Outlaw Star 01-04

Eps:

1-4

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Writer:

Katsuhiko Chiba

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Directors:

Takeshi Ashizawa, Naoyoshi Kusaka, Takahiko Hoshiai

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Air Date:

08-Jan-1998 - 29-Jan-1998

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm watching the first four episodes of Outlaw Star!

I was only planning to write about one episode, but then I discovered how serialised the series is and long I'd have to keep writing about it just to reach the bit with the spaceship in. I've got other series I need to write about, I can't keep posting about Outlaw Star every week, so I've decided to get all four episodes out of the way in the same article. It's a giant-sized super-fast paced extra-value review!

This isn't actually my first time watching the series, I just haven't seen much of it and what I have seen I don't remember much of. That's not necessarily a sign that it's bad, as I'm easily distracted and my memory isn't always great. It might be a really good series for all I know! It'd definitely had a good studio behind it, as it was made by Sunrise, the people who made Cowboy Bebop. Outlaw Star had a more typical origin however, as unlike Bebop it was adapted from a manga.

Okay I'll be going through each of the episodes, summarising what I see and sharing my thoughts, so there will be huge SPOILERS here.

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EPISODE 1: OUTLAW WORLD

The first episode begins with a woman dancing in the grass, for some reason. Then it cuts to a red spaceship in a fight with a green ship. They do some dogfighting for a bit, but soon switch to fist fighting instead! Okay it's more of a slap fight, though the ships do both have arms.

Spaceships having arms wasn't all that new for anime at this point, legs either, but the ships tended to transform into a robot form first. These are just regular spaceships with arms! Well, the green ship had arms anyway, before they got snapped and torn apart by the red ship, which then finishes its opponent off with a barrage of missiles. Works for me, I liked the red ship better anyway.

By the way, there's a trick in animation where fast moving objects are smeared and stretched to add fake motion blur. These smeared frames go by too fast to see, but they make the scene feel more fluid. The animators haven't done that here.

In fact when the back end of the ship swoops across the camera we get three super-detailed frames showing off all the intricate pipes around the engines. This image you're looking at is on screen for 1/24th of a second, it holds for just one frame, so it's an amazing amount of work for something that's basically subliminal.

It seems like this footage all comes from a two minute pilot animation produced a couple of years earlier, so my theory is that the animators were showing off because they either had more time, or they had to make it look good to get the series made. Or both.

Speaking of subliminal, the word "GO!" flashes up for half a second, then the theme music starts.

OPENING TITLES

The Outlaw Star theme is a rock track called "Through the Night" and it's as cheesy as it is perfect. Seriously, I might have forgotten basically everything about this series but I'll never forget this song. Here, have a YouTube link to the full version. You could open it up in another tab to enhance your next 4 minutes while you read.

The intro's full of shots of the characters doing stuff (mostly that character in the middle with the bright red hair), and it pretty much gives away who's going to become a major part of the series and who isn't sticking around to join the crew. It also gives away that giant shoulders are in fashion.

ACT ONE

The first scene of the first episode features the hero with the red hair standing on a cliff, looking at a space rocket taking off.

But then it cuts to space pirates trying to attack this ship for whatever reason. Each of those tiny green things is a fighter, so you can tell the size of the vessel by comparison. She's got a barrier up so they had to fly in close to fire their anchors. They lost a few fighters in the ship's missile barrage, but they've got it hooked now.

The ship's sole pilot, "Ice" Hilda, realises that it's death whatever she does, so she decides to engage the giant propeller at the back, jumping to FTL... and doesn't die. I guess she meant it was death for the pirate fighters? Either way, the main thing I've learned here is that warp drive propellers are weird. Uh, sub-ether drive propellers, whatever.

Meanwhile, on a ringed planet called Sentinel III (population 1.52 million) located in an equally purple part of space, a man walks into a bar and it seems that he's looking for these people sitting at the back. Well, maybe not the person on the right, I think she's the waitress.

