Hello ladies, peoples, and animals it is I, the Arcane Reviewer! Here to bring you a new anime review. This is gonna be a tough review, now that I mean that this anime won't be so easy for me to completely nail down like all of my other reviews. There is a blurred area in this anime that has actually been able to split the anime community quite a bit. You have people that love it but at the same time you have people who just don't like this show. It's not everyday that I watch an anime that can just split me up as much as this anime has and I feel that it'll be quite tricky to review this. But enough of all that, let's dive right into this show shall?
Story:
This anime takes place in a post-apocalyptic like world in which most of the earth's land has been covered by water. Not only is half of the world covered in water but you also has a mad scientist named Zorndyke who created a type of hybrid species that is both aquatic animal and human. Zorndyke created these creatures and is the cause of the flooded world that we see and just about all of the remaining humans see him as a terrorist and rightfully so. This is where we meet our protagonists, Tetsu Hayami, a former elite cadet at the Naval Academy. We see that Tetsu is just about sulking around in his little crappy apartment until he's called back into action to which he reluctantly agrees to. That's pretty much all I can say about the show without flat out spoiling everything for you guys but in all honesty, I wouldn't know how to summarize this show even if I did start spoiling it. The story to this show can be very clunky at times. The show starts off as a simple stop the bad guy story, then it shift to an almost environmental message, then it goes into a kinda romance, then it stops to a "are we really the bad guys?!" kinda plot. What I'm trying to say is that the show tries to tackle a lot of plot lines as well as driving home a some-what serious message but the main problem is that it's handling too many story elements and the show simply isn't long enough to give them that proper care they deserve. The show presents all of these plot lines and even ties them up but they never really feel finished or even give you a sense of closure. But even in saying all of that the show actually has some guts to follow these specific story elements and they never do them badly either. Sure they aren't as emotional fulfilling as they should be but they aren't handled awfully either. The show is pretty much smack right down in the middle when it comes to it's story it really is hard to complement it as well as completely bash it as well.
Animation:
Well I'll be damned if I didn't say that the animation kicks ass here. The character designs aren't super amazing but are pretty cool and the creature designs are very creative and where fun to see. Also all of the big action scenes were badass and animated extremely well. So the animation here was awesome. For the most part. You see while the traditional animation was really good you also had CGI as well and it was fucking horrendous. Now this show was made in the 90's so I can forgive the CGI a little bit, that is until I see a giant CGI whale that's talking to our main character and the show expect me to take it completely seriously. The that's when it starts to bother me. Yeah the animation is only half good because of the aged CGI and the top notch animation. Maybe it won't bother you but to me and many other people I couldn't help but be distracted.
Music:
At least I can praise this! Yup the music was really good in this show. It's a very jazz heavy soundtrack but I feel that it was able to convey all of the emotions that had to be showed through the musical expression. The show also used a lot of just normal background noises like animals in the water or seagulls flying through the air to really immerse you into the world of Blue Sub 6. So the music is pretty damn good and I always enjoy listening ti it from time to time.
Characters:
Now this another thing that bothers me about Blue Sub 6. None of it's characters are very interesting. In fact a lot of them are pretty boring to be honest. Testu never really develops beyond his normal angry and just not caring self. Until at the very end he's apparently a completely different person and understands both humans and water monsters and wants both sides live in peace. But the problem here is that you don't feel as though that character change is believable because the show doesn't really bring Tetsu up to where you can see the change of heart naturally happen. he just kinda has a change of heart because it's convenient to the plot. None of the other characters are worth mentioning simply because they don't develop much past the role they're given. None of these characters feel like people they just feel like caricatures of what people are supposed to be like. So I really didn't connect with these characters at all and that's pretty sad when your story takes place in the water apocalypse.
Nitpicks:
My one big nitpick here is pretty much how the show tries o presents the villains here. At first they show us that they are evil and we should hate them but as the show continues they try to change this. They try to makes us feel sympathy for these creatures. Now say for like tow of them I feel no sympathy in the slightest for these monsters, they tried to kill us! Now it would makes sense if we threaten them in some way first but no, the show flat out says that they attacked the humans first and caused the world to be flooded. Zorndyke even gave them the order to attack all of the humans, they're fucking evil! I'm not gonna feel bad for some asshole who through the first punch! Fuck that guy!
Overall:
I guess I can say that Blue Sub 6 is a mixed bag for me. The show has a lot of good but also a lot of bad. It has it's high moments but also it's low moments. The thing I can say is that you need to watch the show yourself to really see if you like personally. Do I regret watching it? No. Do I personally recommend it? Not really. I did like the show to an extent but it also had a lot of problems that hindered my enjoyment. I'd watch and see for yourself if you think it's good or not.
Arcane Reviewer gives Blue Submarine No. 6 a 5 out of 10.
You can watch "Blue Submarine No. 6" on
Hulu (Dub only)
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