my book, that earns it a B. It’s nothing amazing, but it never set out to be, and it certainly weighs in at above average. I’d recommend it to anyone who’s in the mood for something a little bit lighter, which isn’t a bad place to be now and again.