Moretsu Pirates dropped (8 episodes)

I wished the anime itself was this good.

Well, it took me long enough to finally admit that this isn't worth my time. I got to give it to Marika; if not for her appealing character design coupled with a promising new voice, I probably won't last half of it. It's just too bad that her character is as shallow as a bird bath, and her dialogues are mostly monotone and meaningless.

Other than the fairly decent character designs and animation quality, I really don't know what else Morestsu Pirates has to offer. I've always divided "story" into "concept" and "storytelling" (story style), and I'll have you know that it fails at both.

Correction, they're all first-rate side show entertainers.

First of all in concept, while it's probably cool to feature space-age pirates that are actually the good guys, this concept erased everything the term "pirates" has going for it. It's unlike One Piece, where it's clearly been stated that the main cast aren't actually "good guys". In Moretsu Pirates, they're simply cute individuals with a spaceship who like to show off their big guns. Their victims treat the "robberies" no different from a side show, and most of their activities involve taking odd jobs from various quasi-legal parties who simply asks to do more of these "robberies". The "letter of marque" is simply one of the show's many poor excuses for them to adventure under the guise of being a "pirate". The letter actually forces you to pirate? There's insurance to cover your losses you're legally robbed from? Pretty convenient, huh?.

And secondly, there has been few traces of clever storytelling. Marika is one-dimensional, but she is unfortunately still the most interesting person out of the huge number of people we have seen so far. The only other character worth a look, Chiaki, is simply a tsundere rival-friend under a thin cold image. In the battles, most of it happened on a computer screen. No, not yours. 50% of all the action features flashy and futuristic diagrams and arrows filling up flying across their ship's monitors. 49% features the characters talking really fast about stuff that's really complicated and apparently really brilliant. The final 1% shows the ship firing its guns maybe once or twice. I guess they wanted the audience to imagine all the excitement happening on the deck but dude...