Mouretsu Pirates - 1

[gallery columns="4" orderby="title"]

How can I not watch the first episode of an anime about space pirates Must be my love of most movies, animes etc. that are set in outer space coupled with my love for pirates in animations (not movies). So far the shows this season have been of mixed quality from my point of view with some shows dissapointing, some exceeding expectations and others matching expectations; which category will this show fall into Luckily, this was one surpassed my expectations - actually, it would be more appropriate to say that it gave me high expectations since I didn't really have a positive or negative view of the show just from the previews.The story itself looks to be promising; space pirates is a slightly different theme from space cowboys (who can forget Cowboy Bebop or for all you die hard fans; Firefly) but is one that that greatly appeals to me and here's why:

First of all any anime that has involved the use of pirates has been extremely well done - I mean who hasn't watched One Piece and more recently Ginyoku no Fam which are just fun to watch. Secondly, even though a lot of animes and mangas do have fantasy settings most don't actually have space settings and so making the anime that do a little bit refreshing as you're aware from the start what genre you've got yourself into. Having female lead characters for this series was to be expected because of the genre but it's actually something that made the first episode more enjoyable, even better that the show avoided use of fan service to do so!

Story-wise, I would go as far as to say that Mouretsu Pirates had the best first episode of all the series premiering this season; it managed to nicely and quickly introduce the plot and the characters whilst ending in such a place where we are left wondering about the story. The episode also did a good job of incorporating elements of comedy into the story, in particular the parfait scene which if I'm being honest was one of the strangest yet funniest scenes of comedy I have watched recently (a great example of subtle humour being better than blatant in-your-face humour) and not to mention used a wide range of almost artistic cinematography techniques such as: suddenly cutting away to a close up of inanimate objects, the Big Lebowski-esque dream sequence Marika undergoes.

First episode is great! It's tempted me to review Mouretsu Pirates on a regular basis (I have yet to watch the 2 shows I have most expectations of: Inu x Boku SS and Another before making my decision) but I'm at least going to watch the series on a regular basis.