Banner of the Stars II - 7/10
Thar be some light spoilers ahead. Since this is an old-ish series in which there's little interest I won't bother tagging it.
Banner of the Stars bored me after a few episodes so I jumped straight into the sequel. In this series the two lead characters -- Lafiel, an Abh princess, and Jinto, her human bitch/friend/soulmate -- become territorial ambassadors for a planet in a newly-conquered system. They're not best pleased to discover that it's actually a prison planet housing a million criminals, and trouble is brewing between four factions, all of which put forward a representative claiming to be in charge.
It's a strange set up. On the east of there's the male prisoners. On the west is the female prisoners. Between them is are the largest group: a voluntarily sterilised mixed population. To the south is where the prison guards and staff reside, and it's their representative who Lafiel and Jinto recognise as having authority. Turns out the male prisoners want kids for some reason will stop at nothing to get to the fertile women, who want the Ahb to help them emigrate before the men reach them - but it's a race against time because enemy ships are approaching.
And it all plays out in quite a thrilling fashion. But something that bothers me, aside from the few things that don't quite ring true, is that the representative of the female prisoners is heavily sexualised, and subjected to numerous leering close ups of her heaving chest and hot pants-clad posterior. Given that it's implied that many of the female prisoners turned to crime after suffering sexual violence, and given their fate if the men reach them, her depiction seems wholly distasteful.
What this series does miss, and why Crest is still my favourite of the three series, is the lack of interaction between Lafiel, who stays on the ship, and Jinto, who liaises with the prison guards on the surface. Still, the characters and their dialogue continues to be exceptionally well written. Screenplay for all Crest series was handled by Aya Yoshinaga, who later proved in Kurau that she has a keen insight into the relationships between people.
Incidentally, I strongly recommend the first series, Crest of the Stars, to anyone and everyone.
