Irresponsible Captain Tylor - Reviews

Alt title: Musekinin Kanchou Tylor

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Whims44's avatar
Feb 21, 2011

Welcome to my fifth community review of an anime series on Anime-Planet. With this review, I am going to be looking and giving my opinion on the anime series The Irresponsible Captain Tylor, a 26 episode series animated by Tatsunuko Pro in 1993. No spoilers or cursing in my reviews, so you can read them without any problems and recommend them to younger people. Please comment and review my review. They can be very helpful for future reviews. Thanks and onto the review!

Story; Justy Ueki Tylor is the great uniter, but he is an idiot and a genius. The show has a solid plot of trying to stop aliens from destroying humanity. Pretty basic and ordinary, right? Wrong. Tylor is not ordinary. Not at all. Not at all. There is a word that perfectly describes Tylor as a series and that word is charming. There is so much that the story has to offer from romance, drama to downright fun and games. It has a little bit of everything for everyone and that is rare for anime these days.

Animation; For being animated in 1993, it's actually surprisingly good looking. Tatsunuko Pro did a wonderful and solid job with this show. The designs of the ships and characters (both human and alien) are superb and very pleasing to the eyes. I have seen the original animation and the remastered version. I would highly recommend seeking out the remastered video and audio. It's a significant difference when you compare the two.

Sound; The background music is pretty goofy at times, but so is Tylor. The same can be said about the opening and closing songs. Although there is distinct charm with this series' choice of music. It's appropriately and tastefully done to respect the work. The Japanese track was well done and the English track equally so. I could safely recommend watching Tylor in either of the languages. It just sounds fantastic.

Characters; Charming characters in a charming series. Tylor is all about the characters. They can be largely entertaining in every episode. From the lovely Azalyn, to the stern Yamamoto, to the cute twins and beyond. Although I cannot forget about the titular character for it would be a crime against the universe to do so. Tylor is easily one of the most enjoyable and entertaining lead characters in all anime. It's a solid character drama with great growth.

Overall; Irresponsible Captain Tylor is a fantastic comedy series from the days of old. There is a massive amount of charm in this series. I am going to recommend watching it. However, I am not going to go as far to say watch the OVA series too as apparently it ends with a cliffhanger whereas the series does not. That said, if you want more animated adventures of Tylor and his crew, go ahead as I am sure you probably will not care - you will just be glad to have more Tylor! Tylor is addictive stuff and I would not blame you. Bottom line, just watch it. Do yourself a favor.

9.5/10 story
9/10 animation
8.5/10 sound
10/10 characters
9.3/10 overall
Wickerman's avatar
May 23, 2014

Personal thought before review:  This review will be a bit positive rather then both a critical review.  You see I got out of watching anime a year ago, and after picking this show up a few weeks ago I'm back in full swing! Also has made me want to pick up The Ledgend Of The Galactic Heroes that it parodies that I'm about to watch so I give it thanks for that aswell.

Overall And Production:

A show what revolves most humour around one man's incompablility surely shouldint be counted as annything more then mediocre surely.  Yet Captain Tylor milks it's dull consept so well that It produses a milkshake.  Everything is crisp in this show, the humour, animation, editing, and sound.  I'm just supprised that the show's producers didnt get up to much anime works before or after Tylor.

Personnaly I'm not sure if this show has a following at all since I havint met annyone who knows of it yet it seems to be a minni landmark when it comes to anime, space opera's in general even. Even thought for its older age it competes with Outlaw Star or Trigun five years later that have surely mirrored there image on it yet they have such high statuses.

Story:   I'ts a comedyso surely the story is nothing special, however I did happen to be neck streached out at times to the screen yet modestly gave only a small worry when a plot didnt develop, it's a comedy after all.  Cant say its annything origenal though since it's a parady as well yet the enemies consept is charming although moree background I wish was given gradually.  

Charectors:  

Without a second thought I say to myself how can a show whose protaganist is a persona of the shows viewers yet only look on the bright side the whole way though. Since tylor began his adventures by blindly following a propaganda poster with a cuite girl in it.  I was thinking of Welcome To The NHK in mind that satarises the concept harshly yet with resect. 

The show dose take seriouse matters into its lighthearted humour, such as the alchoholic doctor that you cant stop but chuckle everytime he even mentions alchohol or sips.  At a pace that you cant look back on and reducing you to only smile.

All charectors besides from Azalyn and Tylors superiors, seem to just be on invidisual paths yet get moulded (in a good way) into assosiating Tylor as there captain.  Simple lessons to be learnt? Yes, yet that never keeps a charactor flat as you would think.


Music/Sound:  Well like alot of shows the soundtrack is what made me find out about the show in the first place. So that garantees that the shows going to be good for me.  It was remembrable enought to go back now and then on youtube to look it up. Background sound design was also high on the radar for detail. 


