So it seems Steven Den Beste got his hands on Sol Bianca: the Legacy thanks to Geneon’s sale, and he couldn’t finish it. I’m not surprised. I never got past the first DVD.� My biggest problem is that it wasn’t the original, vintage 1990. While my memories of it are fuzzy, there were just so many ways that the original OVA’s rocked. It was a much cooler show. The roles of the characters made more sense compared to their personalities, for one thing. As pirates, the women were, well, pirates. Not scavengers of old technology; they actually assaulted ships and killed people to steal from them. Yet they weren’t total reprobates–they were capable of bravery and sacrifice; they fought among themselves, but they showed loyalty too. When chance dropped a seemingly-orphened kid in their lap, they protected him at great risk to themselves, which got some of them captured by a dictator (Emperor Badros; now that’s a name!) Ending up in the middle of a revolution, they caused a lot of mayhem; yet remained focused on their goals; their own freedom, loot, and getting the kid home to his parents. The one major distraction was when April got really, really mad at the dictator for slicing her cheek. When the opportunity came, she escaped and fought her way almost single-handedly through dozens of his elite guard force to reach him, while the revolution raged around the palace. April casually disarmed Badros, leaving him helpless and hysteric. Instead of killing him, she gave him a matching scar on his face — and then turned and just walked off.
That’s style. That’s storytelling. As I recall, Dr. Heinous said something to the effect that if he’d been Badros, he’d have called her back and made her empress on the spot. I think I responded that the obvious drawback was that then she would kill him, and succeed to the throne!
Imagination? How she escaped: one of the items they looted at the beginning of the show turned out to be a shipment of ultra-long-range laser sniper rifles. How long range� Feb (I think, it was the lush/captain, either way) clamps it to the Sol Bianca’s hull and kills April’s guards from orbit. (Evil dictator’s note #342: Never plan an open air execution when you haven’t found the enemy’s cloaked ship…) And there’s a greater story waiting to be told in the background. In the second OVA, it became obvious that the Sol Bianca was a mystery to everyone, even to her crew. It wasn’t obvious at first, but the captain wasn’t really in control. June was; the ship was somehow linked to her psychically — and not even all five of the women knew it. Only she, the loli (May?), and the captain (Feb?) did — though the others got a bit suspiscious when June ordered Gi (the AI) to come rescue them, despite having no visible means of communicating with it.
The second OVA ended on a cliffhanger, more were planned but never made. I later heard thirdhand something I can’t confirm; that supposedly one of the writers said that the real secret behind the show was that the ship was their mother. Based on some of the flashback scenes in the remake that SDB watched, I think they were still playing with this idea, but the execution of the remake was far poorer. The originals argued and fought� Well ok, we’ll have the copies do that too! Only the fighting is fake and put on, it’s not convincing. The Sol Bianca had a lot of special abilities? We’ll give it holographic attacks, like a huge woman shooting a bow! Never mind that it’s silly. But we can’t have the pirates engaging in, well, actual piracy; they’re more into scavenging. Character consistancy? Not even within the show itself, don’t mention against the original. All the roles were changed around; as I said above, the lush was the captain, not April, the blonde.
I admit I liked the art from the remake; the financing was apparently from a South American company, and a lot of the the ship’s menu and building designs were clearly influenced by the Hispanic culture. But those and a likeable OP just weren’t enough to carry the remake, even without comparison to the original. Steven couldn’t watch the last DVD… I never got past the first.
Sol Bianca: The Legacy was not a worthy legacy to Sol Bianca the original.