The man reveals that he wants revenge on Gene Starwind for how he pulled a number on his brother. The bartender hesitates, clearly not keen on revealing where Gene is, but Gene gets up to settle things himself... which annoys his friend, who was winning whatever it is they're playing.

The stranger explains that he's "Death" Rob and Gene will be the 31st man he's killed.

Turns out that Gene is a cocky badass type who isn't fazed by much. He's pretty good with a quick draw as well, though he wasn't expecting Death Rob to just get right back up after being gunned down, and then attack him with his robot arm.

Fortunately his friend's on the case, analysing his augmentations on his laptop.

In fact it doesn't look like there's a whole lot of human flesh left in there.

There is a glowing obvious weak point though, so Gene takes his knife out, buries it in Death Rob's side and then slices across until he's Dead Rob! I was expecting Gene to be a little more out of his depth here maybe, capable of holding his own but having to improvise and struggle, but nope he just took down a cyborg killer without even breaking into much of a sweat. He tells his friend Jim to collect the bounty on Rob and use it to pay for the damage to the bar.

A crowd starts to gather outside the bar (with the camera focusing on a blonde woman in sunglasses), and Gene decides it's time for him to go off alone to 'some place that doesn't interest kids', to the annoyance of his kid sidekick. I figured they were going to leave it at that, but nope next time we see him he's in Club Temptation with a woman.

The camera cuts to that starport Gene was looking at earlier, revealing that the pirate mothership has landed. Well, part of it has anyway.

These three pirates disembark, along with a team of mime ninjas. I guess pirates in this universe all look like video game characters. They've determined that Hilda came to this world three days ago and they're determined to find her.

Meanwhile, in Club Temptation, the woman Gene's with asks what he'd do if he ever travelled to space. Treasure hunting? Bounty hunting? He tells her he'd go pirate hunting, but he doesn't have a ship.

The next morning we get to see what Gene and his friend actually do. They're not bounty hunters or whatever, they actually repair stuff. His friend's called Jim Hawking by the way, which is probably a reference to the protagonist of Treasure Island, Jim Hawkings.

It's almost noon at this point and Gene's still asleep, mostly because he got back at five in the morning.

But he's up in time for them to get a phone call from a customer. It's the future but they still use landline phones... and have giant gramophone horn speakers attached to their flat screen TVs? Maybe it's just sitting next to it, I dunno.

It's the blonde woman with the sunglasses from earlier calling. She wants them to acquire some stuff for her, and she also wants to hire Gene as a bodyguard!

ACT TWO

The customer's called Rachell Sweet and she's asked for some weird stuff, but she's paid them, and her ID checks out. There's lots here for people with a pause button: she was born in June 1988, her figure is "VERY GOOD", and her 3SIZE is "Dynamite". So hang on, if she's 23, that means the series is set in 2011?

I love this kind of anime sci-fi computer UI by the way. I got to see one in Cowboy Bebop as well so I've been doing well recently.

Jim throws Gene a PDA with all her info on, and Gene heads to the bar where Rachell explains what's going on. Turns out that she needs the bodyguard for herself as she didn't know this place was so dangerous. That weird stuff she asked for is easy to explain as well: she's repairing farm equipment at an agri-plant out in the wheat fields.

Turns out she was right about the place being dangerous as they're attacked outside the bar by those ninja mimes sent by the pirates! Though they are nice enough to give Gene the option to walk away before they kill him too.

Gene's able to hold his own, as the ninjas mimes don't seem to appreciate being head-butted and shot at, and they're all gone by the time Jim finally arrives with the hover car. They get in, start the ignition, the car lifts off and... just drops back to ground. The camera lingers on them for a while as they sit and think about how really bloody annoying this.

Then they get to work and fix it.

They're not really in any danger at the moment, this isn't a tense scene, this is a just a moment of comedy to bring Gene down to earth a little and show that Jim might be a kid genius, but he's not infallible. It also shows that they're pretty good at repairing cars.

This is a pretty nice car by the way; you don't see a lot of three-seaters.

With the car fixed they're able to drive Rachell off to the wheat fields outside of town, only to run into their next problem: the pirates are standing in the road.

