THE IRRESPONSIBLE CAPTAIN TYLOR starts out oddly enough with a homeless man named Justy Ueki Tylor, aged 20, sitting out in the rain, staring at an advertisement for the United Planets Space Force (UPSF). Somehow, from this ad he gets the idea that, for an easy life, one only has to join the military. Tylor explains to the UPSF recruitment officer that in the military you get free food, a free uniform and other daily necessities, you don't have to pay rent and when you retire you get to live off your pension. The recruitment officer doesn't buy any of this, but allows Tylor to be evaluated for military service because Tylor promises the officer that if he ever rose to the rank of admiral, he would dedicate his memoirs to the recruitment officer. Tylor might not be the brightest individual, but he certainly is smooth.

Unfortunately for Tylor, just as he joins the military, hostilities renew between the UPSF and the Raalgon Empire, but luckily for Tylor he is nowhere near the battle lines because he is assigned to a comfy desk job in the Pension Department. One of assignments he receives at his new job is to personally deliver a late pension check to the retired UPSF Admiral Hanner. But the job isn't as easy as it looks because Hanner, along with his two twin daughters and a family friend, have been taken hostage by two Raalgon terrorists. Tylor, not one to be daunted from his job by something as trivial as intergalactic terrorism, makes his way past the UPSF military forces surrounding the Hanner residence and he gets himself taken hostage once inside. Even though he never really intended to in the first place, he manages to defeat the terrorists by being his irresponsible dense self.

As a reward for taking care of the hostage crisis, Tylor is given a promotion and command of the space cruiser Soyokaze, which translates into "Gentle Breeze." But not everything is as it's cracked up to be as the Soyokaze is a rusted piece of junk and the crew is comprises of the dregs of the UPSF. Things go from bad to worse as Tylor has to now face a crew that is on the verge of mutinying, assassination attempts from his own superior officers who see him as a disgrace and the fact that they are outnumbered by Raalgon warships. In pretty much every episode Tylor stumbles onto certain doom, only to get through it using his infinite supply of dumb luck.

I had originally seen the entire TV series back when it came out on VHS. One of the reasons I really like this show is the character of Tylor. Though most of the time he acts like a complete buffoon, he will every once in awhile do something of sheer genius which will make you suspect that his irresponsible personality is just a cover to put people off. But, of course, just as you are thinking this, he will do something completely stupid which will destroy any notion that this man has absolutely any idea of what is going on.

Another thing that is great about this series is the interaction between the various characters, especially when they interact with Tylor. Many of the crewmembers of the Soyokaze can almost be classified as stereotypes of characters from other more serious science fiction war anime because they believe in love of country, honor and bravery, etc. On the other hand, Tylor has not the slightest interest in any of those things and so it's fun to see him as the captain cast aside any heroic notion his crew might have when faced with insurmountable odds. Also, the fact that this show is extremely funny makes it worth viewing.

The DVD itself for the most part was quite good. The video was nice and clear, as was the audio track for both the Japanese and English tracks. There were no annoying volume dropouts that plague some anime DVDs. There is also a Spanish language track, which I didn't listen to because I don't know Spanish.

Also the DVD sports quite a number of bonuses and features. One of the features included in this DVD are the liner notes for each episode on this volume. Bonuses include a collection of dossiers on the various characters in TYLOR, and something that calls itself a gallery but it just shows a montage of clips from the episodes on this volume set to one of the background music pieces. I don't know how you can really consider that a gallery, but it's on there. And, for some reason, the Japanese credits are placed in the bonus section, which leads me to believe that many of these anime companies will label just about anything a bonus/extra for the sake of pleasing the irate fans who must have DVDs loaded with extras.

When I originally saw this series, it was in subtitles and with the DVD I was able to hear the dub. I was looking forward to hearing it because I am a fan of dubbed anime, and I had read some positive reviews about the dub and, well... those reviews were wrong. Suffice it to say, I didn't care for this dub at all, though in all fairness it was for the most part adequate. The dubbing studio TAJ, which does the dubbing for many of the Central Park Media anime, did it and I never really care for the CPM dubs in the first place. (Also, TAJ is the studio responsible for the POKÉMON dubbing...) But, in any event, this dub just didn't click with me and I felt that it in no way could the English cast compare to the excellent performance done by the original Japanese cast. Another thing that hurt the dub was that many of the performances were really wooden, while the English voice actor for Tylor, Crispin Freeman, was just too flowery and didn't really capture the essence of the character at all.

So, despite the extremely mediocre dub TYLOR is an excellent series and one you should definitely check out. Also with seven (yes, count'em, seven) complete episodes on this volume alone you can be able to view a nice chunk of this fantastic serious. I can't recommend this series enough.