A couple of months ago, I had the pleasure of viewing a semi-obscure piece of 90’s comedy gold. The aptly titled The Irresponsible Captain Tylor is a 26-episode anime that ran in 1993, and based off a light novel (The Most Irresponsible Man in Space) that ran from 1989 to 1996. After its run as a show, it had a 10-episode OVA that ran from 1994 to 1996. Before this year, I hadn’t ever heard anything about this show. That’s strange because this show has all the elements that I’m looking for in a show: sci-fi, fantasy, and comedy. The fact that it’s a piece of 90’s anime only adds to the excitement that I’d already be feeling, being a sucker for all things that fall under the category of “90’s anime”.
The Irresponsible Captain Tylor is set in a sci-fi/fantasy world where alien races battle for supremacy with their vast space fleets, and tells the story of 20-year-old Justy Ueki Tylor, a lazy man with the damndest of all luck. Through a series of crazy events, he joins the military – known as the United Planets Space Force – and gets promoted to captain of his own space vessel all within a span of four episodes. Although his assignment to captain a ship in the UPSF would seem glamorous, he’s assigned to captain the worst ship in the fleet; the Soyokaze. The Soyokaze’s poor reputation is rightly deserved because it’s the ship where all the worst officers are sent, which include a rowdy space marine, an antisocial pilot, a drunkard doctor, an uptight first officer, and an equally by-the-books lieutenant commander. All of these people would make anybody’s life a living Hell, but not Tylor’s, as he embraces the madness and only adds to it as the series progresses.
Under that, there’s a subplot that eventually becomes the main focus of the show which is the United Planets Space Force’s fight against a powerful alien race known as the Raalgon Empire. Both sides are on the brink of war, and war does eventually break out due to the Raalgon Empire’s new empress, a 16-year-old girl named Azalyn, and her inability to lead without being coaxed by her council. The Raalgon’s faulty Intel on the Soyokaze only adds fuel to the flames of war. Throughout the run of the show, Tylor’s unbelievable good luck is often mistaken for genius, and his ability to squeeze out of any situation – whether he knows he’s doing it or not – shines through and intoxicates his entire crew in a way that makes their initial disgust for him turn to nothing but love and admiration.
I’d gladly put my life in this man’s hands any day
I’ve only scraped the tip of the iceberg that is The Irresponsible Captain Tylor. I feel that the setup is pretty standard, but Tylor’s character is just so charming that it was a treat seeing how he would react to very serious, and often times dangerous, situations in his bout of optimistic bliss. This show also wouldn’t have worked without such a diverse cast of supporting characters, all with their own quirks and conflicts. The only aspect of the show that didn’t really work for me was the forced romantic subplots that sprang up sporadically, but the emphasis on those weren’t too expanded upon, so they’re very forgivable. I won’t give away too much more than that because the story does offer up quite a few twists and turns, despite half of the story being very predictable.
It seems that whenever anybody talks about great anime from the 90s, they always hit the key shows: Cowboy Bebop, Neon Genesis Evangelion, and Trigun to name a very select few. I’ve only heard one person ever mention The Irresponsible Captain Tylor, and that was the one person who got me into the show in the first place. It seems that a nice handful of people know about this show, but it never seems to come up in a discussion, which is a little sad. Why has this show been thrust behind those classics? I have a theory, and it’s because The Irresponsible Captain Tylor is a comedy show, and comedies aren’t looked upon as classics in the anime community as frequently as serious dramas are. Having said that, do I think this show is better than any of the three other shows I mentioned? It’s debatable, but I’d probably be more inclined to regard them as classics because of their stories than Captain Tylor for its comedy. Does that mean it’s not a classic? Well, that’s a matter of opinion. Does a “classic” entail “level of enjoyment + age”? Possibly, but who’s to say what’s a classic and what’s not? Classic or not, this series needs to be more widely circulated, and with it being on Manga Entertainment’s YouTube page for free, there’s no excuse for people not to at least check this little gem out.
A classic to one man can be an obscurity to many others. Even if the world isn’t ready to embrace this anime as a “classic”, it should at least give it a second look and revive it from the obscure status it currently holds. Somehow, this show presents one of the most likable characters I’ve seen in any show. The personality that the titular character has just radiates out and put a huge smile on my face that’s equal to the one that the addictive opening theme puts on my face. If you’re in to sci-fi, fantasy, space operas, comedies, or just semi-obscure 90s anime, I can’t recommend this show enough. Check out the English dub here, and set sail for the future!
