Enemy's the Pirates!, The
Entry updated 8 April 2024. Tagged: TV.
Japanese Original Video Animation (1989; original title Teki wa Kaizoku: Neko no Kyōen; vt The Enemy's the Pirates!: The Cat's Banquet; vt Galactic Pirates; vt Galactic Pirates Cat's Feast). Kitty Film Mitaka Studio. Based on the novels by Chohei Kanbayashi. Directed by Katsuhisa Yamada. Written by Akinori Endo. Voice cast includes Kenyuu Horiuchi, Chie Kōjiro, Yūji Mitsuya, Jouji Nakata, Kaneto Shiozawa and Hideyuki Tanaka. Six 25-minute episodes. Colour.
Human Raul Latell Satoru (Tanaka) and the catlike Alien Apulo (Mitsuya) are a detective team in the Division of Space Piracy (DSP) (see Crime and Punishment), which leads the fight against the pirates that afflict the Solar System. Apulo's lack of focus on anything other than food is a source of constant irritation to Latell: their frequent arguments usually ending with a burst of ill-directed violence from the latter. Apulo has the ability to "lock" people's emotions – such as keeping them happy or brave, regardless of the circumstances (see Psi Powers); he is the DSP detective the pirates fear most of all, presumably due to being an agent of chaos rather than having crime-fighting skills. Their Spaceship is the AI-controlled Lagendra (Horiuchi), who laments the idiocy of its superiors.
Our heroes are fired from the DSP because the amount of collateral damage they cause – such as blowing a hole in a luxury space liner – so Apulo steals Lagendra and decides to become a film star on Titan (see Outer Planets); Latell – who has convinced himself he was only fired so as to keep an eye on Apulo, joins him. Meanwhile the mysterious Herbert Katz (Shiozawa) plans to steal the Computer Assisted Thinking (CAT) System #86: he has assured his boss Youmei (Nakata), the leader of the solar system's pirates, that the Cat System will enable him to carry out any order without DSP knowing about it. Youmei has his doubts where Katz's loyalties lie, his origins being unknown, but is interested in seeing how events play out. CAT Systems are commonplace devices and can be used in the making of films – but the Titan film company uses the #86 model, which has been banned as it can affect Perceptions and alter reality, as well as eventually taking over its user. It turns out the DSP chief manipulated events so that Apulo ended up on Titan just as Katz arrived to steal the Cat System: Katz succeeds, but many of his pirates are killed by Apulo and Latell, so the pair are reinstated with the DSP. They now have an additional member to their team, Marsha (Kōjiro), formerly their chief's assistant, but now a detective.
Youmei – so civilized that he has a robot string quartet playing in his garden – is the most powerful man in the solar system: he orders Katz to use the CAT System to kill Latell and Apulo. The pair are currently on Mars as members of the DSP baseball team (see Games and Sports), fighting their bitter rivals the Information Forces: the latter have resorted to using Powered Armour, though as the DSP team includes Robots this is not entirely unjustified. DSP win, but then virtually every human on the planet turns into a cat (see Shapeshifting) – though Apulo's emotion lock prevents this happening to Latell and Marsha, whilst the captain of the Information Forces' team's sheer hatred of Apulo prevents his transformation: similarly, Lagendra's antipathy towards becoming like Apulo means they split in two – one part does become an enormous flying cat, but the other stays a spaceship by fleeing into Omega Space (this Anime's equivalent of Hyperspace). Their flying cat form is a coal-powered propeller plane (see Steampunk). Martian robots become robot cats; all those transformed are unaware of their change.
These changes are the result of the Cat System taking over the Information Forces AI, which becomes a giant winged cat that, after a tussle with Lagendra, flies off into space. Meanwhile Katz is revealed to be an alien pirate from the planet Margansayle, who want to take over the solar system. A brief space battle follows involving the pirate factions and Lagendra, plus the newly arrived Martian and Solar System fleets. It all fizzles out when Youmei kills Katz. At the end, the people on Mars remain cats.
The inconclusive ending suggests further episodes were intended. "The Enemy's the Pirates!" is a refrain the crime-fighters regularly repeat, presumably to remind themselves that they should be fighting pirates, not each other. With a plot that does not make too much sense, this Cat-fixated anime is centred on slapstick and banter (see Humour) and, in small doses, is moderately enjoyable as such; but despite its short run, there is much padding. Though The Enemy's the Pirates! did not have an American release, an English dub was made in the UK: it is not good. [SP]
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