Anime / Irresponsible Captain Tylor

"Either he's a fool or an out-and-out genius."

— Dr. Kitaguchi on Justy Ueki Tylor

In the distant future, the United Planets Space Force is poised on the brink of war with a race of aliens known as the Raalgon. As the tensions start to boil over, along comes Justy Ueki Tylor, a young man who joins the military hoping to find a cushy office job somewhere and take it easy.

Fate has other things in mind for our hero, however: Tylor soon goes to deliver a pension check to the highly respected Admiral Hanner, and ends up accidentally saving him (along with Tsundere love-interest Yuriko Star, and Hanner's cute twin granddaughters Emi and Yumi) from Raalgon agents posing as anti-war terrorists. His "heroism" gains him a rapid promotion to lieutenant commander and an assignment to captain the destroyer Soyokaze (which translates to "Gentle Breeze").

Unbeknownst to Tylor, the Soyokaze is considered a dumping ground for the space fleet, and his frustrated superiors are trying to get rid of him before he causes any more chaos. Unfortunately, this backfires, and Tylor ends up leading his rag-tag crew into a series of victories (much to the chagrin of both his superiors and his subordinates, especially Yuriko and Tylor's straight-man second-in-command Lieutenant Yamamoto), with the fate of the whole war soon ending up in their hands.

He also manages to gain attention among the enemy, including the beautiful teenage Empress Azalyn. All the while, both the other characters and the audience are left wondering if Tylor is a lucky nimrod, or a brilliant strategist.

The Irresponsible Captain Tylor is a 26-episode anime series directed by Koichi Mashimo and produced by Tatsunoko Production which aired on TV Tokyo in 1993. The series is an adaptation of Hitoshi Yoshioka's The Most Irresponsible Man In Space series of Light Novels, with the anime taking its name from the first book in the series. Moshimo followed up the anime series with a 2-part OVA, Tylor's War, also known as An Exceptional Episode, in 1994. Eight additonal OVA episodes directed by Naoyuki Yoshinaga were released in 1995 and 1996. The series is distributed in North America by Nozomi Entertainment, who created the English dub when they were known by their parent company's name, Right Stuf. The series aired subtitled in the United States on the International Channel in the early 2000s.

Interesting Fact: Captain Tylor's first and second names (Justy Ueki) are a pun on the words 'Just wake', as in "Just Wake Tylor." "Just Lucky" can be derived as well, which seems appropriate.

On July 11, 2017, a sequel of sorts, Musekinin Galaxy Tylor has been broadcast, with a descendant of Justy named Banjo Ueki Tylor as the main character, and finally ended on September 26th, 2017 with 12 episodes. If you're hoping for some of the charm from the original, you won't find it there. Each episode was a mere 3 minutes.

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Tropes:

• 10-Minute Retirement: Tylor, after Admiral Hanner's death. Goes hand-in-hand with the Bait-and-Switch ending, when we're led to believe Yamamoto's reunited the rest of the crew aboard the Aso, until he steps out of the way...
• Ace Pilot: Kojiro Sasaki and Lt. Katori.
• Adjective Noun Fred
• Age Lift: According to the box set liner notes, the producers weren't keen on the light novels' original depiction of the romance between Tylor and Azalyn — not when Tylor was close to 30 and Azalyn was 10. One of the demands by the producers was that Tylor's age was to be reduced to 20, and Azalyn's to be increased to 16.
• The Alcoholic/Drunken Master: Dr. Kitaguchi, who has apparently been drinking since he was three years old! If what he says is true, he's at his best for work when drunk.
• All-Loving Hero: Tylor. He views Raalgons as people, admires their strength, is understanding of his crew and figures out Harumi is a spy quite early on, yet never does anything about it even when admitting he knew. Treats her better than her own side does, too. Whether he's competent or not, there's no arguing that he's an extremely compassionate person.
• Anguished Declaration of Love: The roar of the engines covers up Harumi’s cry that she thinks he loves Tylor, but Yuriko standing at her side seems to have heard perfectly well.
• April Fools' Day: UC 6998, a fitting day for Tylor to become captain of the Soyokaze.
• Bait-and-Switch: Inverted in the final episode — it looks like a relatively serious ending with the captain leaving, and most of his crew assigned to a brand-new, state-of-the-art cruiser , until they pull... it... off. You will not see it coming.
• Becoming the Mask: Harumi was a spy, but she came to care for Tylor and the rest of the crew.
• Bizarre Alien Biology: When Azalyn claims to be pregnant with Tylor's child after sneaking into bed with him in episode 21 "Paco-Paco Junior", she counters the crew's incredulity by invoking this trope. She's lying, of course, but they don't know that...
• Boisterous Bruiser: All the Marines.
• Book Ends: Tylor's command to the crew to "Do what they want."