The pirates tell Hilda that if she comes out they'll spare her life and Rachell responds by throwing a grenade at them! It doesn't kill them, but it kicks up enough smoke for Team Starwind to get past them.

They haven't quite gotten away though, as the tall pirate with the sword does a little dance then uses Tao magic to make a hovering platform out of some of the ninja mimes in order to give chase. Seriously, that's exactly what he does!

So now they're being chased by a dude on a floating platform of ninja mimes that's shooting at them.

At this point Gene and Jim have reason to question if Rachell's hiding something and it turns out she is. She tears off her mask and wig to reveal she's actually the woman from the intro! Also she has an eye patch underneath her mask. Gene never noticed that one of her eyes was painted on.

She's the legendary outlaw "Hot Ice" Hilda, and she's searching for the same treasure that the pirates are.

Gene tells Hilda to take the wheel so that he can return fire from the back seat, and the whole scene of them climbing past each other to switch seats is properly animated! I don't know if it was rotoscoped or what they did, but it looks really good. I've heard that the first and last episodes of the series have noticeably better animation than the rest, and this scene makes me believe it.

Now that he's in the back Gene tries his gun, then a bazooka, but nothing will even touch the pursuing pirate due to his magic barrier. So Gene eventually pulls out a long pistol that uses special expensive numbered bullets that they don't have a lot of. There's a bit of discussion with Jim about whether they even should use one of their special shots now, but they do and it utterly obliterates their foe! I was expecting it to knock him to the ground or something, but nope he is unambiguously dead after that. Two pirates left to go.

The car pulls up to the agri-plant they were headed for and the three of them get out. Then Hilda shoots Gene in the chest at point-blank range, dropping him to the ground! Seems a bit harsh really, considering he's done nothing but help her so far.

You'd expect the episode to wait a while before revealing if he survived, but nope he's back in just 26 seconds with a gun to Hilda's head and a broken PDA in his hand. It's the old 'I survived the shot because by some miracle you fired at the exact place where I keep my bulletproof PDA/gold bar/whiskey flask/whatever' cliché! But The Mandalorian went and pulled the same thing so I guess I can't be too hard on it.

Turns out that Hilda has a trunk stashed here that she was coming back to collect; possibly the treasure the pirates are after. Gene's kind of curious about it now and demands that she gives Jim to the code to open it.

So she does, and inside they discover...

There's a naked anime girl in there! She was a bit less naked on the US airing as they painted some underwear onto her, but either way you can't see anything... except for how weird her legs look. They're very bendy.

Anyway, that's the end of episode one! To be continued...

Then were get some creepy pencil sketches during the end credits. I think it's the proportions that are bothering me; giant anime eyes don't always go well with realistic shading.

The music's nice though. It's basically the opposite of the opening title theme, in a good way. A lot more chilled out, melancholy and orchestral, with fewer drums and squealing guitars. Here, have a YouTube link.

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EPISODE 2: STAR OF DESIRE

Episode two begins with the narrator talking about how all men were once boys and boys have a right to dream. I'm fairly sure all women were once girls as well, but that's outside the scope of his narration. While he's talking we get to see shots of young Gene with his dad... and older Gene hanging out in a club with a pair of women.

Then we get the titles again, with shots of that mysterious red ship. I'm going to have to keep watching the series long enough to find out how they get it because I've genuinely forgotten.

ACT ONE

Hilda reveals that she has a damaged cybernetic arm that she needs Jim's help to fix; that's the real reason why she told them to buy all those weird parts. Gene decides that they'll fix her arm in exchange for some answers, even though he doesn't entirely trust her after she tried to murder him. She doesn't even tell him why she did it! Though we at least learn that the girl in the trunk is called Melfina, and now that they've opened it she's coming out of a cold sleep.

They've got a bit of a problem now though, as the remaining two pirates will find them soon. Hilda's shuttle is nearby, but they can't move the girl or the box while she's in the process of being revived from hibernation.