Animation:  From my viewing of anime of 1990-1995 I can proudly say that this is a milestone in animation.  Even the cheesy pop intro accidentely points out to show us what era this anime was from.  Still cant get over that its more then 20 years old.  At times during the end of the show I coulding stop but smirk seeing how the background animation of the human capital did bare alot of resembelances to Akira's. But thats more a personal thought.


Final Thoughts:  This show fits manny needs. I recomend it.

  • Retro
  • Anime Cultural Step
  • Casual/Intense Comedy
  • Parody of greater Animes

7/10 story
10/10 animation
8/10 sound
7/10 characters
8/10 overall
Dubfan's avatar
Aug 5, 2020

This show is great! It is a good comedy submarine film genre, however it is set in space. (Similar to the movies "Operation Petticoat" or later "Down Periscope".) Due to an overwhelming war with an alien nation, the Raalgon Emipre, the United Planet Space Force requires every resource capable of combat. No matter how incompetent, every able body is necessary for the war. The story follows the exploits of the young captain "Justy Ueki Tylor" or rephrased as captain "Just Lucky Tylor" on board the outdated space destroyer Soyokaze. Soyokaze meaning "a gentle breeze" in Japanese which is fitting for a space battleship... Clearly, physics was not an issue. The show is about using teamwork to overcome intense challenges. Each group of characters has a specific role to accomplish which fits into the plot. The plot is continuous from start-to-finish. The initial character development is lacking, but there is great character growth which progresses throughout the show. Animation and sound are not comparable to modern standards. If you're looking for a diamond in the rough, then I suggest this anime. Also, there is an OVA of short side-stories involving each character group.

6/10 story
5/10 animation
5/10 sound
8/10 characters
7/10 overall
kirant's avatar
Jun 3, 2012

Background of the Show

Irresponsible Captain Tylor is the story of two civilizations at war, humans, using their navy, the United Planets Space Force (UPSF), and Holy Raalgon Empire, humanoid aliens.  In the centre of it all is Justy Ueki Tylor, a lazy, laid back, optimistic man who's probably never done or taken anything seriously in his entire life.  After a certain incident, he's given command of the Soyokaze, an outdated, underequipped UPSF destroyer...which turns out is the dumping ground for all useless and unmanagable UPSF staff.  Despite that, the ship continually survives engagements with Raalgon forces...leaving everybody wonder how they do it...especially given Tylor's attitudeand lack of any real sense of urgency.

The anime is based off of Hitoshi Yoshioka's novels of the same name.  It is generally called a comedic space opera.

Story - 7.0/10

The story of Irresponsible Captain Tylor is very intriguing.  The background is something you could expect would come out of a serious show, along the lines of the visual novel version of Galaxy Angel.  Yet, for something considered a parody of space operas, it's surprisingly serious in where it actually takes the story.  The method that solves the events, namely Tylor's inverventions, are comedic, but the story itself is pretty serious.  That means nothing wrong however...it actually adds to the flavour a bit.  The story can be considered pretty standard, but the interaction it has with the characters makes it feel extremely strong.  The show begins to grind down from time to time.  Looking back, I find it hard to remember that it's 26 episodes. 

Animation - 4.5/10

The animation in the show shows its age.  It's an early '90's anime and, as such has many of the follies of an early '90's anime in its art.  This comes to a particular forefront in the rare battle scenes, where repeated animations are used frequently. This is much less noticable in non-action scenes however.  Again, it's pretty standard for its time (though the repatition is a little tough to watch).  It's marked as average for that reasion.

Sound - 5.0/10

This ranking incorporates many sections.  I'll go through them individually:

 - Songs: Generally solid.  The opening is catchy and fun (with one of the wierdest opening sequences you'll ever see).  The ending is pretty standard.

 - Sound Effects: Passable. There's little special, little off with it.  It doesn't stand out in any way.

 - Original Sound Track: Reasonable.  A few memorable songs sprinkled inside a fairly standard set. 

 - Voice Acting:  Fine, but nothing special in either language.  English's version is pretty much a collection of all your favourite VAs before they were hits.  Famously, this was Crispin Freeman's first major role before he got typecast (after playing Zelgadis).

Characters - 9.0/10

The characters are the major reason why you watch this show.  They're a completely goofy crew...and they take the space opera on a wild ride.  By completely defying all sense of logic, conventional wisdom, and probably UNconventional wisdom, they destroy all sense of reason in the show and bringing all sorts of hilarity.

Character development doesn't go unattended either.  While the eponymous character doesn't really develop, everybody around him does.  Despite much of the debate being on whether Tylor is a genius for saving the crew countless times, or just plain lucky, the massive impact he has on the cast leaves the question to the possibility of him being a spiritual figure, leading them to enlightenment.

