The character of Queen Emaraldas I assumed would be undercooked. I assumed it would be a character of mystery and legend, and that would be the summary of her tale. BOY, was I wrong. I was thoroughly shocked at the character development, the realistic nature of her relationship with others, how the supporting characters found their footing, etc.

Most of all, I found the presentation to be filmesque. It didn't present like an anime. It presented like the personal story of a space pirate with high morals, hence the name I'm assuming. It left me not only satisfied, but at the edge of my seat anticipating more vignettes of this sprawling epic.

This is also a rarity. From what I researched, it is rare to find the 3rd and 4th episodes outside of Japan bc Japan only licenced the first two to be shown out of country. So very few people have ever actually SEEN the second half of the story. We were never going to get an over-the-shoulder, 2 hour epic directly from the perspective of Queen Emeraldas. She's a mysterious creature and doing that would dispel a portion of her foundational build. The character you get deep insights into are no longer mysterious and the mysterious character remains so because part of who they are is obscured. And she never exposition dumps who she is to anyone, which you could chalk up to indifference; aloofness; she is heartbroken, so on some subtle level she is already dead aka fatalistic; or perhaps she is is simply actualized and doesn't feel the need to justify her existence to anyone. Indeed, who would she justify her existance to?

This is also one of those rare times when I don't say, "The manga was better." The film is clearly more of a passion project than the manga, which I would actually skip. It is short, but every character that isn't Emeraldas is drawn as a low quality cartoon character, including the villains.