Hilda claims not to know why the pirates want Melfina, she just knows they wanted her, so she took her. I guess she couldn't risk leaving her on her ship while she was hiring someone to fix her arm, so she hid her in a barn instead. Gene still thinks she knows more than she's letting on.

With the pirates closing in, Gene decides that Hilda and Jim should go get her shuttle while he holds off the enemy single-handedly... with the aid of some missiles they happened to bring. Fortunately the pirates are making it easy on him by all coming from the same direction.

Gene gets out his big-ass pistol again to take care of another pirate, but he's only got one #5 and a #19 left so he has to make them count. He uses the #5 to take out a magic dragon they summon (this is a weird series), then uses the #19 to kill the old man who created it... but it's a dud. That's it then, he's got nothing left that can even harm them!

Fortunately he's saved when Hilda's dropship provides air support, giving him a chance to give Melfina his coat to wear and get her out of the building.

The more Dr Eggman-looking of the two pirates starts creating another dragon out of Tao magic, which is a bit of a concern, but they manage to get away at the last moment. Now Hilda's flying up to her ship from the start of episode 1, and Gene and Jim decide to come along

Jim and Melfina are fine with being in space, but Gene isn't doing well. He makes it absolutely clear that it's not his first time, he's not a 'space cherry', he was just very young last time he was up here. That doesn't stop Jim from taking the opportunity to torment him for a change, teasing the guy relentlessly. He even offers to hold his hand, but Gene decides to hold Melfina's instead.

The dropship docks with her ship in orbit, which raises two questions: did the pirates not find it here when she left it unoccupied for three days, and how did it get fixed up? It was a mess last time it was on screen, with obvious hull damage, but now it's fully intact again. It's called Horus by the way, after the Egyptian god of the sky.

They set course for Blue Heaven, an Outlaw hangout, and jump to FTL.

ACT TWO

After the break we see Gene was telling the truth about being in space before, as we get a flashback to when his dad's ship was destroyed by grappler ships. His wounded dad throws him into an escape pod, and ejects him into space... and the scene transitions into him falling into an abstract painting, because it's a dream.

So that explains why he's freaking out about being in space again, and why he told that woman he wanted to go pirate hunting, but he's not keen on sharing that with the others.

The ship docks at Blue Heaven, a free town built into an asteroid, where Hilda meets some of her old friends.

They tell her that McCoy can't make it and the MacDougall brothers have been asking about her, so Gene threatens them with a gun to get some damn answers about who they're talking about and what's going on. They just tell him that firing guns isn't allowed here (due to all the death that would happen if they crack a seal and let the air leak out), he replies that it wasn't loaded anyway and the conversation continues. No one seems even slightly bothered about what just happened!

That guy in the red sneakers is an alien by the way, he's not just wearing that pot to look cool. He's a Corbonite, which isn't anything like carbonite from Star Wars or corbomite from Star Trek. Hilda asks him to fix up and resupply Horus, and he throws in some exposition as a bonus, telling Jim and Gene that there are three powers in space: Space Forces, outlaws and pirates (Hilda's an outlaw and the pirates are pirates).

Hey the inside of the asteroid is a shopping mall! It's like Deep Space Nine's promenade, except perfectly still. No one's allowed to move during the panning shot as that would be too expensive to animate.

The four of them decide to split up, with Jim and Melfina going to buy some clothes. I'm predicting a scene where she tries a bunch of different weird combinations of clothes on, as Jim gets more and more exasperated.

Cut to Melfina showing off the outfit she picked. Everyone's happy, there's no hassle or drama whatsoever. It is a kind of weird costume, but hey it's a weird setting.

One thing I still want to know... is how much Melfina knows. Who is she? Why was she naked in a box? Why does Hilda want her? We're getting zero answers and she seems happy to just go along with whatever the others are doing.

Meanwhile Gene and Hilda go to a bar to hire some help, and get into a bit of trouble with McCoy and his goons. This time Hilda's not pretending to be Rachell so she stands up and takes all three down with a taser. Though they take a while to realise they've been beaten and fall over.

