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troperville

This is a "Wild Mass Guess" entry, where we pull out all the sanity stops on theorizing. The regular entry on this topic is elsewhere. Please see this programme note.

Bodacious Space Pirates

Descriptions and sketches of Marika's pirate captain identity broadcast on the news will sound/look nothing like her.

Perhaps leading her to mutter something like "Did they even look at me when we hit that ship?"

Nope; her real picture is broadcast all over the galaxy in ep 12.

Marika will have several Chekhovs Skills

The trailer starts with Marika flying a small spacecraft in her school uniform, then later in the video she's piloting a space fighter with a near-identical cockpit in her pirate captain outfit. Her swordfighting skill and other skills useful in operating the pirate ship may also apply.

Marika's father was murdered.

They said it was food poisoning, but they could've meant someone put poison in his food.

Jossed, he's still alive as Ironbeard

The cyber-attack on the Odette II is being performed by a member of Bentenmaru's crew

It's a test to see how Marika will handle such a situation. Note that Kane assigned her and Chiaki to be the only ones on the bridge at the time the intrusion happened.

Jossed. The attackers are from Lightning II, an armed merchantman that's moonlighting as a pirate.

The Odette II will sail as a privateer again

While her shields and beam cannons have been removed, the Odette II isn't much changed from her last configuration as the Hakuchou. Given that she's also been outfitted with a fleet flagship's command and control suite, it's quite possible she may lead a taskforce, consisting of her, Bentenmaru and Barbarossa. As for her crew, the Yacht Club are prime candidates.

Or worse, Jenny will use her father's connections to obtain a Letter of Marque of her own. And then the galaxy will learn to fear the Yacht Club.
- As original poster for this WMG, that is both awesome and terrifying at the same time. And further to that, perhaps it's less that Jenny obtains a Letter of Marque, and more that the ancient original Letter of Marque for the Odette II is revived, to the current surviving descendant of her original captain, one Captain Doolittle. In the generations since the war, Captain Doolittle's descendants have left piracy for commerce shipping, carefully building up their war chest for the day the ancestral ship returns to war...
- I just read the japanese wikipedia of this anime. According to the Letter of Marque laws, the government stopped giving these letters after the Independence War and new ones can only be issued to space pirates that fought with the Colonial Federation during the war. Even then, it's only the Captains and their descendants that can get new Letters of Marque. So unless one of Jenny's relatives is still in the privateering business, that's not gonna happen.
  - You never know. More elaborate legal fictions have been known. From the realist standpoint, despite being OP, I admit that if the Odette II and Yacht Club were to deploy as combatants, then shit has really hit the fan and Sea of the Morningstar is scrambling for any ship and body they can get to fight.
  - Another possibility is that someone attacks the Odette II again, and Jenny decides to go after them, using her father's money to rearm the Odette II. By the time the war ends, grown men are known to tremble in fear when they see a ship crewed by the Hakuho Academy Space Yacht Club.
It happens in the third book. Bentenmaru takes a job delivering biological samples to a research hospital ship. An experimental animal gets loose and it might be carrying some disease pathogen, so the ship is placed under quarantine. Problem is, by the time the quarantine is lifted, the Letter of Marque will have expired. So Marika recruits the Yacht Club and the Odette II to make one pirate attack on a cruise liner. Since Marika leads it, that's enough to satisfy the rules and prevent the loss of the Letter of Marque. Not yet known if this will appear in the anime.
- The third book begins with ep 14.
- What actually happens is that Marika tries to recruit a new crew, but is foiled thanks to Kenjo Kurihara; Chiaki suggests she recruit the Yacht Club, which she does, and they take Bentenmaru out in the next episode. And the crew was infected by the pathogen.
  - Also, at the end of the Hakuoh Pirates arc, Jenny thoughfully muses that she's heard there are ways around the legal restrictions surrounding Letters of Marque... and then at the final episode, her company has apparently bought over the Odette II from Hakuouh Academy.

The protagonists are The Theme Park Version of Space Pirate... literally.

The independence war that created the first Space Pirate has been ended 120 years ago, and all factions are said to be united by the Galactic Empire. However, the local government still maintained the Privateer on the basis that they rob people at least once every 50 days, for 120 years. Given that there are no other governments that they can fight against, it seems rather improbable that such system was maintained for that long without any interference.

Though, the reaction of (most) passengers of the Princess of Apricot showed that they are actually excited to be visited by the Space Pirate. How is it so? Because they are The Theme Park Version of Space Pirate... literally. The romance of Space Pirate lived on even after the war, and the local government decided instead of disbanding them, it would be better to keep them into the current harmless way, so that they can be used as an attraction to the wealthy cruiser-goers. The reason why they are required to rob every 50 day is to ensure the attraction has some kind of regularity, and the shipping company can cover the loss by insurance (which, in turns, funded by the increased tourism due to the pirates).

