Ao no 6-gou

Yet another anime I remember watching during my Toonami days. I remember not liking it very much when I was younger, due to the dark plot. But I've recently rewatched it again (years later) and I must say, this was a kickass anime.

I was rewarded with a great plot, jazzy music, excellent animation, and a good moral lesson.

The story itself had a pretty interesting and original twist on the End of the World genre of movies. With the theme's of man vs nature and such (it does this much better then The Happening, but that isn't very hard to do).
I only wish that they'd ... have made a few more episodes. I'd really have liked to have seen the plot deepen somewhat, which we didn't get the chance to see with just 4 episodes.

The animation was great, at least the hand drawn portion. It flows very nicely and the colors are vibrant. The drawn stuff has aged very well... the CGI not so much. They added quite a bit of CGI, which probably looked cool 10 years ago. But now you can CLEARLY see the age. This can be an eye sore at times.

The soundtrack was quite interesting. You'd think that something like this would have an epic orchestra score. But instead, the soundtrack consists of a group of jazz tracks. The jazz actually fits very well with the anime, who would've thought...

The characters aren't very complex save for Zorndyke, who ends up being a very complex and deep character. Other than him, the other characters remain 2 dimensional. Hayami is your standard antihero, Kino is your standard annoying female counter part, and Verg (who is actually my favorite) is your standard bad guy, up until the end where we see a completely different side to the monster shark captain.
Once again, I blame the lack of episodes for this. We're just not given time to watch these characters develop at all.

Overall, this is a pretty good anime from beginning to end. It has and uses some very interesting idea's, some elements work (the concept and story) while others don't (the CGI).
I recommend this to any action/apocalypses junkies.

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 tropey ... cast 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.

It's a lot like the Evangelion Rebuild 3.0. There's very little plot or character depth, just a post-apocalyptic excuse for action sequences and overall surface-level childish morality questions of: war is bad? bigotry is bad? The antagonist is effectively just a Posadist Hitler a 2d cutout spouting hypocritical nonsense, throwing away the only opportunity the anime allows itself to have any depth in it. One of the only other actual characters is effectively mute and goes nowhere while the other antag is just a mentally deficient manchild soldier who can barely talk. You'll note the main character Hayami goes through an immediate character 180 after ... his 1st scene which immediately makes no sense.
Everything about this show is surface-level and thrown together nonsense. And the art is a ton of CG that while technically cutting edge at the time still looked bad way back then and now.