Millie, a buxom teen with her heart set on becoming the greatest detective in the universe and the author of a best-selling autobiography, prepares to make the sting on some illegal mob activities just as Kain and Canal show up to do the same. A series of plot devices and bickering fits later, Millie finds herself implicated in the syndicate's shenanigans.

As scientists attempt to push the light speed barrier, trying to replicate the power of the lost ships of lore, the experiment goes wrong and sucks the guinea ship into sub-space. The government turns to Kain and Canal to help recover the lost ship before something terrible happens. And, as is most of the work they do for the government, they work pro bono. As luck would have it, Millie pops up again, spurned by the detective agency, fired from a job as a short order cook, and ends up joining the crew.

An unidentified ship approaches the Swordbreaker just as an explosion within the ship sends Kain to investigate the disturbance. The mysterious ship carries the team's government contact, Rail, who comes to offer them a job that requires a fast ship. The explosion was just Millie making breakfast. The government offers them the gig of collecting and protecting a witness against a powerful crime syndicate. On the verge of refusing, Kain finds himself forced into the job by an alacritous Millie who makes a contractual obligation to see the job through.

Millie, determined to be yet another "Best at Something" in the universe, decides to enter a beauty pageant. As she and Kain attend the pageant down on the planet, a tarot-reading, lovelorn assassin targets Kain. (The pageant contest involves the bikini-clad participants getting crabs, or rather, collecting crabs from the beach.)

Culling the catalogue of anime clichés for this entirely unimpressive work, director Takashi Wantanabe ("The Abashiri Family") phones in this thoughtless series of veritable vaudeville routines with single-note characters - characters on which he tries to tell a more folkloric space epic about an ancient and mysterious locomotive technology. But neither his characters, nor the plots they stumble through provoke even the slightest glimmer of intrigue, with each successive episode sinking this series deeper into the abyss of the banal.

Without a clear story or attention to important details - and an inability to distinguish between them and unimportant details - "Lost Universe" lives up to at least half its name, floundering through bad jokes and even worse plot devices. But central to the failure of this anime is the creators' refusal to even attempt fluidity, distracted as they are by even the most minute reason to plunge any of the Swordbreaker's crew into hateful rants.

When Kali, a sumptuous lunatic who savors the hunt among all else, arrives on the scene, the semblance of an interesting dynamic stirs. But no sooner does the intensity between the hunter and the worthy hunted, Kain (as clueless as ever), begin than the situation dissipates into a stock battle - the narrative innovation dissolves into the mind-numbing dribble that makes up most of the series.

Negativity can also very well coat any assessment of the grossly jarring shift from the blatant 3D CGI used to render the ship and the cel animation meant to give life to the characters. And the bland theme song that, to its credit, isn't nearly unique enough to be memorable. But why bother ranting about these trifles when blanket statements of "Lost Universe's" malfeasance will suffice.