Turns out that Hilda's next move is to pick up a ship. A grappler ship with the power to dive into the Ether Sargasso. This gives Gene another flashback to that time a grappler ship wrecked his dad's vessel and killed him. Hilda's happy to have Gene along on this job (she's not inexplicably trying to kill him anymore), but she has noticed he seems to hate being in space.

They'll all be sleeping in a hotel tonight, I guess because the beds are better than on their ship, and it seems like Gene and Hilda will be sharing a room.

They're not the only ones in there though, as the goons from the bar show up with spiky sticks to murder them in their sleep.

Fortunately it turns out that Gene and Hilda put pillows under the covers as a cunning trap! I guess they knew that someone would come after them tonight... and not go after Jim and Melfina, who are fast asleep in another room.

Gene and Hilda take care of the goons easily, but it's not going to be that simple as the elevator reaches their floor and then a mech smashes out through the doorway!

Aww, he's got a tiny blue lightsaber!

Hilda reminds Gene that he can't use a gun to kill it, so they've got to think of another way to get out of this cliffhanger ending. By the way, it looks like Gene once got mauled by a tiger who then threw him into a shark tank and no one's commented it on it so far. Those are some really nasty scars. Either that or they're tattoos.

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EPISODE 3: INTO BURNING SPACE

The narrator returns at the start of episode three to talk a bit about how the Munchausen Drive made FTL travel possible, and to explain the difference between space pirates, the Space Force and outlaws. The first two are pretty self-explanatory, but the outlaws, like Hilda, are basically people who don't fit into either category. People who do what they feel like, with freedom as their guide.

The name Munchausen is possibly more associated with the syndrome where people fake their illness these days, but the syndrome was named after Baron Munchausen, legendary teller of tall tales of adventure. The actual man inspired a book which inspired sci-fi pioneer Jules Verne, so I can see how a Munchausen Drive could make the Outlaw Star universe possible.

ACT ONE

Anyway Gene resolves the mech situation by pulling out his gun... and shooting paintballs at the sensor/window. Turns out that McCoy was piloting the thing and the moment he climbs out Hilda just tasers him again.

They question one of the other goons and discover that MacDougall was paying them to either capture the two of them or keep them here. So they decide they want to be elsewhere as soon as possible.

Turns out their friends in the dock have taken out some goons themselves and they're curious what's going on. Hilda reveals she's hunting for the Galactic Leyline, which seems fairly mythical from her friend's reaction. She says she doesn't believe anything until she sees it with her own eyes; no one has the heart to remind her she's got an eyepatch over one of them.

So Hilda's overall quest is to find the Galactic Leyline, but her next step is to get that ship that can dive into the Ether Sargasso.

Hilda and the others depart Blue Heaven in Horus, but they're pursued by goons piloting five grappler ships. She asks Gene to be useful, but he's too busy trying not to puke, so Jim volunteers to man the repaired laser cannons. They're not going to get past their pursuers' barriers, but it'll give them something else to think about.

It's just occurred to me that this area of space is purple too. Maybe space is just purple in this series.

They can just get Horus' FTL propeller spinning and jump away again, but first they need to get clear of the asteroids surrounding the station and they're being harassed the whole way. Even worse, there's a giant cruiser called the Orta Honehone travelling this approach lane coming the other way, and belongs to the Ctarl-Ctarl, who are vicious tiger people with an empire. Though they look more like humans with long pointy ears to me.

Hilda decides that she needs the lane more than they do and charges right at their massive vessel in a game of chicken.

Over on the Ctarl-Ctarl ship Orta Honehone, Captain Aisha Clan-Clan (they love doubling up on words it seems) is freaking out about the ship that's currently hurtling towards them. The Ctarl-Ctarl are far too prideful to move... until the last moment, when they decide that they really don't need a lunatic to crash into them. They pull the ship off the path, straying into some of the asteroids, which smash harmlessly against the mighty hull. Not that it stops Aisha from screaming.

