Blue Submarine No. 6

Title: Blue Submarine No. 6 Manga, Live-Action Movie, Anime: Blue Submarine No. 6 was originally a manga created by Satoru Ozawa. It ran in Shonen Sunday, and stands at three collected volumes. It has yet to be licensed Stateside. In 2005, a live-action movie was announced by Gonzo studios, with Masahiro Ohkura directing. There's no more info about the movie after this, so your guess is as good as mine as to whether or not it's actually still happening. Blue Submarine No. 6 is a four episode OVA that was produced by Gonzo (famous for their work on Gankutsuou and Bokurano) and directed by MahiroMaeda (famous for directing Gankutsuou and the Second Renaissance segments of the Animatrix). It was released in Japan in 1998, and came Stateside in 2000 courtesy of Bandai Entertainment, and was released one episode (which ran about a half hour) a disc, and the final disc was released on October 3rd, 2000. It also aired on Toonami starting on November 6th, 2000 in the 6:00 block. Story: In the near future, the seas have risen to flood most of the world, and what few areas of land remain are attacked and/or destroyed by sea-living hybrids created by a scientist named Zorndyke. In order to stay alive, humanity relies on the crews of submarines known at the Blue Submarines. The story focuses on Blue Submarine No 6, and a jaded ex-submariner named Hayami, who is asked to come back and help the crew defeat Zorndyke and his hybrids. Sound like every other post-apocalyptic anime you've seen? Well, it is like most other post-apocalyptic anime out there, except that it takes place mostly in the sea. For the most part, the plot isn't anything particularly stellar, not to mention subplots that are bought in out of nowhere and kind of made of WTF. The characters are not particularly well-developed, even for having only four half-hour episodes to do it in. The characters have basic traits established, and that's how they stay for the entirety of the series. One of the problems I have is the "romance" between Hayami and the female lead, Kino, who's a whiny little bitch who suddenly does a 180 about how she feels about Hayami in the third episode. The one exception to all of this is Zorndyke, who comes in in the second episode, and is probably the best well-developed plot line and character of the whole thing. He's initially painted as the ZOMG EVIL SCIENTIST, but as the OVA goes on he gets enough development that you're left with this moral ambiguity about him that you see in shows like Code Geass and Death Note. Art: The blend that Gonzo does of 2D and 3D art here is absolutely stunning, especially for the ocean scenes. They're also particularly creative in their designs for the hybrids, which is a nice touch. The overall color scheme is based on various shades of blue and grey and green, because hey, we're in the ocean. Normal character designs aren't anything particularly special, but hey, it works. Music: The music for this series is all jazz-bassed, as is the ED (no OP), and all in all, I really like it. ...Nothing more I can say about it, really. Seiyuu: Again, no seiyuu that I recognize/love to death, but all in all, a pretty good job. Props especially to Mutio's seiyuu, who could convey what she wanted to get across with the character without using actual words (most of her dialogue was humming or random sea animal-esque noises). Length: I think they could've stood to add two more episodes and made it a six-episode OVA, which would've given it a bit more time to breathe, in terms of plot and characters. Overall: A pretty decent OVA with a plot and characters that don't stand out much, except for one character, pretty art and music, and awesome hybrid designs that deserved an episode or two more. Story: 7/10 Art: 9/10 Music: 9/10 Seiyuu 8/10 Length: 7/10 Overall: 40/50; 80% (B-)

I dont generally do reviews but nows as good of a time as any to start, that being said this is my first review and you may find it a little odd in comparison to most however i'll just keep doing them in my own 'brainless' way. Story: The story, which i'm not going to any detail about, is border-line amazing though it doesn't seem very "whole". I say amazing because I've never really seen anything quite like it, that is to say it is quite unique and quite creative. However it does seem to have a lot of holes, much seems to go unexplained. Becauseof the very short four episode life span of this anime the story does proceed along at a very fast rate, this may explain my feeling of the story not being very "whole" Art: The art was one of my favorite parts about this anime, everything is very nicely put together and anything non-human was quite creatively put together. The only thing that bugged me quite a bit was the use of quite a bit of CGI (which i cannot stand in my anime). Aside from the CGI (if your into that kinda thing, isn't even a problem) the over-all "art" of this anime is great. Sound: Music track is win, Voice's are win, Sound Effects are win, over-all the "sound" section is win. That is to say there are no voice's i hated and only one that bugged me. (shark-boy's voice bugged me a little) Characters: This is a section this anime really suffers in, and over all the sections it gets my lowest score. I say this because the character development in this story is damn near non existent. We can blame this on the whole "I'm a very short anime i have to get right to the point thing" but even for an anime of this length the lack of character development is horrible. New characters are not introduced, they merely start existing when the plot seems to need them, half of which don't even seem to have names. By the end i had trouble even remembering who the two main characters of the story where. despite these aspects of terrible "character-isms" the main characters are very like-able, even if you don't fully remember their names.... Overall this is an enjoyable little anime, generally i skip any anime with more then 2 minutes of CGI (grawr i hate that stuff) but for some reason this anime just really kept my attention. don't go into expecting any character development or any of that but its a nice anime to just sit down and watch if your bored. Verdict: Brainless Approves 8/10 This was very poorly written. brainless reviews his review as 2/10 - brainless 12/9/14