As such, the story is actually a literal Space Opera of Space Pirate, playing with the trope.

Then why some of the people treat it as a Serious Business? It might be a case of Enforced Method Acting, so that our rookie protagonist can be (slightly) more realistic when "robbing" the cruiser. Another reason may be because the pirate ships are still fully-functional warship with (generally) competent crew, so that in situation where there are real enemies, they will be conscripted into the navy, thus actually risking their lives.

Confirmed. These cruise robbings are in fact a joint production between the Space Pirates, the government, the shipping companies and insurance companies. Each group benefits from these stage robbings with the Pirates having some experience and work to do when not in war, the shipping companies attract more tourists due to the pirates, the insurance companies get more customers, the government gets money and keeping the pirates active and the tourists get an exciting vacation worthy of their money (the valuables the pirates steal are fakes made by the insurance companies but are used as tokens to pay the pirates which they in turn they return them to the insurance companies who give them real cash.
- Well, with the ending Cliff Hanger in episode 8, it looks like a Civil War is about to erupt. If a war breaks out, all bets are probably off. So all that showboating Marika is being forced to do will likely be utilized for real, and she'll probably end up having to kill a lot of people to save lots of others...
  - It Gets Better afterwards, but not before showing off the combat ability of Bentenmaru against military vessels.

The Golden Ghost Ship is a TARDIS

Think about it. There's this ghost ship that's being sighted in extremely distant locations with an improbably short time between these sightings, and it's explained that ships as old as the ghost ship wouldn't have FTL, so there's no way it would be able to appear as it does...unless it's a TARDIS with its chameleon circuit stuck on "Golden Ghost Ship!"

Oh, the Time Lord controlling it is Marika's father. He faked his death just so he could screw with people for the lulz. The revelation will cause Marika to use the TARDIS to go back in time and really poison his food so that he really does die.
Apparently the Golden Ghost Ship process some kind of [[FTL]] jump capacity, as it utilised subspace for fast travel between dangerous space.

Marika's entire crew is ringers

Every last one of them were replaced at the hospital. But the ringers don't all work for the same illuminati, which is why they're working to expose each other.

And now you know the real explanation for Courier!

Quartz Christie is an alias, and she's the heir to the Imperial Throne

Note the way Ironbeard addresses her - calmly, firmly, without overt aggression or rudeness - and informs her that the Galactic Empire's Empress has charged him with returning her to the Empress' side. Also note that they're both theoretically equals, being pirates recognised by the Empire, and yet Ironbeard kneels before her on one knee, as if a subject before royalty. The last hint is how he tells her he intends to ensure her safety - and Ririka, who's now a member of Ironbeard's crew, foils the attempted assasination.

Ironbeard is Gonzaemon Kato, Marika's father

According to the novels, Gonzaemon was a commissioned officer in the Imperial Navy before he took over as Captain of the Bentenmaru, and his family has a long and distinguished history both as pirates and as naval officers. His death from food poisoning also seems suspicious given that Misa was onboard the Bentenmaru, he'd have had to have eperiencedRirika's cooking, and the fact that his death, conviniently in Marika's 1st year of high school, sets the story in motion. It's more likely that he faked his death, and spent the last several in-universe years as a roving troubleshooter for the Empress, acting under his Letter of Marque.

Also, they share the same eyes.
Confirmed (for the anime at least) in Episode 26 - Gruier calls him 'Captain Gonzaemon' and Ririka refers to him in the same way as she did Gonzaemon in Episode 1.

Marika had a reason for choosing the location she did for the final battle

It was the location where they originally found the Golden Ghost Ship, and the area is lousy with Serenity sensor drones, all still operating. Courier already knows how to hack into those drones, and that's part of the information she uses to create that singularly excellent battlefield situation map. Also, Serenity had been feeding valuable information to Marika in preparation for the encounter, and this is Marika's way of paying them back. Serenity naval intelligence has a front row seat for the battle, and no matter how it comes out, those sensor records will be priceless. They get to see how the Grand Crosses fly and fight, and as it turns out they also get to see how the pirates defeat them.

Marika sent a message to Serenity telling them where and when the battle was going to be. We know that because Gruier was trying to get there in Odette II.
We also know that Serenity naval intelligence observed the battle, because they told Gruier that it was over and that the pirates had won.

The reason the Corbacks and Talbots are shaped like blades is for boarding actions

Most of the time, they take over the other ship's control systems before boarding, and in that case they use normal docking procedures. But in the last episode we saw that they can engage in boarding a ship they don't control, by ramming it. That worked pretty well for Shangrila, but it didn't penetrate very far because of its blunt shape. The blade shape of the Corback class and the Talbot class is more reinforced and should penetrate better, increasing the chance of reaching corridors in the target ship. The dual-blade Maracot class doesn't do this, but by the time that class was designed, the shipyards were already experience building blade-shaped hulls, so the design included two of them.

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