Non-Tylor characters are good, but not memorable.  They are quirky, but do not stand out enough to make a show.  The show is very much about how Tylor impacts...well...everything and how he drags them along despite seemingly doing nothing. 

Long story short: A little slow at times, the show takes what you remember about space operas and turns them on their head by taking a familiar and easy to recognize situation...and turning it on its head.  While it doesn't stand out in its delivery or overall polish in animation, if you're able to get past that, it's a solid show to watch.

Overall - 7.0/10

7/10 story
4.5/10 animation
5/10 sound
9/10 characters
7/10 overall
kenikki's avatar
Oct 27, 2009

Story: 5/10

I wasn’t too sure about this one at first since I had started it several months ago and stopped watching it midway through the first episode. Although I couldn’t remember a thing from it. But when I started it this time I was highly impressed by it. The first episode, while not being THAT funny, paved in a good start. The coming episodes were quite often really funny and silly. But around episode 10 or so the show started trying on some melodrama and it was laaaame. It also started introducing harem aspects to the show, which were worse. And then the war part of the show started to become serious, and it wasn’t good at it. I gotta admit that I liked the final 4 episodes despite them being quite serious. I’m not sure why I liked them. I mean, the human side of the story got a pretty nice conlusion for a comedy series like this one, but there wasn’t one for the Raalgon side, which was kinda annoying. Hell, the Raalgon side hardly went anywhere, most of it was just spent on the empress being another harem member for Tylor (this is where the show took the biggest nose dive btw) and the “power struggle” was just lingered on. Nothing major really happened. The bomb was the biggest thing, and that wasn’t even dwelved upon any deeper by the Raalgons, it only gave grounds for the next episode and a reason for the empress to board the Soyokaze. Besides that we just got some mundane plans and evil smiles from Wang.

I’m sure some people will probably say that the serious parts aren’t meant to be taken seriously because it’s a parody, or something, but if that’s the intention I gotta say that they did a poor job with it.

Animation/Artwork/Visual Effects: 7.5/10

Actually, I thought it was really good. Especially considering it’s from 1993. I think the animation is better than plenty of shows from today. Most of the designs here aren’t impressive, but I still liked them.

Sound: 8/10

The voice actors did a great job here, even if the twins voices were way too “cutesy”. I also liked the sound a lot of the time, but there were some scenes here and there that was infected with too simple keyboard music that just sounded outdated and cheap.

I was especially impressed with the music in episode 23 (“The Longest Day In Space”) when Tylor and Dom was gonna fight and just flew past each other.

Characters: 4/10

Like with the story, I really liked Tylor in the beginning, being so irresponsible (duh), lazy, so motherfu***** lucky and even kinda sly. But later on in the show, while he was still lazy and lucky, he turned from irresponsible into plain stupid and selfish. And he started to appear as just dense, indecisive and overly kind, like the usual male harem lead that is.

Yamamoto on the other hand annoyed me a bit in the beginning because he was a bit whiny (I still found him funny though), but he grew on me more and more because while Tylor’s feats started to annoy me the longer the show progressed, Yamamoto’s feats, which are basicly the opposite of Tylor’s (responsible, caring & hardworking) started to appeal to me.

I liked Yuriko in the beginning because she tried to keep Tylor from being too irresponsible in humorous ways and I liked her a bit later on generally because I couldn’t take Tylor anymore and her attempts on “stopping” him just became something I prayed for so he wouldn’t make the show worse than it had already become. But after a bit more time she started to piss me off because of course she has to fall in love with him as well for some reason.

The empress was just bratty & bossy and was nearly always complaining, I never liked her. Dom was a bit too nice, but he wasn’t so bad. Harumi got the greatest development and I actually had no problem with her falling for Tylor because she actually seemed to have a reason for it. The doctor was good, though nothing special. I’m a little suprised the marines didn’t get on my nerves since they never got any development in the TV show and thus stayed the same throughout the series, but I liked them all the way. The navigator was a no-face and Kim stayed true to her character for the rest of the show, she was alright. The twins were too “cutesy”, but I had no real problem with them since they didn’t take up much screen time. The fighter pilot, while I liked him as a character, he didn’t get any development. I mean, why was he scared of women? And it seems he stopped being scared of women, but I would’ve liked to know how. Bah, we hardly even got see him in any fights. He trained the twins once and was in one fight iirc, that’s it.

I really liked the admirals though. I thought they were always funny when they were meant to be funny.

Wang was a terrible villain btw.

Overall: 5.5/10

Bottom line, they should have tried to keep it the same as it was in the beginning ~9 episodes throughout the show imo. That was definitely the top part of the show, and was generally really good. The final for or five episodes were actually decent, but the stuff in between were pure garbage.

5/10 story
7.8/10 animation
8/10 sound
4/10 characters
5.4/10 overall
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