Aisha is much cartoonier than the other characters so far and she wants someone to pay for this! She gets on the mic and tells all Hilda's pursuers to stop and hand themselves over, or else. So they do.

By the way, the Ctarl-Ctarl ship's interior looks like an underground jungle cave, and we keep getting this panning shot of the crew all punching the air in their matching pink uniforms, each of them entirely motionless. It's very strange. It's also a bit weird that they're all guys, while their captain is a woman. Seems like a deliberate choice.

The ship opens fire at Horus, but they get clear of the asteroids and sub-ether jump away. They're heading to a star system to meet up with some more of Hilda's friends.

ACT TWO

Back on the Horus, Gene wants to know what the deal is with the Galactic Leyline. Turns out there's supposed to be some huge treasure there that the pirates are eager to find.

Gene then tries to talk Hilda into sleeping with him during the trip, but she doesn't think he'd be up to much in his current state. Which leads to Jim teasing him some more and Melfina offering him sympathy.

I think the series is doing a good job with Gene, making him competent enough that he can take on the enemies he's facing, but flawed enough that he's got problems to overcome. His fear of space being the most obvious one at the moment.

Horus arrives at their destination but there's nothing here but debris. It seems that Hilda's friends Marx and O'Malley have been murdered. Just then the pirate vessel from the start of episode one appears and launches ships.

Turns out the pirates have been getting help from MacDougall. He knew exactly where she'd go.

Hilda's bit pissed off that they killed her friends and needs Gene to man up and go man the damn weapons already. They need to fire some missiles at the incoming ships. Hang on, why didn't they use missiles on those laser-proof grappler ships a minute ago?

The crew successfully drives the pirates off... except they've already gotten what they were after. They've branded Horus with a tracking glyph or whatever so they can follow Hilda and take back what she stole from them. Hang on, so this is another chase to pick up something Hilda's stashed somewhere?

There's no reason for Hilda to stick around here now so she begins the 40 light year jump to Farfallus to get her hidden ship.

Meanwhile, back near Blue Heaven, Aisha is having a chat with her boss. Aisha's second in command keeps reminding her that it's a recording and he can't hear her, but she carries on responding anyway. She kind of seems like an emotional young brat who isn't old enough to be driving a car, never mind commanding a starship, and her boss seems to feel the same way as she takes the vessel away from her for letting Hilda get away. Her voice actor really nails the angry childish whining though. Voice actors I mean, as the Japanese and English casts are both pretty solid.

I knew Aisha was going to be part of the crew from the start as she's in the opening titles, and now she's on the path to get there... eventually. Personally I'm more interested in seeing Hilda and Gene get their damn ship though!

Hilda's getting really close now as Horus has reached Farfallus and located the asteroid it's docked inside, which is orbiting scarily close to a star. Hilda reveals why she's after it: it's a special ship built with the brains of the pirates and the technology of the Space Forces, whatever that means. She doesn't explain why she isn't flying it already though, seeing as she was the one who stole it in the first place.

Okay, I'm onto episode four. This is the last one I'll be watching so I hope I get some kind of resolution for something.

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EPISODE 4: WHEN THE HOT ICE MELTS

Episode four begins with a bit of a history lesson about grappler ships and why they exist. It turns out that it's actually very sensible for spaceships to have arms and sometimes carry guns. So that proves me wrong.

We also get to take a good look at the blueprint for a ship called the XGP15AI. I thought it was the red ship from the opening credits at first, but then I noticed it doesn't have the engine pods on it.

ACT ONE

They take the dropship inside the asteroid dock and we finally get to see the hero ship! It's the wrong colour but it's definitely the ship that shows up in the opening titles. And she's a beauty.

Hilda calls it the XGP15A-II, so it's the sequel to that ship on the blueprint from a moment ago. It's still not clear why she stashed it here and kept flying Horus, but she's picking it up now.

The ship's design was apparently inspired by the real life X-15 prototype fighter and by the look of it I can believe it. Though it's much much bigger. It was designed by famous mech designer Shōji Kawamori, who did a lot of designs for Macross and the Odyssey for Ulysses 31, in addition to designing the original Optimus Prime (back when he was called Convoy). He's done a lot of stuff.