• Born Lucky: About the only aspect of Tylor that both theories on his intelligence agree on. It really comes down to how much does Tylor make his own luck. Early in the series, after the crew have been arguing about what is most important to win a battle, Tylor points out that they defeated an enemy that was better trained, better equipped and more intelligent. Yet they suffered a crushing defeat with no losses on Tylor's side. Why? Because if your luck is bad enough, absolutely nothing in the universe can save you and if your luck is good enough, you can't lose. Fate decides battles so far as Tylor is concerned. And that is the best explanation you're likely to get for his normal attitude.
• Bratty Half-Pint: Azalyn only starts acting this way when she's taken prisoner on the Soyokaze, and usually when it involves Tylor.
• Brick Joke: The bomb that Tylor receives early in episode 3 bails them out late in episode 4 — long enough to be forgotten by everyone present, except for Tylor. (Though Tylor claims he didn't even know it was a bomb...)
• Bridge Bunnies: Kim and Katori. Okay, so Katori isn't female, but he's pretty enough to count anyways. Oddly enough, Katori is bald.
• Brilliant, but Lazy: Tylor — maybe.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Pretty much everyone.
• Captain Ersatz: Several characters and organizations are based on those found in Star Trek, if skewed a little... sideways.
• Casanova Wannabe: Subverted; While this tends to be the impression Tylor gives, hitting on every girl he encounters and usually coming off as something of a bumbling idiot. He not only eventually wins over all the girls he encounters including non-humans, he actually turns away most of them.
• Cast of Snowflakes: Every single member of the crew, even the members of the rarely seen fighter ships support crew, has a uniquely identifiable face.
• Changed My Mind, Kid: Yamamoto in Episode 22.
• The Charmer: Tylor, who manages to gain the attention of every woman on his ship and similarly let them down gently (albeit, unintentionally) and also makes an android and a computer AI fall in love with him, despite the fact that neither of them were built with that ability!
  • It's not just the women. He convinces the chief petty officer to support him for enlisting with the 'I'll pay you back when I hit it big!' line and at the beginning of the next episode flatters someone into holding back against him in a game.
  • It's not even just human. He somehow charms a computer program into self-destruction by talking to it and blind luck. Maybe.
• The Chessmaster: Tylor — maybe.
• Chekhov's Gun: Once an episode, there's always going to be something innocuous in the episode that becomes important later. For example, the trash accumulated in episode 7 when the crew were forced to clean the ship also serves as obstructive debris preventing Captain Dome from pursuing the Soyokaze as it fled.
• Chekhov's Skill: A fairly odd one. Tylor accidentally sweet-talking the recruitment exam AI just seems like an odd throwaway gag at first (once it becomes clear that he's not an Accidental Pornomancer, that is). But suddenly it becomes a lot more plot relevant when Tylor does almost exactly the same thing again this time with Raalgon spy and Robot Girl Harumi. Apparently, A.I.s just love him, even if they really shouldn't.
• Cliffhanger: The OVA, the OVA, the OVA! The Soyokaze is destroyed, the Raalgon Empire is under attack by an unknown third party and Yamamoto of all people is placed in charge of the entire human fleet.) Wanna know what happens next? Too bad! They never made a sequel! You'll have to track down the deluxe box sets and listen to the special features to have any idea what was meant to happen afterward...
• Cluster Bleep-Bomb: In one of the OVAs, Andressen launches into a stream of profanity so foul that music begins playing over it and a message appears on the screen stating the show's gone to a video-only feed.
• The Comically Serious: Lieutenant Yamamoto.
• Conflicting Loyalties: Harumi is a Raalgon spy, but she’s intrigued by Tylor, especially when he openly admits that he views the distinction between the Raalgon and the humans as fairly arbitrary and doesn’t care that she’s an android.
• Cool Ship: Played with. The Soyokaze's a piece of junk, but it does have, among other things, a bar, a spa, and both a fighter squadron and a marine detachment. It's supposed to just be a lowly destroyer.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Most of the time, Tylor looks and acts like a complete ditz. But when the chips are down and his crew is in trouble, he'll usually come up with a crazy (but awesome) plan to save the day. Either that, or he's just making it up as he goes.
• Cruel Mercy: Azalyn spares Tylor from execution by claiming him as a pet to serve as an example to the UPSF. She really does treat him like a pet, too.
• Defrosting Ice Queen: Yuriko. Though she was initially annoyed by Tylor and his irresponsible behavior, she really grows to like and understand towards the end of the series.
• Desperately Looking for a Purpose in Life: Lt. Kim joined the UPSF because she felt putting her life on the line would put it into focus.
• Diegetic Soundtrack Usage At Admiral Hanner's funeral Tylor sings the show's ending theme "Downtown Dance" with slightly different lyrics.
• Do Wrong, Right: Tylor advises Harumi not to make reports in an unused corridor. It’d be really easy for her to blow her cover.
