I’ll assume all of you reading have watched the show, Tytania, or at least its first episode. And for the record, Panther - Nishikiori Ken isn’t all that good a tenor. Notice, at around 1:08, he loses control over his tone, and breaks into a sound that is unsupported by his diaphragm. The most important quality about a classical voice is consistency of tone across the register, and he, well, rather obviously fails at that. As an aside, I should think he’s more of a baritone than a tenor.

*SPOILER WARNING*

Anyway, on to the show. Graphically, I’ll have to describe it as beautifully baroque. Nobility is dressed like nobility, complete with ruffler and wig, and the musical score fits the art style wonderfully. The lengths to which Tytania goes to maintain appearances is immediately apparent, down to the impeccable hairstyle of the customary man-who-looks-like-and-sounds-like-and-is-most-likely-voiced-by-a-woman.

The difference between the stuck-up nobility and the commoners is readily apparent in the differences in ship design, from the gleaming psychedelic curves of the Tytania fleet, to the gritty grey blocks that make up the Evliya fleet. The difference goes all the way to the design of the bridges of their respective flagships, with Tytania’s ornate stage (ironically, the people on the stage are the ones watching) with a butler making tea, compared to Evliya’s straight-out-of-Evangelion brown-NERV-coat-wearing ruffled-crumpled-hair admiral.

The weapons are, also, outlandishly outdated. Consider the starship laser, which bursts out of random orifices and goes right through metres of steel. Consider the nobleman’s pistol, which doesn’t seem to be able to kill an old man with one bullet. Things on the ground don’t match up with things in the air.
In fact, technology as a whole seems about as confused as a blind mole rat in a labyrinth. While ships are perfectly capable of warping straight into thin space and blowing great gaping holes in each other with light beams, material engineers somehow haven’t discovered Spandex or Latex. And while the gentlemen in space are blasting at each other with lasers (which, naturally, do not move at anything near the speed of light), people on the ground are still HORMAT SENJATA with bleeding chemical-propellant rifles.

On to the plot. Plot movement is excruciatingly slow in this episode, and we find out next to nothing about the history of the anime’s universe. Basically, all that happens is a Chancellor bites it, a king has a birthday, and some young chap gets trounced by another young chap. That’s it. As for background, all we know is that a typical overambitious gang of fellows asserts their authority over everyone else using their wonderfully shiny fleet of spaceships. Fascinating.

Let’s also discuss some of the tactics used. Evliya’s initial blockade would be suicide, really. Usually, holding position in a battle confers an advantage, namely that of cover and accuracy, since you’re hiding behind something, and you’re not dashing about. On the other hand, in a space battle, holding position is tantamount to suicide. For one, you’re stationary. Any self-respecting laser (read: instantaneous beam) would hit you, hard. Two, you’re not receiving any accuracy advantage. If your ships are smart enough to warp into space en masse without smashing great big holes into each other, surely the computers are smart enough to plot a firing trajectory. You know what? In fact, I think my laptop is fast enough to do that.

Alright, so Tytania’s ships have an unfair advantage- they take bloody lots of hits to destroy. On the other hand, Evliya’s ships seem to be made of plywood held together by spit and prayers. Which brings me to the question- why don’t they just make every ship like the Weigelt cannon? A gun slapped on engines, with no crew, controlled remotely. Awesome. You could throw millions against Tytania’s thousands and come out victorious.

Another thing. If they’re firing lasers at each other, why is there even the issue of range? Considering that Voyager can send us electromagnetic radiation from the edge of the Solar System, one would think a high-powered hull-smashing monster of a electromagnetic radiation generator could do better.

One last thing that’s been bothering me. How do 600 bloody ships make a small fleet? I mean, you would have to completely strip a planet or two to build, say, eighty large ships, and there they are prancing about like two thousand is nothing. Either their ships’ hulls are made of really thin metal (or plywood, as discussed earlier), or Tytania in reality is just a gigantic metal recycling plant.

Conclusions? Honestly a rather boring watch. There isn’t much plot progression, the most exciting thing is an old man dying of two bullet wounds, and the space battles don’t look particularly outstanding anyway. I’ll only continue watching because I’ve started it, and because I like Baroque stuff.