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EP. REVIEW: Fena: Pirate Princess

And thanks "MagicPolly" for the English opening, I didn't know it was even a thing! Been a Junna fan since Macross Delta, so always happy to have more of her music!

...has the lyric "Carry on, to unveil of the promised El Dorado". No clue if the jp version has an equivalent line, since all the lyric lists I can find seem to be of the English version....

What was really hard to get around was that nobody noticed Fena wander off when conversation was devoted to her acting strangely.

The idea of only poppies blooming where the goblins have been is another mark of the demonization of Asians, because the poppy is specifically associated with opium.

"The WWI Origins of the Poppy as a Remembrance Symbol - The Remembrance Day symbolism of the poppy started with a poem written by a World War I brigade surgeon who was struck by the sight of the red flowers growing on a ravaged battlefield."

Other nations soon followed suit in adopting the poppy as their official symbol of remembrance. Today, nearly a century after World War I ended, millions of people in the United Kingdom, Canada, France, Belgium, Australia and New Zealand don the red flowers every November 11 (known as Remembrance Day or Armistice Day) to commemorate the anniversary of the 1918 armistice.

In the United States, the tradition has developed a little differently. Americans don’t typically wear poppies on November 11 (Veterans Day), which honors all living veterans. Instead, they wear the symbolic red flower on Memorial Day—the last Monday in May—to commemorate the sacrifice of so many men and women who have given their lives fighting for their country.

“In Flanders Fields” by John McCrae

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Red poppies are also the remembrance symbol of the dead after World War 1

Fena really has been a very passive lead ever since she met the Goblin Knights, which is funny since she showed a lot of spunk and initiative in the first episode (with her plan to escape her crappy arranged marriage.) But for the past two episodes she's basically just been led around while other characters do all the fighting and spout all the exposition. Even the whole subplot about her wanting to master a weapon hasn't gone anywhere. I want to see more of Episode One Fena, who came up with crazy plans and got by on sheer determination. Maybe she'll stage a daring escape from the ship next week and get to kick some butt on her own. Heck, maybe she'll actually become a pirate (despite the title, halfway through season 1 the only pirates we've met are bad guys.)

Despite these issues, this show is still a fun time. Historical sailing adventures are a pretty rare anime setting, and the animation is absolutely beautiful, especially in this era of increasingly cheap production values.

I also picked up that book you mentioned earlier in the thread, Princess Irene, and have been trying to get into it. Have to admit, it is a bit drier than I was hoping, so far, for a bit of pirate history.