What is it I love about Blue Submarine 6... Well, I remember, vaguely, watching it in instalments, back during those beautiful 6 months when I was 6 and we had free Cable, on Toonami. At yes, along side those hours watching Gundamn Wing and Chris Colorado, there was this odd little show about a Blue Submarine and some odd Animal men. Back then, I wasn't so crazy on it, but that was mostly because I could never work out what order the episodes went in. I had this vague idea I might be watching them out of sync, or perhaps that I missed one. Now of course, its14 years on and I've got the series. And Damn do I love it. Blue Sub 6 does not, really, stand out in any particular category. No numerical store I could give it would really do justice to how Much I really Like it. The Animation is smooth, beautiful, but its not remarkable in any way. The Story isn't perfectly original, but its good and it has some wonderful little details. Frankly, the characters don't stand out at all for me. But somehow, all put together, its a truly enthralling thing to watch. There's a noticeable lack of Romance, although I think there's something implied between Mutio and Tetsu. And perhaps Tetsu and Mayumi too. The Scenes of underwater combat are stylish, well done, and fairly believable, but the far enough between that you can't call this a "Battle Anime". The Scenes with the animal men are...Strange, but present a rather interesting view of them. Very human, yet clearly not. The Music is rather nice too, some wonderfully appropriate Jazz tunes in there. Rather reminds me of Big O in that respect. but I can't say it stands out in this regard either In fact, all in all, my reason for loving this series cannot be found in any particular aspect of it. Its, so to speak, in the completion rather than the components.

Have you ever thought "Oh man, Waterworld was an interesting movie. I wonder what'd it'd be like if Japan made a cartoon?" Well look no farther because Blue Submarine No. 6 is that. But, you know, not at all really. First off, the character and creature designs are spot-on. The world Blue Submarine presents the viewer with is at once visually interesting and begging to be explored. Everyone looks and sounds very distinct and at no point (despite the relatively short amount of time I had to get to know everyone) did I ever confuse a character with another. I was initially ready for a tropeycast that really seemed like they were copy/pasted right out of an anime database. But I was pleasantly surprised to find that everyone develops over the course of the meager four episodes in a most pleasant way. No one is really how you initially expect them to be. As I watched the anime I couldn't help but want to know more about the history that led to the Earth we see here, but if you think the anime is going to give you answers OH NO, it's not. Hehehe. Get it? It's like the title. I did a bit there. Hope you caught it. But no, really, you aren't told nearly enough about this fascinating alternate reality for it to really sink in. The humans are fighting hybrid creatures, but why? When were they made? How were they made? Why did the villain feel like creating human/animals hybrids was the best course of actions? Why did he (SPOILERS) transform that one human prisoner into a hybrid creature? Was it just for kicks? The villain's character is sorely underdeveloped, especially compared to the protagonists, and I didn't feel like he effectively justified himself to the viewer. And fine, okay, a villain certainly doesn't have to be justified. But the anime really seems like it WANTS you to understand him. They really go far to say "Hey, he's not THAT bad. Just delusional!" Sorry, but killing over 10 billion people and attempting to destroy humanity completely is pretty evil by most standards and I'm not biting. The writers could have really gone in an interesting directions by playing up how justified he feels against how atrocious his acts really are, but instead the earnest attempt to make him sympathetic when his actions are so destructive is just really bizarre and off-putting. The main side villain is also totally uninteresting, despite his design (Did I mention the creature designs are all amazing? Because they are.) Story-wise, everything is really straightforward and while the anime starts out as if you're going to be slowly revealing the past of each character, the ultimate reveals are all pretty disappointing in all honesty. This anime is also LOADED with terrible CGI. And man, OH MAN, is it terrible. I saw the amazingly drawn characters and thought "Alright, this looks great!" But then the first of many terribly CGI'd fight scenes begins. This is definitely where the OH NO of Ao No. 6 Gou comes from. The fights would actually be very interesting if they were just animated in 2D. But with so much terrible CGI saturating the anime, from the water to the splash effects awkwardly places over 2D characters to the ships and other creatures, it almost becomes hard to enjoy what would be very interesting visuals. I say "almost" because the soundtrack is terrific. I mean, it's really good. Energetic jazz spliced with sparsely used enigmatic and otherworldly tracks. Not on the level of Cowboy Bebop, Samurai Champloo or any of the other legendary anime soundtracks, but still fantastic and it makes sitting through even the worst-looking CGI a pleasure. So do I recommend it? I mean... kind of? It was good. I liked it. It's no Akira but it's still an interesting post-apocalyptic story with some cool visuals and moments with a great soundtrack. Nothing fantastic, but worth looking into.