Cinnamon Ass

And lo, did Gonzo partake of the Aquaricrack from the land of Satelight. And lo, ’twas…interesting…

Cleo and his band of pirates blow up the Empire’s ship with some whizzy CG pyrotechnics and some utterly bizarre weaponry (first they brand the ship with a big crest, then they literally fly through the hull and out the other side), but Baron Makone (aka the tea guy) escapes in a small ship amidst the badly animated explosion.

When they board Michelle’s ship in search of treasure (in a rather unsubtle manner…), Michelle believes them to be their saviours and asks anything of them; however, Cleo has no idea who she is, although his subordinates are well aware of her reputation; they don’t immediately get on that well, as the pirates hold Michelle hostage and ransack their goods to Michelle’s displeasure. She demands that Cleo take her, Jean-Luc and Silua with him, suggesting that the pirates join forces with the People’s Army and get all the booty they need, but Cleo isn’t interested in such an offer, even when she tries to kill him (aaaw, shucks, RABU RABU is in order).

Meanwhile, at the Imperial Palace, Baron Makone makes his report on his unsuccessful encounter with Michelle to the excessively bishounen (roses! ROSES! EVERY OTHER LINE HE SAYS IS ABOUT ROSES!) Betty and his shota companion/lover Ralf (Betty and Ralf - BEST NAMES EVER!). Quite why Makone has a big mallard’s head on his walking stick I don’t know; nevertheless, Betty has him imprisoned as “tribute” for failing in his duty, before receiving Baron Jean-Four (who looks like a Mardi Gras reject) who is concerned about Betty’s love for Michelle and his setbacks in trying to get her to be his, to Betty’s displeasure.

Cleo changes his mind about letting Michelle and co. onto his ship; after all, Silua gets started on doing the washing up for the slobby pirates, so that’s something, while Cleo orders the crew to head to some planet or other which I didn’t catch the name of - I suspect it’s the planet where the nobles are holding an opulent masquerade ball with the BEST MUSIC PLAYING EVER - “Life is an opera!” they sing, as women fawn over Ralf and Betty meets a strange masked girl on the balcony and muses on how everyone wears masks and lies are the truth, you know, the usual for a masked ball. The episode ends with Michelle discovering that Cleo is a descendant of the old royal family that supposedly all died out some time back (I think?), and that his name is Cleo. Big whoop.

Why couldn’t this have been animated by two other studios? As much as I love Satelight, they’re not doing good work here at all, and Gonzo have Speed Grapher-ed the 2D animation to hell; it’s frequently quite shit, frankly, and the characters keep going off-model.

Then there’s the weird, random bits of the script that are frankly retarded; the crew of the Glass Ship are “wacky supporting characters” from the rambunctious loli Aimel, the geeky Nova, horny Badatt and GOUBAIN!!!-tastic Haizach, and even some of the random stuff at the ball with Ralf is a bit odd. I really wish they’d played the whole thing with much less comedy, but hey, this is anime, these things don’t happen often.

Yet for some reason, I’m actually genuinely interested in Glass no Kantai now. There do seem to be some interesting political machinations going on in the background of the Empire, even if Michelle and co are stuck in the usual second episode cast-introduction hijinks; Ralf’s a bit of an odd character, and one that’ll put off a lot of the regular fansub crowd probably, but I like the general atmosphere of the Empire scenes quite a lot and Betty looks to be an interesting “villain”, if we can call him that at the moment. Furthermore, the CG attack at the beginning of the episode was really quite good in my opinion, so obviously Gonzatelight can produce SOMETHING decent out of their overworked, underfunded arses on occasion…

So yeah, I’m bitter about the animation; it’s not quite as bad as Speed Grapher at its lowest points, but it’s still shit given that I think Garakan would be a genuinely very good show indeed with more care taken over the production. As it stands, I do like the show, and I’ll be watching more of it, but I hope I don’t end up regretting it in the long run as the narrative (and the truly excellent music) will have to carry it a long way…

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 13th, 2006 at 12:10 am and is filed under Glass no Kantai. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.