• Driven to Suicide: Yamamoto tries to hang himself after Tylor hands himself over to the enemy, saying he should have shared his captain's fate. Everyone else in the room rushes to stop him (well, almost everyone).
  "Alright, who's pulling him down?!"
  • Admiral Mifune has to be physically restrained from committing seppuku quite a few times as well.
• Drunken Montage: Tylor has a couple.
• Easily Forgiven: Harumi’s actions lead directly to Tylor’s capture, nearly killing the entire crew and later getting them imprisoned, but she feels bad so it’s okay.
• Establishing Character Moment: Tylor's first speaking scene has him explaining just how joining the UPSF would lead to an easy life, nod off when the recruiter explains the dangers of the job, then charming the recruiter to get himself in anyway.
• Everyone Has Standards: Kim might be inclined towards being far too informal to be part of the military and likes to wear civilian clothing while on duty, but just because she likes to look nice doesn’t mean she’d use it to get ahead in her career. Andressen gets kicked quite hard when he suggests otherwise.
• Evil Chancellor: Wang; he tries to assassinate Azalyn and is implied to have killed her father to provide cause for the war, which is meant solely to increase his power.
• Expy: Captain Tylor is a much less serious version/interpretation of Yang Wen-li. He even wears sunglasses at the end!
• Faint in Shock: When the ship is haunted by a ghost, Yuriko Star forces her cowardly captain to search for his first officer, whom Tylor ordered to confront the ghost because he was too scared to do so himself. Yuriko ends up fainting when she's confronted by a skeleton, much to Tylor's surprise. The ship's nurse explains that Yuriko was suppressing her fear, and the sudden shock caused all her emotions to come out at once.
• The Fatalist: Tylor — "When it's time to lose, you lose no matter what you do."
• The Fool: Tylor — maybe.
• Freudian Trio: Tylor is Id, Yamamoto is Superego, and Yuriko is the ego.
• General Ripper: Admiral Fuji, the most dog-kickingly gung-ho of the UPSF military leadership — he thought firing missiles at a hostage situation involving a war hero was a good idea because he didn't want the UPSF to look weak. His rival Admiral Mifune has moments of this, but is more of a Reasonable Authority Figure.
• Genius Ditz: Tylor — maybe.
• The Gift: The twins are natural fighter pilots once they actually know how the controls work in the ship, giving them enough respect from Kojiro.
• Guile Hero: Whether or not you believe him to be a Magnificent Bastard, you have to admit he's got a bit of a silver tongue.
• Gut Feeling: Tylor is a very good judge of character and willing to give people a shot when most people wouldn’t even consider it.
• Headbutting Heroes: For about half the show, most of the crew dislikes or disrespects Tylor. For his part, he’s not good at dealing with Yuriko but hides it far better than she does. After Harumi is annoyed by the marines disrespecting him, the story turns more serious and the crew realizes that they do trust Tylor.
• Heal It with Booze: Subverted in one episode, where Dr. Kitaguchi considers using his personal stash when crew injuries are piling up. He considers it, takes a swig, then decides it'd be a waste. Eventually, he finds a workaround: take a swig, then spit it on the wounds.
• Heel Realization: Though Azalyn is a little girl, she IS also the empress of a large empire. When Yuriko calls her out on her irresponsible attitude possibly costing numerous lives, it comes as quite a shock to her. She’s not used to dealing with the consequences of her actions or being confronted about her decisions, even by Dom.
• He-Man Woman Hater: Kojiro Sasaki never quite grew out of the Girls Have Cooties stage of childhood. Naturally, this means that the ridiculously cute twins just have to latch on to him from day one onward…
• Heroic BSoD: Tylor, surprisingly enough; you'd think he'd be immune to such a thing, but after Admiral Hanner's death, he goes on autopilot for a little while, utterly disinterested in (and walking out on) a ceremony in his honor. It takes him a while to snap out of it, at which point he decides to leave the UPSF. It doesn't stick.
• Hockey Mask and Chainsaw: One of the marines, named Jason.
• Honest Advisor: When among the Raalgon, Tylor constantly points out the flaws and political maneuvering among Azalyn’s top advisors. Since he’s her ‘pet’ he can get away with being quite insulting. Unfortunately, Azalyn doesn’t listen to him as much as she should.
• Human Aliens: The Raalgon. Different biochemistry is alluded to, but humans and Raalgon can eat the same things and the idea of Azalyn being pregnant via Tylor is not ruled out immediately. Visually, the only apparent difference is that Raalgon are much paler and have pointy ears.
• Human Outside, Alien Inside: Invoked. Azalyn claims that she was able to get pregnant merely by sleeping beside Tylor.
• Hyperspeed Escape: Subverted. The Soyokaze's engines barely work well enough to hyperjump normally, much less in a pinch.
  • One episode plays it straight...-ish. Pursued by an overwhelming enemy force, Tylor orders this maneuver, but the enemy vessels can track them through hyperspace... so he orders the crew to jump again. And again. And as many times as needed. Then they run low on fuel...
