A One Submarine War On The World
Anime Geek, Movie guru, into action flicks, Afraid Of The Ocean
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MAY
22
2007
Intro
A world overcome by disaster and a man who wants to shape the new world in his own image… where have I heard this before?
The Story
Taking place in the future, the Earth has been hit by a disaster of epic proportions called ‘The Hammer of Eden’ leaving the ocean levels raised to the point of leaving only a few land masses left in the world. Fourteen years after the disaster, mankind has moved on and has determined to move on and form a brand new United Nations. Our hero is a young kid named Keel who is making it through the tough world by conning others out of their coin; he also has a crush on a pregnant girl named Isla but more on that later. More importantly though, not everyone is happy with the idea of a new United Nations.
One of the few remaining captains of a nuclear submarine, Captain Gould, has declared war on all surviving nations and has decided that he should be the new ruler of the world and sets out to form the world in his own image. After the town is attacked, things become worse when Isla goes into labor and Keel’s long lost twin brother, Teen, appears. After the delivery, Teen is taken into custody and Keel is given an escape but it means leaving behind his city and Isla so he decides to stay behind and help her and her new baby.
With the town in complete disarray, Keel tries to get himself, Isla and the baby to safety but the only route he can find is the one given to him by Teen which is to unknowingly cast off with the crew the attacked his city and declared war in the first place.
Reconstruction and counter offensives are set up by the attacked city of Yabitsu begin immediately. While on board the submarine, Keel is conning the crew out of items that he thinks he’ll need when he, Isla and the baby disembark off the sub but with a serious lack of harbors, the three are stuck on the sub for awhile longer than expected and it seems that the captain might have a use for him on the sub anyways… that is until he realizes where he is and what they did to his city.
Meanwhile, Teen is flying to parts unknown himself with the Secretary General, Aoi.
The Good And The Bad
Looking at the front cover of this release I knew that the character designs were going to be nice though I have to admit that I thought Keel was a girl before the first episode started. I really like the way Isla is designed though. It’s so rare to have a pregnant character in an anime so this was a really nice change of pace and then having her give birth so early in the series and adding the dynamic of her raising a new born aboard a strange submarine adds a very interesting wrinkle to the plot.
Right away the story in this release really goes out of it’s way to bring you in. I have seen animes in the past which focus on the destruction of the world but this one takes it in kind of a new direction and has a nice fresh spin on it. It’s not entirely original nor is it entirely innovative but I do like that they are at least putting a very solid effort into making this idea into their own.
This volume really tries to squeeze a lot of information and story within every episode though. This made things a little harder on me as a viewer and I know that by doing this they are making the audience really pay attention. I had to rewind more than once throughout this volume to re-watch scenes because I missed something the first time around and even now I’m sure that I missed a couple of things that are going to come back and bite me in the butt later on when I’m not quite sure who someone is or why someone is doing something. It’ll be interesting to see how things play out in the future though now the initial outline of the series has been laid out and the last three volumes can take a bit more of a relaxed pace, perhaps even develop a character or two.
The writing is nice though and it interjects humor consistently. Using the ostrich as a comedy device was interesting and it reminded me of Saizo the pig from ‘Peacemaker Kurogane’. The dramatic scenes however stay just as dramatic as they need to be which was nice. There were a couple of dramatic scenes that included some jokes that really didn’t need to be there but for the most part, I could feel my muscles tense up just slightly when I thought that there was some bad danger about and someone was going to be terribly hurt. The scenes from the first couple of episodes when the city is attacked were great examples of this.
With this anime taking place in a new version of the current world, the writers did an interesting job with occasionally having a character describe what we were about to see or things that had been changed because of the ‘Hammer of Eden’. I liked how this was helpful to me but for some reason it felt like the plot device was misused with how characters so dramatically described something that would be simple knowledge to them.
Foreshadowing is also quickly becoming a very strong plot device to watch for in this series as each episode ends with a view from a space station and the line ‘today’s transmission complete’ which naturally really tells me that something big is gonna come in the next couple of volumes and I’m already very curious to know what it is. The series has already dropped a couple of hints regarding it’s place in the series but not nearly enough for me to make any kind of guess as to what it’s going to play in the future. I’m also very curious to know what caused the ‘Hammer of Eden’.
I think the last thing really worth mentioning here is that the animation was quite well done. While it didn’t look perfect, it did look smooth and there were some fabulous scenes when the sub was traveling underwater that looked absolutely perfect.
Music
For the most part the music in this series was also something that I quite enjoyed. The opening and ending themes were well placed and highly enjoyable (though I do admit that the opening theme was much more enjoyable) and the background music always made sense.
I didn’t notice any drops in sound quality or distortion.
Dub vs. Sub
With the English dub being recorded by ‘The Ocean Group’, it was nice to hear Bandai dip into the Canadian talent pool once again since it seems to happen quite rarely nowadays. The casting for this series was quite well done and I enjoyed listening to both casts but I think that I liked the English dub cast a bit more as I could really hear some over the top performances in the Japanese which didn’t play nearly as well. Standout performance of the volume goes to Jayna Mitchell as Isla. A quick view of her resume shows that Jayna is still fairly new to anime but she really did well with this role and I’m going to be looking forward to hearing more from her in a very near future.
Extras
There aren’t a lot of extras on this volume but the extras that are on the volume are really enjoyable with all of them focusing on the music of the volume. The first extra is a special interview with the writer and vocalist of the opening theme Minami Kuribyashi. For the most part I enjoyed this extra because she gave some good answers to the questions that were asked of her about her impressions from the anime and the song writing process but the questions ended up being subtitled on the screen in Japanese and her answers subtitled over the top of the kanji making them very difficult to read sometimes. This really could’ve been done better but it’s really only a small annoyance.
The last two extras on the volume are the full versions of the opening theme song ‘Blue Treasure’ and the insert song ‘The Little Mermaid’.
Overall
After watching this first volume I see absolutely no reason why I wouldn’t tell other people to see it. The only reason why I think someone might not really like this anime is because of all the information that is crammed into these first four episodes and if you’re someone who just likes to sit back and turn your brain off while viewing anime you’re going to be lost before the series even gets started. Like many other series, this is one that is going to engage you right away and really make you pay attention to it. There is tons of potential here for a great ending and so I’m going to give this one a big thumb up and say that the potential is worth sticking with it. Recommended.
Final Grade: 87% - B
Tide-Line Blue Vol. 1 is recommended by scorpioeyez
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