Starship Operators 6/10

Y'know, I figure this show has about the dumbest name ever. Starship Operators. Thanks for nothing guys.

Starship Operators aired in 2005 and runs 13 episodes. This series looks amazing most of the time, the CG spaceships and computer screens are great. It seems everything has a computer screen and they're all so detailed I wonder how the hell anyone managed to survive what must have been months of screen designing.

I also didn't mind the music, it's rather good but the OP and ED sucked royally. I've hated that particular brand of caterwauling since Please! Teacher. Blech! The animation is good but I really don't care for the odd look of the eyes in some of the the character designs. There are no reflections most of the time and some characters look different than others in the same shot. Teenage girls shouldn't look like androids.

The good ship Amaterasu is out for a three hour tour when it's home planet gets it's ass conquered by the Kingdom of Henrietta. The crew is ordered to abandon ship and surrender but after all the real crew leave the cadets that remain buy the ship from the company that built it, cut a deal with a TV network to fund them, and set off to free their home world. While this ill-advised move is pretty unbelievable even for an anime, the story quickly moves into some pretty entertaining ship battles.

We get to meet a bunch of the main crew and the story focuses on Shinon, the first officer and budding master tactician who's the reason the Amaterasu wins battle after battle. During the story the crew are attacked again and again and we get to see the political motivations behind the various nations and that's only mildly interesting until the final couple of episodes. A big part of the show was supposed to be the fact that the TV network is airing their battles but it doesn't really amount to much.

Other than the ship battles, some of the crew have little stories, some of the crew are killed, and poor Shinon falls in love, only to have her new beau blown up by a missile in the proceeding episode.

While I liked this show, the crew got pushed to the back burner after episode 8 or so and that's a shame as they were pretty entertaining. Also, Shinon falls in love and loses her new man in one and a half episodes and it feels a little rushed so it loses a lot of it's impact. The last couple of episodes are good but it's almost like the first 11 episodes didn't really matter. Kinda recommended.