• Idiot Houdini: Tylor. Maybe.
• Idiots Cannot Catch Colds: But Justy Ueki Tylor can...
• I Gave My Word: Andressen has a contest with Yuriko to see if he and the marines have to clean up the ship and act decently for a day. When he messes up and loses, he keeps his word since it was a promise.
• Ignored Enemy: After the ghost of the last downgraded captain corners Tylor and Yamamoto, they begin squabbling about responsibility instead of paying it any attention. It calls them pathetic and leaves.
• I Have This Friend: Azalyn tries to indirectly tell Tylor how she feels by telling him about a friend of hers in love with someone of hugely different status, on the enemy side and with an age difference. He apparently hasn’t picked up on the fact that she’s talking about herself, so she adds in that the man her friend is in love with is very dense.
• Improbable Age: Not quite obvious until you realize that the oldest crew member of the Soyokaze is only 33. The average age of the crew seems to be 19. The twins are only 17 and don't appear to have had any training.
  • The eyecatch reveals Harumi's age to be THREE...but this is justified: She's an android.
• Instant A.I.: Just Add Water!: Exposure to Tylor leads to android Harumi developing emotions. Not the first time his personality has affected a computer, either.
  • To be precise, the first time was in the first episode, where he only got into the army/space navy because the testing AI fell in love with him!
  • And he did both without trying or meaning to. Maybe.
• Invincible Incompetent: Nobody can decide if Tylor is an example of this trope, or if he's just that good but prefers to look like it.
• It's Personal: Admiral Donan after being "outwitted" by the Soyokaze early in the show attempts to track Tylor down for revenge. He leads his entire fleet to orbit around a star then fires on the Soyokaze. The star’s gravity well changes the course of the shots, hitting the star and causing it to flare up and destroy his own fleet. His ship crippled, Donan asks Dom if he managed to take out the Soyokaze as well and Dom confirms his success.
• Jerkass Has a Point
  • Dismantle the entire military to save four hostages? You’re kidding, right? They aren't even really civilians given that one is a retired admiral, one is a lieutenant commander at 19... somehow... and the other two are both crew members on a destroyer.
  • "Jerkass" is a bit too strong a word, but the crew's ire with Tylor after he fails to submit the paperwork that might have prevented their collective demotion is completely justified. He was given the responsibility to handle it, and even if he didn't care about it at all, if he's at all as emotionally cognizant as he lets slip on occasion, he should have known that they cared a great deal about it.
  • Later, Tylor is courtmartialed and set for execution by the admirals after he willingly releases the empress back to Raalgon and offers no explanation for this. His actions could easily have resulted in the deaths of millions or even billions depending on Raalgon policy in war, which has not been shown to include mercy or half measures.
• Jerkass Realization: Kojiro finds the twins annoying, so he refuses to teach them how to fly and then sets them off on a test flight. If they fail, they can never fly again and will hopefully leave him alone. However, they’re so incompetent due to lack of training that they instantly get into grave danger, leaving him horrified at his own selfish attitude.
• Journey to the Center of the Mind: Episode 19 - The Meat Circus has nothing on Tylor's subconscious.
• Kicked Upstairs: How Tylor gets made the Captain of a (seemingly worthless) ship.
• Kiss Me, I'm Virtual: The recruitment computer in the first episode ends up confessing her love for Tylor. She's not even supposed to have the ability to even do that!
• Knife-Throwing Act: Referenced. The marines hear someone listening at the door during a secret meeting with the captain, so they leap outside throwing a couple of knives which hit on either side of Harumi, who's dressed in a skintight outfit (instead of her usual look) as she's trying to assassinate Captain Tylor.
• The Last DJ: Tylor is this to his superiors, until they realize at the end that he's the Bunny-Ears Lawyer they need.
• Lawyer-Friendly Cameo
• Let Them Die Happy: After Donan tracks down the Soyokaze, he accidentally causes a star to flare up and cripple his own fleet. Dom intends to come rescue him, but it’s too late. He instead tells Donan that he successfully destroyed the Soyokaze.
• Lima Syndrome: Tylor easily makes friends with the two terrorists at the beginning by flattering their looks and spirit reflectively. Unfortunately, the ugly terrorist is so moved that he decides they should all die together. When Yuriko accidentally disarms him, Tylor’s charm kicks in and the terrorist goes nuts and jumps out the window.
• Logic Bomb: Tylor accidentally seduces the psychological exam AI. This, naturally, causes the mainframe running it to explode.
• Loves Me Not: In one episode, Tylor must file paperwork in person by a certain time in order to prevent the Soyokaze being transferred to punitive duty. The crew destroys a pile of flowers doing "He'll make it! He won't make it!" until one guy stops them short on the last petal of the last flower. Tylor, of course, doesn't make it because he spent all day hanging out with old Admiral Hanner.
