Irresponsible captain Tylor

	Original run	1993
	Episodes	26
	Watched	26/26, English subbed
	Director	Kooichi Mashimo
	Studio	Tatsunoko Production
	Based on	Hitoshi Yoshioka's light novels
	Review date	March 9, 2012

This series was introduced to me in the "classic of the month" article in a local anime magazine years ago. I got interested in the story, started watching, and despite being fairly intriguing it disappeared under other stuff after a few episodes and was forgotten. But now it was time to dig it up again and give it another go.

The story tells, not so surprisingly, about Justy Ueki Tylor, who ends up as a captain of a space ship, and he's very irresponsible about it and everything else in general. At the beginning of the series he is sitting on a street and thinking what he should do with his life. He comes up with a brilliant solution: Join the army, get an easy desk job and later retire and live merrily on the pension. After the army mistakenly believes that the enemy is attacking them even an idiot like Tylor gets quickly taken in. Next Tylor accidentally solves a hostage situation involving a retired war hero, and he is promoted to the captain of the ship Soyokaze as a reward. It turns out that the Soyokaze is used as a dumping ground where all the worst people in the army (including Tylor) are pushed away to keep them from disturbing the higher ups, who are trying to seriously wage a war against the alien Raalgon Empire. Tylor proceeds to lead the anarchistic crew with his carefree and utterly irresponsible manner, with Lt. Commander Yuriko Starr and Lieutenant Yamamoto, the only fully sane and responsible people on board, desperately trying to keep things under control and everyone alive.

A central element in the story is Tylor's unbelievable plot shield: All his victories come from a combination of his endless irresponsibility and pure dumb luck, and he constantly surprises both his enemies and superiors with his absurd moves. He swiftly catches the eye of the Raalgon empire which considers him a noteworthy threat, while his superiors try to figure out a way to get rid of him and his idiotic maneuvres before he cause damage on his own side. Needless to say, assassination or demotion attempts bear no fruit, and Tylor continues to shine on the battlefield, enough for the young and good-hearted Raalgon empress to take an interest in him. Also it should be mentioned that while Tylor's victories are ludicrously improbable, they don't feel like lazy writing with deus-ex-machinaing the heroes out of all their troubles, because they make more or less sense in context and get somewhat foreshadowed.

The beginning of the series was pure awesome, and I could watch even up to eight episodes a day. Then the quality suddenly took a huge nosedive to the depths of derp. I wanted to see more of Tylor's insane wins, but instead I got random completely out-of-place adventures inside Tylor's brain and in a random alternative universe dreamworld, and "hilarious" romantic comedy with Tylor accidentally insulting the female crew members. Towards the end the series improved dramatically, delivering one of the weirdest Grand Finales I've ever seen. The few last episodes lost a bit steam, but luckily they still stayed far above the randomness at the middle of the series.

Surprisingly for such a silly series there were plenty of serious situations as well. I expected to see just Tylor's goofy antics and that the war would have been merely stuff blowing up, but while the war never gets too realistic there were actually named characters who died. And while the audience knows that everything will turn out just fine in the end the epic scenes are still pretty epic.

The cast was very likable as well. The main character was something I don't see often, and he delightfully manages to be a genuinely well-meaning and friendly guy who doesn't really wish anyone ill while having a ton of flaws at the same time. Somehow it feels that the main character has to be a selfish jerk, even a little, or otherwise they're an uninteresting ninny or something. I prefer nice guys as long as they have enough flaws to keep them away from the messiah-like Mary Sue territory. A lot of people seem to be of the opinion that he's actually a genius mastermind who just pretends to be an idiot, but I am not one of those people; I like to think that he's a guy who is content with himself and happens to be loved by the universe. Also he's not exactly stupid in the "hurr durr my main character is a complete moron" way, I think his antics stem more from his laid-back "everything will be alright" attitude, which may come off as utter ignorance of other people's feelings.

While the main character is excellent the side characters weren't bad either, they got fairly good characterisation and were involved with the plot, and they interacted with other people than the main character as well. Especially Yamamoto managed to impress me. Also seeing the Soyokaze crew work together was appealing to me, I tend to like it when quarreling scoundrels succeed in teamwork because they suddenly get a common goal. The Raalgon Empire was shown in delightfully sympathetic light; the Raalgons were worthy opponents and honourable warriors and not mindless generic bad guys you wanted to get offed (Dom was awesome).

I'm a girl, so I often pay attention to how well (or badly) the female characters get treated, and this time I wasn't disappointed. I may have been slightly distracted by the Awesome that is Tylor, but I felt that the female characters were all involved with the plot, and they had characterisation outside being a male character's crush/wife/daughter/etc. Though after finishing the series I noticed that all but one named female characters were sort of interested in the main character... Well Tylor was just so awesome that I'll let it slide.

Occasionally he series has excellent background music. I love the epic fanfares, they are... well, epic. Also, the series sometimes uses fun and cheerful music in serious situations, and it somehow manages to still sound right. Or at least William Tell Overture wouldn't have been my first pick if I had had to choose background music for one of the most intense events in the whole series, but it works anyway. And it's rare for me to bother watching the opening or ending music, but this time I always watched the ED as well even if it was just looping a few frames of Tylor walking. Dat smile!

"Fairly poor" was my first impression of the dress-uppability of the series. The character designs are *gasp* distinct enough that most characters have a different body type, and not so surprisingly for the military setting they tend to wear same clothes most of the time. However, especially the titular character has at least 5 different outfits and the side characters are shown in civilian clothes a couple of times, so if you ignored the different body types you could scrape up some kind of a dress up. The civilian clothes weren't very memorable though, so it wouldn't be much of a game.

	Best	Worst
Episode	13, 23	19
Character	Tylor of course	The whole cast was likable, I don't remember disliking anyone.
Pairing	Tylor can have all the girls in his harem so no one gets left out.	There weren't really any other pairings sans Tylor x the girls...
Outfit	Tylor's red suit from the ED	Some of the girls' civilian outfis were a bit stupid.
Final judgement 2,5/3 Extremely enjoyable as long as you're not trying to take it too seriously.