anime: Bodacious Space Pirates
Bodacious Space Pirates is about pirates. IN SPACE. In case you couldn't tell from the title. I'd been curious about the series for a while because it was about pirates with a mostly female cast, but the title made me think it would likely be a fanservice fest. Thankfully, someone posted on it recently declaring otherwise (sadly, I forgot who, and didn't find it in the tags of the likely suspects), for which I am ETERNALLY GRATEFUL.
Set in the far future, a galactic empire rules (mostly) peacefully. Before it ruled peacefully, there were space pirates who ran amok until someone had the bright idea to bring the pirates under the empire's wing and issue letters of marque. Now, while pirates still undertake various transport jobs and will sometimes go un treasure hunts and takes on jobs from princesses and/or runaway princesses, they're mostly tourist attractions. Cruise ships and the like will contract insurance companies to have pirates accept commissions to attack luxury cruise ships and the like. The pirates get the loot, and the insurance companies repay the customers for the stolen property, and the customers get the fun of being held up by (totally civilized and safe) pirates. Letters of marque and pirate ships can't be sold for whatever reason, and can only pass to the current captain's direct descendant. Because of this (presumably, some pirates' kids gave a "thanks but no thanks" to the pirate successor bit), there are far fewer pirate ships than there used to be.
Marika Kato lives on a nice, peaceful world with her larger-than-life mother, Ririka. She's a member of her school's yacht club (SPACE YACHT club) and works after school at a maid cafe. Then Kane and Misa, two strangely attractive and dashing customers at the cafe, mention that they just happen to know her mother, and appear at her house that night. At which point, Marika learns that (A) Ririka is actually a REALLY FAMOUS pirate, and (B) Marika's father was the captain of the pirate ship Bentenmaru, and as he recently died, she's now the captain of the Bentenmaru, if she wants the job. Kane and Misa would very much appreciate it if she would take the job, because they want to keep theirs.
VARIOUS PARTIES are very interested in whether or not Marika takes the job, so Kane and Misa go undercover at Marika's school as her homeroom teacher and the school nurse, because they've really appreciate it if no one would kidnap their captain before finals. Ririka is completely chill and la-di-da about all this. Ririka is very confident that her mothering skills can only create BAMFs. One of these INTERESTED PARTIES is Marika's One True Love, Chiaki, a MYSTERIOUS TRANSFER STUDENT. Chiaki rescues Marika from 50 or 60 other INTERESTED PARTIES camped out at Marika's cafe. Chiaki would like to fervently insist that she does not like or care about Marika AT ALL and will continue to do so for about 3/4 of the series, despite appearing almost literally everywhere Marika does to totally-not-help-out-no-really. For the proper context, imagine Kyoko and Kanae from Skip-Beat IN SPACE. I'm 90% certain that most of Chiaki's scenes end right before she runs from the room screaming "STOP LOVING MEEEEEEE....(wait, why aren't you following me with hearts in your eyes? Am I running too fast?)" Sadly, Marika/Chiaki aren't technically canon lesbians. There are canon lesbians whose life goals include marrying each other after school and jointly running a ridonckulously successful intergalactic business with a bit of hacking on the side, but that's not Marika/Chiaki.
The rest of the yacht club thinks it's AMAZINGLY COOL that Marika is a pirate captain. Marika's crew thinks Marika is scary smart of a teenager, but would like her to know that child labor laws still apply to teenaged pirate captain. also, could she maybe be a teensy bit more subtle about scheduling their jobs around finals? Marika's best friend, Mami, is an aspiring fashion designer and is TOTALLY OVERJOYED at the chance to play around with schoolgirl pirate uniforms. There's a space princess surnamed Serenity with blonde hair, pigtails and buns who would like you to know that no, she doesn't own 30 copies of Sailor Moon, but she is willing to be a total Marika fangirl. Chiaki would like to let you know that no, she still isn't in love with Marika, she'll just glare you to death if you're mean to Marika and give Marika just the right advice when she needs it. Ririka is still chill about this, and is pondering a career change.
There's also plot, and it's generally pretty good plot, but who cares about plot when you have so many delightful characters and interactions running around. (Look, it was very difficult not to just type multiple paragraphs of "HEARTS IN MY EYES.") There's one plotpoint that comes up later on that involves a secret being kept from Marika that irritates me (it irritates me mostly because everyone but her knows the secret, but she's the one who should know it) but the anime only adapts the first few volumes of a much longer light novel series, so I assume it gets addressed later on. Sadly, there don't appear to be any signs of an official or fan release of an English version of the light novels.