Hilda goes to the bridge and gets everyone registered with the computer, Gilliam II, so they're officially the crew now.

The bridge has a really weird design, as it's more like a cockpit in the middle of an empty room. You have to climb in over the controls to get into your seat. Well, Gene and Jim do. Melfina goes through a hatch in the floor and emerges in a tank of liquid... naked. The tank raises out of the floor and she has to cross her arms to keep the series from getting a higher content rating.

Just then the pirates show up again, having tracked Horus, so Hilda returns to her ship and tells Gene and the others to get the XGP15A-II launched. She was just about to give the ship a name as well!

It's like the start of episode one again, with the pirate ships swarming Horus, except this time Hilda can't make a run for it.

Meanwhile Melfina's connecting with the XGP's systems in her tank, somehow, and Jim rushes to the engine room to unseal the engines so they can move.

ACT TWO

It doesn't seem like the XGP has gun turrets to repel boarders, so Gene tries leaning out of the door to fire at the incoming ninja mimes and their space pirate boss. That doesn't work so great though, so he moves to plan B: opening the docking bay door remotely to let the pirates get flushed into space along with the atmosphere.

Meanwhile the grappler section of the pirate mothership disconnects to go after Hilda, who's currently using the asteroid for cover.

Whoa, the bridge just got weirder. The cockpit part of the bridge just rose up a bit and it has headlights and a hood ornament!

Unfortunately the ship's not going anywhere, as the other half of the pirate mothership has moved down to block the exit door. They try to use the ship's grappler arms, but there's no space inside the dock to move them, so they just crash into the wall.

Suddenly a thermonuclear missile comes out of nowhere and blows the pirate ship up!

It's MacDougall again! But he's not here to save the outlaws, he's here to kill everyone.

The asteroid dock is already closer to the nearby star than you'd want, but he fires another 10 or so missiles into to give it a bit of a push. The pirates, Horus and the asteroid go tumbling into the star, with the XGP still stuck inside the dock. Turns out that MacDougall has picked up a new contract: to destroy the XGP.

Gene pulls MacDougall's ship up on screen and recognises it! It was there among the grappler ships that destroyed his ship and killed his dad all those years ago. And now it's trying to kill him again, by firing a missile almost as big as the ship. The asteroid's falling even faster into the star now, and Horus doesn't have the power to escape the gravity well, so MacDougall decides that the job's done and flies off.

But Gene controls the grappler arms to smash free of the asteroid dock! A bit weird, but it worked.

The remaining half of the pirate mothership reaches over to the XGP with its own grappler arm and there's a shot of the Dr Eggman-looking pirate inside the hand with a boarding team ready to take the ship.

So Gene grabs it with the XGP's grapple arm and crushes it, killing him! That's two pirates down now, only one left.

Hilda detaches her dropship from the doomed Horus to try to reach the XGP and Gene reaches over with the ship's arm to grab it.

It's a great plan, except the dropship is knocked off course by a harpoon cable fired from the pirates. This is bad for all kinds of reasons, but the main one is that the cable gets attached to the XGP just as they were trying to not get dragged into a star.

The dropship's damaged but Melfina tells them that the XGP can't go back to save her or it'll drop below escape velocity. This is an issue as they can't accelerate with that pirate ship attached to them.

Hilda's not out of ideas yet though, and she bails from her dropship to grab the cable! I hope her spacesuit has some really good built-in cooling.

Trouble is the last of the three pirates is coming along the cable as well, with intention to kill her and steal the ship. She's got a magic barrier to prevent Hilda's bullets from hitting her and she's closing in fast. Hilda asks Gene for help, but things go from worse to even worse for her when the cable snaps! Now she's stuck falling into a star with a magic pirate who wants to kill her.