• Lowered Recruiting Standards: Tylor's attempt to join the Space Force includes two interviews with him bungling the second, but as soon as the Raalgons declare war he's automatically accepted because the Space Force is desperate for more bodies.
• Meaningful Name: Transliterated into Japanese, Tylor becomes "Taira", which means "calm" or "plain", and is the same Chinese Character as "Grunt/Peon".
  • Also his first two names, Justy Ueki, is a homophone for the English phrase "Just Lucky."
  • Inverted with Dom, who isn't. (Though he made a good effort with the whip.)
    • Any good Dom knows who's in charge at any time. When among his subordinates, he is the very image of control, but with the Empress, he knows exactly where his place is.
  • The ship name "Soyokaze" literally means "gentle breeze", and seems very out of place in the military. ^note though the Japanese have traditionally given their destroyers weather-related names, which is why so many of them end in kaze("wind") though "Soyokaze" is pushing it. What better place to put all of the Space Force's misfits than a ship with a misfit name?
    • Who would name a destroyer "Gentle Breeze?" Glad you asked!
• Military Brat: Yamamoto remarks that he was raised in a strict military household.
• Military Salute: Yamamoto delivers the occasionally Comically Serious salute (often with tears in his eyes), and one that is just outright comical (in episode 26). In episode 23, however, the salute ends up being the most important moment of the episode, and it is pretty epic at that, while the final OVA sees everybody in both fleets saluting the Soyokaze as it's scuttled by the UPSF fleet.
• The Mole: Harumi. Though, this is known by the viewers — and likely Tylor — by the midpoint of her introductory episode.
• Motile Vehicular Components: Episode 5 shows that the Soyokaze has a pair of huge arms it uses to repair itself. They fold away underneath the hull when not in use.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Harumi after she puts the plan in motion to infect the crew. It does not help that, as the ship's nurse and one of the few people unaffected by the illness (and still not outed as the spy that caused it), they're looking to her to save them.
  • In episode 10, Kojiro suffers this when he believes he led the twins to their death on their first space flight when he thought he saw wreckage from one of their ships. It was so bad he suffered a Heroic BSoD long enough for it to be too late for him to dodge an asteroid about to collide with his ship by the time he got the proximity alert. Thankfully, the twins were able to save him as that wreck was likely from a different earlier disaster.
• Negative Space Wedgie: The... veil thing that sends the ship into the ghost dimension.
• Non-Action Protagonist: Juste Ueki Tylor from Irresponsible Captain Tylor is a lackadaisical, incompetent, and above all lucky captain (in fact, his name is pidgin-English for "Just Lucky Tylor") who spends the series lightly drifting through a war between humans and Space Elves, sweet-talking, smooth-talking, and occasionally seducing his way out of trouble throughout the series. He only got into the space force because he, er, "impressed" the assessment AI so much "she" crashed, and he was made a captain as a "reward" for accidentally rescuing an admiral from a hostage situation.
• Not So Stoic: Dom, in the final episode, when Azalyn orders him to retrieve her "pet" for her. Really, his face says it all.
• Not Worth Killing: The ghost of the former captain of the Soyokaze finds Yamamoto and Tylor too pathetic to be worth killing.
• Number Two: Yamamoto.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: At least some of Tylor’s stupid behavior is just playing dumb. The question is how much is just playing dumb. He usually doesn’t bother with tactics because of his odd fatalistic streak rather than not comprehending them, can act like a perfectly competent captain if he wants to and is an excellent judge of character and motivations when he wants to be. When inside his inner world, Yuriko and Azalyn see that there’s a lot going on under the surface that Tylor doesn’t tell anyone, but it’s all so hard to grasp that they can’t tell what he’s really like, only knowing tidbits like him knowingly playing jester for Azalyn to avoid mistreatment.
• Oblivious Guilt Slinging: When Harumi says she’d keep Tylor save even if he was taking prisoner by the Raalgon empire, he says he’d appreciate it but he’s really rather stay with the Soyokaze and all his friends, Harumi included. Given that she said that because she’s trying to take him prisoner, this doesn’t help her feel better like it was probably meant to.
• Oblivious to Love: Much to Azalyn’s annoyance, Tylor just won’t seem to realize that she likes him.
• Obviously Evil: Wang is clearly a plotting scumbag, but only Tylor seems to notice this or try to call him out on it.
• One-Sided Arm-Wrestling: Yuriko vs Andressen.
• Organic Technology: The Raalgons zigzag this trope. Their ships seem loosely modeled after crustaceans and sea creatures (in contrast to the humans' "Japanese Naval Fleet IN SPACE!" aesthetic) and their architecture definitely incorporates a lot of organic-looking curves and spirals, but except for some ambiguous cases like their rubbery-looking laser cannons and a sheath of "birthing goo" that surrounds their ships when they disembark, their actual building materials seem to be structural metal and ornamental stone.
• Our Elves Are Different: The Raalgon have pointed ears and organic/psionic technology, as well as a feudalistic society ruled by an Empress.