Set in the far future, a galactic empire rules (mostly) peacefully. Before it ruled peacefully, there were space pirates who ran amok until someone had the bright idea to bring the pirates under the empire's wing and issue letters of marque. Now, while pirates still undertake various transport jobs and will sometimes go un treasure hunts and takes on jobs from princesses and/or runaway princesses, they're mostly tourist attractions. Cruise ships and the like will contract insurance companies to have pirates accept commissions to attack luxury cruise ships and the like. The pirates get the loot, and the insurance companies repay the customers for the stolen property, and the customers get the fun of being held up by (totally civilized and safe) pirates. Letters of marque and pirate ships can't be sold for whatever reason, and can only pass to the current captain's direct descendant. Because of this (presumably, some pirates' kids gave a "thanks but no thanks" to the pirate successor bit), there are far fewer pirate ships than there used to be.
Marika Kato lives on a nice, peaceful world with her larger-than-life mother, Ririka. She's a member of her school's yacht club (SPACE YACHT club) and works after school at a maid cafe. Then Kane and Misa, two strangely attractive and dashing customers at the cafe, mention that they just happen to know her mother, and appear at her house that night. At which point, Marika learns that (A) Ririka is actually a REALLY FAMOUS pirate, and (B) Marika's father was the captain of the pirate ship Bentenmaru, and as he recently died, she's now the captain of the Bentenmaru, if she wants the job. Kane and Misa would very much appreciate it if she would take the job, because they want to keep theirs.
VARIOUS PARTIES are very interested in whether or not Marika takes the job, so Kane and Misa go undercover at Marika's school as her homeroom teacher and the school nurse, because they've really appreciate it if no one would kidnap their captain before finals. Ririka is completely chill and la-di-da about all this. Ririka is very confident that her mothering skills can only create BAMFs. One of these INTERESTED PARTIES is Marika's One True Love, Chiaki, a MYSTERIOUS TRANSFER STUDENT. Chiaki rescues Marika from 50 or 60 other INTERESTED PARTIES camped out at Marika's cafe. Chiaki would like to fervently insist that she does not like or care about Marika AT ALL and will continue to do so for about 3/4 of the series, despite appearing almost literally everywhere Marika does to totally-not-help-out-no-really. For the proper context, imagine Kyoko and Kanae from Skip-Beat IN SPACE. I'm 90% certain that most of Chiaki's scenes end right before she runs from the room screaming "STOP LOVING MEEEEEEE....(wait, why aren't you following me with hearts in your eyes? Am I running too fast?)" Sadly, Marika/Chiaki aren't technically canon lesbians. There are canon lesbians whose life goals include marrying each other after school and jointly running a ridonckulously successful intergalactic business with a bit of hacking on the side, but that's not Marika/Chiaki.
The rest of the yacht club thinks it's AMAZINGLY COOL that Marika is a pirate captain. Marika's crew thinks Marika is scary smart of a teenager, but would like her to know that child labor laws still apply to teenaged pirate captain. also, could she maybe be a teensy bit more subtle about scheduling their jobs around finals? Marika's best friend, Mami, is an aspiring fashion designer and is TOTALLY OVERJOYED at the chance to play around with schoolgirl pirate uniforms. There's a space princess surnamed Serenity with blonde hair, pigtails and buns who would like you to know that no, she doesn't own 30 copies of Sailor Moon, but she is willing to be a total Marika fangirl. Chiaki would like to let you know that no, she still isn't in love with Marika, she'll just glare you to death if you're mean to Marika and give Marika just the right advice when she needs it. Ririka is still chill about this, and is pondering a career change.
There's also plot, and it's generally pretty good plot, but who cares about plot when you have so many delightful characters and interactions running around. (Look, it was very difficult not to just type multiple paragraphs of "HEARTS IN MY EYES.") There's one plotpoint that comes up later on that involves a secret being kept from Marika that irritates me (it irritates me mostly because everyone but her knows the secret, but she's the one who should know it) but the anime only adapts the first few volumes of a much longer light novel series, so I assume it gets addressed later on. Sadly, there don't appear to be any signs of an official or fan release of an English version of the light novels.