Following a devastating attack from Zorndyke and his
Phantom Ship, what’s left of the Blue Fleet struggles to continue ahead with
their counterattack. Stranded in the
middle of the Pacific, Hayame finds himself rescued by female mutant whose life
he sparred once before. As he races to
rejoin Blue Six and his comrades, Hayame begins to ask the right questions:
about Zorndyke, about the war and about where this conflict may be heading, and
it’s not in a good direction. All eyes
head towards Antarctica, where the final clash begins. What will Hayame and Kino find when they
breach Zorndyke’s inner sanctum and meet the madman who killed the world?
Well after such a noisy and violent cliffhanger, I expected
things to calm down at the start of the second half of Blue Submarine
No.6. And really, this episode is both
the series best episode as well as an example of everything wrong with it. Sure
it’s no secret Blue Six and her crew survived the destruction of Blue Dome
(would make a final battle a bit difficult).
But this was Hayame’s time to shine and we got some good backstory on
him. It also gave us some time to hear
him think out why things have gotten so bad and why that may be. Hayame’s conversation with the Musica (one of
Zorndyke’s weaponized whales) is interesting stuff. I feel like this would be a good two part
arc in and of itself but sadly this is still a four part OVA. And that means if a series hasn’t done a lot of
explaining of giving us adequate chance to warm up to or care about its cast,
it’s time to lob it all into the last episode.
And again, im left with more “why” than an actual
answers: why does Kino give a crap about Hayame given how he’s treated her
during the start of the series, there’s no real likeability established between
them and it feels forced? Was Zorndykes
endgame really a test or was he really a lot like that hacker in Bebop who had
a plan and got so old he forgot why he started it in the first place? Besides not nuking the Antarctic and
inadvertently starting another apocalypse, was anything really solved in the
end? And actually, since Zorndyke heart
was literally hooked up to a doomsday machine, shouldn’t it have gone off when
Hayame killed him in the end? Like I said,
more questions than answers and it all feels so horribly rushed and just thrown
out there. I get some endings to stories
can be ambiguous but at the same time, you get enough info before hand to
support it. Sigh, let’s face it. Storytelling wise, Blue Sub Six fell pretty
flat.
It’s partly saved by some really nice CG animation. We really got to see the titular sub really
cut loose and we got some more fun Grampus action with Kino and Hayame at the
helm. I do have to say though, the uncut
version which I watched actually has a line that I thought should’ve been
replaced by the line they used in the Toonami edit. When BS6 emerges above the Phantom Ship and
Captain Iga shouts, “BURN IN HELL!!!”, sorry it’s not nearly as bad ass as “CHOKE
ON THIS!!!” before his sub unleashes every torpedo it has downward and right
into a wailing Velg’s command ship. That
aside, it was the finest hour of Blue Submarine No.6 (the moment, not the
episode).
In the end though, good animation can only get a series
so far, even an OVA. In an OVA and a
Movie, you need to do in 2 hours to 4 30-45 minute features what every TV
series has 26-50 episodes of time to devote to: establishing world, characters,
plot, conflict and pushing them to an endgame well worth the journey. Macross Plus did this in spades and you didn’t
really have to watch any Macross work prior to it to enjoy the hell out of
it. Blue Submarine No.6 feels like the
final four episodes of an Anime who’s prior 8-22 episodes never got made. The crew of the sub looks fun but we don’t get
to spend time with em. Katsuma and
Hayame’s shared back story was begging for some extra time. Hell I would’ve liked more of a prologue to
before the planet became Waterworld.
There’s a lot to be desired and if you came to watch this OVA based on
the cool visual and action scenes, you wouldn’t know you were in for a
disappointment. Even for an action
Anime, it needed more.
It was a good trip down nostalgia lane but it’s not
enough to hide that Blue Submarine No.6 had problems that keep it deep beneath
the bottom of the sea and nowhere near treasure.
5/10
Next week though, we’re taking a look at a supposed
underrated classic. Not exactly an
anime, in fact im not sure it knew what it wanted to be. The first and ONLY film from Square Pictures
is the start of a two-part Final Fantasy movie feature to close out
October. See you next week for FINAL
FANTASY: THE SPIRITS WITHIN.
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