Post by ravenwithoutcause on Nov 26, 2004 18:55:33 GMT -5
The story might make you think Waterworld, but there's a bit more to it than that. Some of the window dressing-- specifically, the post-environmental catastrophe where the earth is half-submerged bit-- is present here, but the tone of the story is quite different from Costnerworld. Here, the Blue Fleet is a well-organized but small pocket of military resistance against the forces of Zornd**e, a world-renowned scientist who apparently went soft in the head and triggered the catastrophe that submerged much of earth's land masses and killed most of the population.
The water isn't the real problem, though. Zornd**e's experiments also created new adversaries for the Blue Fleet, in the form of Musica, a breed of whale engineered to do battle with mankind's navies, and the Phantom Ship, an enormously powerful half-ruined battleship, crewed by a strange, gruesome assortment of mutant anthropomorphic animals. Zornd**e himself seems to have retreated from the spotlight, which is easily filled by Berg, the Phantom Ship's commander, a crazy-ass shark person with dreadlocks. Jawsome!!
The Blue Fleet, of course, is facing problems of its own. Its supplies are dwindling, the remaining civilians on earth are more interested in simply surviving day-to-day than actively supporting the fleet, and the ships themselves are undermanned. Specifically, Blue Submarine No. 6 is missing a very important crewman-- a pilot named Hayami, who might know the way to punch a hole in Zornd**e's defenses and beat back the enemy once and for all.
Hayami's alive, of course-- he just quit the fleet, retreating into the world of salvaging crap from the sea floor in exchange for drugs. Blue Sub no. 6's crafty Captain Iga dispatches a pair of his crewmen to try and bring Hayami back-- Seaman Sidra Denton is taciturn about the affair, but a young officer named Mayumi Kino is more than happy to beg, plead, and threaten Hayami into coming back to Blue Sub no. 6.
That's Blue Sub's greatest strength-- the characters. Far from flat heroes and villains, the cast of this show are fantastic and really well fleshed out, from the grim, fatalistic Hayami to the angry, revenge-driven Kino. Captain Iga and the other officers in the Blue Fleet are well-developed, gritty and almost "real"-feeling. Even Zornd**e is a crafty old bastard. The only really cartoony character is Berg, who spends most of his/her(?) time screaming and yelling about wanting to sink Blue Sub no. 6 once and for all. (That's another good part-- while the Phantom Ship is overwhelmingly powerful, Capt. Iga is a great strategist, and his deft combat skills pull Blue 6 out of jams so often that the "bad guys" seem to regard it with almost superstitious dread.)
Production of the show is also a minor triumph-- the acting is sterling both in Japanese and English (with Coastal providing their usual great work for the dubbed version), the sound is well-mixed and even available in Japanese Dolby 5.1 on the DVDs, and the animation is fluid and only really "clashes" when 3D-modeled stuff and 2D cel-like animation are mixed too heavily. The character and creature designs, primarily by famed illustrator Range Murata, are striking and vivid, and the mechanical designs, which come courtesy of a hodgepodge of talent that includes the great Shoji Kawamori, are unique, sleek and otherworldly. The soundtrack is provided by the Thrill, a 15-piece jazz-rock combo that performs with surging intensity, and the whole production is pinned together by GONZO chief Mahiro Maeda.
Blue Sub no. 6 is good stuff. The only things keeping it from greatness are its relative clumsiness-- the show is a few years old (as of November 2001), and techniques for combining 3D models and 2D animation were still quite primitive-- the first episode, in particular, has some transitions that are quite jarring. Storywise, the show's fantastic, but it has a really depressing and abrupt ending, which made me wish that a few more episodes had been planned. (Satoru Ozawa created a 90s version of the original Blue Sub no. 6, on which this animation is based-- it's long enough to accomodate a few more animated bits.) Nevertheless, Blue Sub no. 6 packs a lot of action and entertainment into each of its' 30-minute DVDs.
The water isn't the real problem, though. Zornd**e's experiments also created new adversaries for the Blue Fleet, in the form of Musica, a breed of whale engineered to do battle with mankind's navies, and the Phantom Ship, an enormously powerful half-ruined battleship, crewed by a strange, gruesome assortment of mutant anthropomorphic animals. Zornd**e himself seems to have retreated from the spotlight, which is easily filled by Berg, the Phantom Ship's commander, a crazy-ass shark person with dreadlocks. Jawsome!!
The Blue Fleet, of course, is facing problems of its own. Its supplies are dwindling, the remaining civilians on earth are more interested in simply surviving day-to-day than actively supporting the fleet, and the ships themselves are undermanned. Specifically, Blue Submarine No. 6 is missing a very important crewman-- a pilot named Hayami, who might know the way to punch a hole in Zornd**e's defenses and beat back the enemy once and for all.
Hayami's alive, of course-- he just quit the fleet, retreating into the world of salvaging crap from the sea floor in exchange for drugs. Blue Sub no. 6's crafty Captain Iga dispatches a pair of his crewmen to try and bring Hayami back-- Seaman Sidra Denton is taciturn about the affair, but a young officer named Mayumi Kino is more than happy to beg, plead, and threaten Hayami into coming back to Blue Sub no. 6.
That's Blue Sub's greatest strength-- the characters. Far from flat heroes and villains, the cast of this show are fantastic and really well fleshed out, from the grim, fatalistic Hayami to the angry, revenge-driven Kino. Captain Iga and the other officers in the Blue Fleet are well-developed, gritty and almost "real"-feeling. Even Zornd**e is a crafty old bastard. The only really cartoony character is Berg, who spends most of his/her(?) time screaming and yelling about wanting to sink Blue Sub no. 6 once and for all. (That's another good part-- while the Phantom Ship is overwhelmingly powerful, Capt. Iga is a great strategist, and his deft combat skills pull Blue 6 out of jams so often that the "bad guys" seem to regard it with almost superstitious dread.)
Production of the show is also a minor triumph-- the acting is sterling both in Japanese and English (with Coastal providing their usual great work for the dubbed version), the sound is well-mixed and even available in Japanese Dolby 5.1 on the DVDs, and the animation is fluid and only really "clashes" when 3D-modeled stuff and 2D cel-like animation are mixed too heavily. The character and creature designs, primarily by famed illustrator Range Murata, are striking and vivid, and the mechanical designs, which come courtesy of a hodgepodge of talent that includes the great Shoji Kawamori, are unique, sleek and otherworldly. The soundtrack is provided by the Thrill, a 15-piece jazz-rock combo that performs with surging intensity, and the whole production is pinned together by GONZO chief Mahiro Maeda.
Blue Sub no. 6 is good stuff. The only things keeping it from greatness are its relative clumsiness-- the show is a few years old (as of November 2001), and techniques for combining 3D models and 2D animation were still quite primitive-- the first episode, in particular, has some transitions that are quite jarring. Storywise, the show's fantastic, but it has a really depressing and abrupt ending, which made me wish that a few more episodes had been planned. (Satoru Ozawa created a 90s version of the original Blue Sub no. 6, on which this animation is based-- it's long enough to accomodate a few more animated bits.) Nevertheless, Blue Sub no. 6 packs a lot of action and entertainment into each of its' 30-minute DVDs.