• Peekaboo Corpse: In a haunted house episode... IN SPACE!
• Planet Spaceship: There's a ship in the Raalgon fleet that causes Tylor himself to comment that it's "more like a planet than a ship".
• Played for Laughs: So many Space Opera tropes.
• Pointy-Haired Military Boss: The two admirals, Mifune and Fuji. Mifune has a tendency of trying to commit seppuku after every setback, and their arguments always end with them trying to kill each other. (But they really are friends)
• Poor Man's Substitute: J. David Brimmer does his best Ron Perlman impression in voicing Yamamoto in the English dub.
• The Pornomancer: Tylor not only manages to get every female on the ship to confess their sexual desires for him, and an alien princess to fall for him, but even gets the recruitment computer when he wanted to join the military in the first place to confess her love for him against all logical functions it was built with! See Unwanted Harem below.
• Puppy-Dog Eyes: Emi and Yumi, of course.
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: And how!
• Ramming Always Works: In one episode, the Soyokaze rams clean through a much smaller enemy vessel.
• Real Men Wear Pink: Andressen is a badass who likes nude modeling. Cryburn's mecha is bright pink.
• Reassigned to Antarctica: It's strongly suggested that the entire crew of the Soyokaze was put there for that purpose. It happens a couple of times through the series as well.
• Reassignment Backfire: Averted, as nothing relevant to the war with the Raalgon occurs until they're on their way back from the demotion sector.
  • Also played straight with Tylor's assignment to the Soyokaze in the first place: The admirals were hoping her notoriously unruly crew would kill him.
• Red Herring: A scene in the opening suggests that Dom would be revealed to be the Big Bad. He isn't.
• Ridiculously Human Robots: Harumi can eat, bleed, and cry, among whatever else is needed for her to blend in as the ship's nurse.
• Robot Girl: Harumi.
• Running Gag: Combined with Shout-Out — one of the marines has a familiar white hockey mask, and a very familiar name. Every time something gets destroyed unexpectedly, he's immediately blamed. Doesn't help that his preferred weapon is a chainsaw.
  • He's also something of a Woobie too, as it's rarely his fault and seems a bit less... psychotic than the other marines.
  • In episode 3 of the OVA, an excuse is made that Jason gets sick on Fridays. REALLY sick.
• Scheherezade Gambit: Tylor escapes the mandatory execution of all prisoners of the Ralgon Empire by capturing the interest of their Empress.
• Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale: Yuriko worries that a random warp may make the Soyokaze teleport into a high population area while Tylor looks on the bright side and thinks it'll appear near a paradise world. Almost all of space is empty, so the odds of appearing near ANYTHING of note would be fantastically small.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: Unwilling to be detained while Tylor is a captive, the Soyokaze’s crew break out, steal the ship and flee the station to go rescue him.
• Serious Business: The marines lend Tylor their favorite porn tape, and threaten to kill him if he accidentally erases it. Of course this is exactly what happens, and Tylor is so frantic to repair the damage he ignores a series of hot women coming to his quarters to express their romantic attraction to him.
• Sexophone: Harumi's appearances are frequently accompanied by a tenor saxophone motif.
• Shout-Out: The Soyokaze's shuttle is named Galileo, a name that sticks out in a space force that's in many respects the IJN in space. The Galileo is actually a reference to the shuttle of the same name that appeared several times in Star Trek.
  • The new power armor in the OVA is named "Newtype", and the jeeps are similar to those in the UC Gundam series.
  • On the Beautiful Blue Danube music probably parodies 2001: A Space Odyssey.
  • One of the marines is Jason Voorhees IN SPACE! Eight years before Jason X was released.
  • The franchise as a whole - including the original Light Novel series it was adapted from - is a love-letter to Japanese funnyman Hitoshi Ueki, who starred in Toho's wildly popular Irresponsible and Japan's Greatest [X] movies throughout The '60s.^note Westerners generally only know him from his cameo in Akira Kurosawa's Ran Apart from the obvious Shout-Out in his second name, "Taira" was also the name of Ueki's character in the very first of these movies.
• Show Some Leg: Used in Episode 2.
• Shrouded in Myth: Most of the people who meet Tylor think he’s an idiot, but with his constantly good results people just don’t know what to think of him. The Raalgon empire in particular has great admiration for his apparent abilities.
• Silent Conversation: At various points later in the series such as Harumi to Tylor as he is being kidnapped, or Tylor to Yuriko after he resigns.
• Single-Minded Twins: Emi and Yumi.
• Slobs Versus Snobs: During episode eleven Kim and Yuriko come into conflict over how formal they should be while on duty with no emergencies. After awhile they intentionally go to extremes just to annoy each other, but come to a compromise when Kim realizes they don’t know when an emergency might occur. Of course, she actually proved her point when she was the only effective person to respond when an emergency DID occur.