Her crew do want to rescue her, but they just can't. Turning around now would be suicide. The magic pirate tries to fire off one last spell to destroy the XGP, but Hilda realises that this is it and bites down on a thermonuclear false tooth. Or maybe the tooth's just the trigger, all I know is there's a cracking sound and then she explodes into an explosion brighter than the star! So that's pirate #3 dead now as well. I expected the three of them to become recurring villains, but the writer's done a good job of making their unfortunate fates absolutely certain. That'll serve them right for trying to steal back their own ship!

The XGP escapes and Gene decides to christen their vessel the Outlaw Star, revealing that the series was named after the ship the whole time! And the ship is named after the star Hilda died at I guess.

Anyway, with Hilda dead and the hero ship in Gene's possession I've finally got a bit of closure.

And yet it's still not giving me a break!

I suppose I'd have to keep watching to find out how he gets the ship painted red. And how he picks up Aisha and the samurai. Plus there's that Galactic Leyline treasure they were talking about.


CONCLUSION

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Sorry that was a lot more recap and a lot less commentary than usual, I couldn't really think of much to say. I still can't! In fact I was tempted to just scrap this whole article early on, but I wanted to show off the grappler ships. And the Outlaw Star's weird-ass bridge. And the thermonuclear tooth. And... basically there are so many weird things going on in these first four episodes that it totally failed to lose my interest.

I'm not saying that I approve of spaceships with arms (except for the Ragnarok in Final Fantasy VIII, that one gets a pass), but I have to concede that it does make the space combat feel different. Even if the space combatants have been mostly using lasers and missiles so far instead... and occasionally actual magic. I haven't seen enough anime to know for sure that spaceship wrestling isn't a trope, but I'm knowledgeable enough to at least say that the series is extremely anime otherwise, more so than Cowboy Bebop. Which is good and bad, depending on your tolerance for childish crying beast girls.

A lot of the appeal of these episodes for me comes from the beautiful slightly-scruffy late 90s hand-painted cel animation. I'm not saying it's better than modern computer animation, it's just a nice look and it never pulls a distracting switch into obvious CGI. The sound also deserves a mention, especially seeing as the opening and ending themes are fighting over which of them gets to be stuck in my head. The English voice acting seems just as good as the Japanese voices to me, to the point where I was happy to leave the dub on (it's creepy how much the narrators sound alike). The actors also managed to make it so that the kid genius character isn't even slightly annoying and that has to count for something. Sure he torments people, but in a good way.

It's hard for me to judge the story though, as it's a long way from being over. This has been a very serialised series so far, with each chapter flowing straight into the next. The first four episodes are a race to get stuff that Hilda has stolen from pirates and then stashed somewhere else for reasons that are never really explained, so the main characters are tagging along in someone else's tale for the most part. Though the episodes have also given a decent amount of focus to protagonist Gene Starwind and his trauma.

Gene's not exactly Luke Skywalker (he's already plenty capable right from the start), and Hilda's not exactly Obi-Wan Kenobi, but he goes on a bit of the classic hero's journey with her as she shows him the ropes and gets him out of his comfort zone. She also tries to murder him at one point and I'm still a little confused why. Maybe she just wanted to put the 'fatal' into femme fatale. Either way, she went out like a badass, dying the same way she lived: murdering pirates with explosions.

Melfina's one trait, on the other hand, is that she keeps getting naked. I was going to say she's also naive, but I suppose I have no idea what she knows. She just stays quiet and goes along with everything until it's time to connect with the ship, then she's basically Computer Voice #2. But it's Aisha Clan-Clan that has me concerned about where the series is going, as she changes the whole tone whenever she's around, and it seems like she's going to be around a lot in the future.

So far I think Outlaw Star is a fun, fast-paced series with likeable funny characters and some good action scenes. So if that's what they were going for, they did well. It's all action, but these episodes got creative with its action scenes and the escalating series of catastrophes during episode four was pretty great. I'd watch more of it.

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NEXT EPISODE

Thanks for reading! Next on Sci-Fi Adventures, it's more early season 5 Babylon 5! Sorry about that. It's going to get better though, I'm sure of it. In fact maybe this will be one of the good ones. It's In the Kingdom of the Blind.

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