Starship Operators

I’m sure there are interesting and well-done strategy-focused and/or politics-focused SF series out there. This is not one of them. The soundtrack is pretty good. That’s… that’s about it. The art quality is cheap looks-nice-at-first-glance-and-only-first-glance. And then there are the boob and miniskirt uniforms, the few characters with rather ridiculous anime hair, and the lack of movement or expression outside of really bad mouth animations on most characters that make this look like a bunch of screencaps with moving lips. There’s some cute guys in it and at least one sweet romance? If you want to watch a really low-quality version of a strategy space ... navy game, that’s… about all the story you’re getting. Also no, the sweet romance is not the protagonist’s.

The first real dialogue we get is between an asshat captain(?) and the primary protagonist and it’s arguably sexual harassment and honestly it’s all downhill from there. Also the English dub isn’t the worst I’ve ever seen but given the bad script and arguably shoddy animation, the dub acting is just… bad. And is frequently poorly synced up.

I liked this back when it was one of the few anime series I’d ever seen. It was shiny and neat and like a cool video game and the romances were nice. How times change. If you want good science fiction series with a focus on relationships interspersed with ship battles and/or politics focused, watch “Suisei no Gargantia”, “Macross Frontier”, or “Gankutsuou”. “Casshern Sins” is also a pretty good SF series with some fun battles to watch and a focus on philosophy (arguably).