• Soldiers at the Rear: Tylor joined the military to get a cushy day job in the Pension Office. It doesn't go as planned.
• Somebody Set Up Us the Bomb: Tylor does this to an enemy captain, completely by ACCIDENT! Or was it?
• Smart People Play Chess: Well, maybe not smart people, but Tylor plays a mean game of something vaguely resembling Chinese Chess with the surgeon. Even successfully sets a trap against him. It's worth mentioning that both had been drinking heavily.
• Space Elves: The Raalgon have pointy ears, and sophisticated technology.
• Space Navy: The United Planets Space Force, of course, right down to their Space Battleship Yamato-esque fleet.
• Spanner in the Works: Tylor — though this may be deliberate.
• Strategy, Schmategy: The less charitable interpretation of Tylor's antics is that he honestly doesn't know what he's doing, and therefore people can't predict his next action because he doesn't know "The Rules" that everyone else follows implicitly.
• Stripperiffic: Azalyn and Shia Has, of which the latter's outfit doesn't seem to actually cover, so much as support, her... assets.
• Subspace or Hyperspace: FTL is achieved by means of "Sub-space warp"
• Take a Third Option: Tylor always finds a third option out of a situation, whether it's intentional or not.
• They Don't Make Them Like They Used To: And perhaps Made of Indestructium too, the Soyokaze went through an entire space base to reach the maiden departing dock of the Aso, without a scratch!
• Too Spicy for Yog-Sothoth: This one deserves a bit more explanation. In one episode, the crew encounters the ghosts of the previous crew of the Soyokaze, who were likewise demoted. They try to do their level best to drive Tylor and Yamamoto to despair and suicide. While they end up driving Yamamoto more-or-less insane, they finally decide Hell would be preferable to spending any more time with Tylor!
• Tough Leader Façade: Azalyn is the empress of the Raalgon empire, meaning she has to appear decisive and stoic. Don accidentally catches her crying after her father is assassinated and earns her trust by praising her for her normal emotional reactions instead of condemning her. She also grows close to Tylor since he doesn’t treat her any differently, showing a softer side around him. However, it's later suggested that she needs to wear the queenly mask more by standing up for herself and carrying herself with dignity and authority so that her advisors don't control everything instead of her.
• Treacherous Advisor: Wang is clearly a power hungry schemer, but Azalyn doesn’t notice. When Tylor points out the obvious, she dismisses his concerns because she doesn’t take him seriously. Eventually, when Azalyn grows a spine he insinuates that if she doesn't do what he wants he can simply use the excuse to cause a civil war, even if he can't normally act directly against her.
• Tsundere: Yuriko and arguably Harumi once she starts to figure out what all those emotion things are.
  • Yuriko is a rare example of a Tsundere whose behavior is due to environment rather than nature or issues; being as much the Straight Man (well, Straight Woman) as Yamamoto, yet lacking his reluctance to physically assault a superior officer, it's only natural she acts the way she does around an irritating, flirtatious goofball like Tylor. She's debatably the healthier one of the two - Yamamoto essentially ends up an addict to tranquilizers and something called a "neuro-cleanser". (He gets over it pretty quick and becomes much more just another of the guys, albeit one of the more high-strung ones.)
• Twin Threesome Fantasy: Tylor gets so damn close to achieving this, but...well, see Unwanted Harem below.
  • Considering how they've latched onto him, Kojiro Sasaki could have this to look forward to if he ever gets over his issues.
• Ugly Guys Hot Daughters: Emi and Yumi, in the granddaughter sense. Admiral Hanner's only ugly because he's really old, though; when he was younger, he was reasonably good looking.
• Undying Loyalty: When the crew realizes that A. Tylor is an extremely good person if not necessarily a competent commander and B. would die for them without hesitation he earns their complete loyalty, causing them to come to his rescue despite having absolutely no realistic chance of actually being able to help him. When he’s set to be executed by the admirals, they tell the crew of the Soyokaze as though they’re passing along wonderful news. If this had been about fifteen episodes or so earlier they would have been right, but now the crew is horrified.
• The Unintelligible: Admiral Hanner became this after being admitted to a nursing home where his health started to decline, but Tylor can understand him perfectly.
• Unresolved Sexual Tension: See Unwanted Harem below. Tylor gets close to Azalyn, but while she loves him, he sees her as a friend. However, in the final episode, he and Yuriko share a drink and practically cuddle, and both are clearly smitten. Nothing goes further between them, as far as the anime is concerned but...
  • Tylor and Yuriko do eventually start a relationship, with Tylor asking Yuriko to marry him. By the time of the manga which is set a few years after the OVA, she is still his fiance.
• Unwanted Harem: After being rescued, Tyler manages to AVERT this trope with Emi and Yumi by despairing that telling them "I'm sorry" won't be enough. Of course he appeared to actually ignore their confession completely and was instead voicing his thoughts on another matter entirely. He then manages to reject Bridge Bunny Kim in a similarly obtuse manner entirely. Whether this is him being thick or his sly ingenuity at work is, as with much of the rest of the story, a matter of viewer perspective.
  • Then played straight with Harumi.
  • Then subverted for laughs with the arrival of Yuriko. As soon as she arrives, Tylor comments "What, you too!?" and then tells her to ignore it as a private joke.
  • Meanwhile, Azalyn is wondering the entire time how she can succeed in capturing Tylor's heart.
• Uriah Gambit: Annoyed by Tylor and the Soyokaze, the admirals send it off as bait for a large Raalgon fleet, intending to destroy them all at the same time. Fails, of course.
• Villain Has a Point: The men who take Admiral Hanner and his family hostage at the beginning point out how terribly the military has treated Admiral Hanner once he grew too old to fight. All the cops outside are rather disgusted as well. This is never addressed by the military and he dies near the end of the show. He isn't even seventy.
• Waif-Fu: Double subverted. Yuriko challenges Andressen to an arm wrestling competition, implying she’s pretty confident in herself, but she’s obviously much weaker than he is. However, a burst of strength caused by Tylor being annoying and Andressen’s failure to take her seriously cause him to lose accidentally.
• What a Piece of Junk: The Soyokaze.
• What Is This Thing You Call "Love"?: Harumi tries to come to understand what this emotion means, and Azalyn finds herself innocently curious towards humans.
• What the Hell, Hero?: When Azalyn hears about how Yuriko treats Tylor like crap she’s more confused than angry, though it has the same effect on Yuriko herself. All Tylor does is compliment her, but he doesn’t look down on her or actually mistreat her in any way, yet she frequently slaps him. The next time they speak, he annoys her again and he flinches as she raises a hand to slap him, but she puts her hand down again.
• What Would X Do?: Pursued by numerous UPSF vessels and unwilling to fire back, Yuriko asks herself how Tylor would escape. Yamamoto simply says to hell with it and starts taking huge gambles, which naturally all pay off.
• "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: Part of the final episode, which shows all of the crew following Tylor's advice before Yamamoto recruits them for the Aso. Of course, it becomes a subverted Bait-and-Switch ending.
• Where the Hell Is Springfield?: A lot of colonies, countries, and members of the United Planet Space Force have a mostly Japanese aesthetic - most of the characters on that side have some sort of Japanese name, there are a lot of Japanese-titled drinks and signs everywhere, and the UPSF's emblem is basically the real-life Japanese flag with a green star on the upper-right part of it.
  • Either that, or the emblem is a tomato.
• Wins by Doing Absolutely Nothing: Captain Tylor excels at this. In one episode, Tylor is given a present by his crew, which he then passes on to the Raalgons as a gesture of good will. The Raalgons then target his ship, but it turns out the present was a bomb and they end up destroying themselves instead.
• Woman Scorned: An AI that’s supposed to be giving Tylor a personality test in the first episode falls in love with him. When this causes the facility to start experiencing errors, he gets distracted and she starts growing increasingly obsessive over him, eventually causing the entire facility to start blowing up thanks to system errors. As Tylor flees the explosions, she begins ranting at him to take responsibility for teaching her what it means to be a woman.
• The Wonka: Tylor is this to his crew, who slowly realize that there's a method to the madness.
• Worthy Opponent
  • Admiral Hanner is a respected man among the Raalgon empire. They consider the poor way the navy treats him now absolutely disgraceful.
  • Dom is no more sure if Tylor is a fool or genius than anyone else, but to him it doesn’t matter. He acknowledges Tylor’s stupidly good luck, but believes that good fortune is the most important quality for a soldier anyway. He also believes in Tylor’s intentions, something that many others don’t directly consider. Because of this, he’s able to predict that Tylor will not actually commit forces to a massive battle without a good reason for the fight, allowing the climactic battle in episode 23 to simply not occur. Instead, the two fleets sail past each other with Tylor and Dom saluting each other.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: Yamamoto, like most of the UPSF staff, has the right mindset for a Wooden Ships and Iron Men tale of Japanese-style militarism — and then Tylor makes them look like idiots.
• Xanatos Gambit: Later in the series, all Wang has to do is be a strong proponent for war in the empress’ name. If she refuses to publicly back him, he makes it clear he’ll start a civil war and fracture the empire. She can’t allow that to happen, so she has to support the war. After that, victory or loss in the coming battle doesn’t really matter. If they win, he gains glory and influence as the one who pushed for war. If they lose, then he can discredit the empress for having sought this battle. Unfortunately for him, he failed to account for one other outcome: Both sides deploying forces and then refusing to commit to battle. Azalyn put Dom in charge of her fleet while the UPSF had to put Tylor in charge. The two fleets play a massive game of chicken with Dom and Tylor saluting each other in space.
• Younger Than They Look: Harumi is only three years old. Which sort of makes sense, considering she's also a robot.

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