Daphne In The Brilliant Blue: Volume 3

Introduction

There are anime series out there whose DVD releases are like finding gold nuggets, extremely rare, but highly appreciated when one does turn up. Then there is Daphne In The Brilliant Blue, which has seen three review discs turn up at my door in as many weeks. They are supposed to be monthly releases for this show, but even if you're buying them, you'll be getting all three volumes over the space of a single month. This is one of those cheap, throwaway series it seems. It's all about the fan service you see, young women in their skimpies performing impossible acrobatic feats in terms of costume integrity, with a story vaguely attached to it. As we all know, sex sells, and this series is aimed at twelve and thirteen year old males who are beginning to get an inkling, but don't yet know what to do with it. This isn't the sort of series to be savoured and cherished. Anyway, as I access my inner teen, this time remembering to have a stock of Kleenex at hand…

The oceans have risen, the polar caps have melted, the coasts have been inundated, and habitable land is now at a premium, but humanity is doing just fine thank you very much, and has adapted to its new circumstances with relative ease, now inhabiting the few remaining islands and floating cities. The world government now controls the remaining resources through the Ocean Agency, an elite organisation responsible for Maritime Safety and Resource Management that many aspire to. One of the aspirants is 15-year-old Maia Mizuki, a young orphan who dreams of working for the Agency, but life is never that simple, and failing the entrance exam is just one of a whole host of calamities. Destiny leads her to find a job with the Nereids, a private firm who offer all kind of services to those who are willing to pay, whether it's fighting crime or rescuing cats. Four more episodes are presented on this disc from MVM.


9. Only I Don't Have Tomorrow
It's time for the Nereids annual health check, and all the staff have to be checked over before they can return to work, or more importantly partake of the staff outing the next month. But then, the Branch Manager happens to overhear the doctors discussing the results, and it isn't good news. Gloria only has a week to live! It's just one week left to fulfil her dreams, and the one thing that gunslinger tomboy Gloria wants to do most, is to fall in love with a sweet, charming and elegant man. It's Maia to the rescue…

10. Siberian Super Vacation
The one upside of the previous debacle is that the staff outing got upgraded to a proper holiday at the balmy resort of Siberia City. The gang stock up on suntan lotion as they head out, but trouble strikes before they even set foot outside the airport. Apparently no one has told Gloria that it's illegal to bring a gun into the country. While she discusses it calmly with the local law enforcement, Rena has just two things on her mind, sunbathing and sex. Yu Park on the other hand is doing the proper tourist thing, museums and monuments and lots of photos. Maia's at a loose end, and decides to hang out with Shizuka, and Shizuka decides to go on a gastronomic tour of the resort, sampling every local speciality there is, including mammoth. While Maia battles indigestion, a couple of shady characters cast their gaze on the pair, with an eye to making a profit. But there is something eerily familiar about Siberia City for Maia, even though she has never been there before.


11. The Long Story
It turns out that Maia has amnesia. It's why Siberia City looks so familiar, and why she would like to stay a little while longer to see if she can jog a few more brain cells. She has to convince the other Nereids first, which means telling her story, which means a flashback episode. Maia was the sole survivor of a crash that killed her parents and left her in a coma. When she awoke after a year, she was introduced to an old man who said he was her grandfather, and he was the one who raised her and helped her through therapy on the road to recovery.

12. The Day The Earth Floated Away
It's the 100-year anniversary of the 8 Cities Union, and the Nereids have got a nice job working crowd security. Maia's chasing stray cats and looking after lost children again, while everyone else tries to find a way to loaf on the job. But Maia has a race to look forward to, an exhibition race is scheduled for the afternoon, and she'll be facing Millie and best friend Tsukasa on the track. That's if she can get there on time.

Picture

Daphne gets a 4:3 regular transfer that offers no apparent flaws or glitches. Everything is clear and sharp, colours are strong, and the image comes across without any major sign of artefacting or significant aliasing. It's your bog standard anime disc. The animation itself is pretty unspectacular. It's a mid-budget show that gets an adequate investment, and it all looks pretty average. The world design is nice and futuristic, if a little bland, and lacking in detail. The underwater sequences are the most impressive aspect of the show. Actually the brevity of the costumes makes the biggest impact, but against a very angular and birdlike aesthetic to the character designs, it's more of a clash than an enhancement.

Sound

You have a choice of DD 2.0 Stereo English and Japanese, alongside optional translated English subtitles or signs. The dialogue is clear, the music suits the show's tone, and there is a bit of separation to the sound design during the more action packed moments. The English dub is something that I don't want to hear again, with cartoonish voices playing up the comedy aspects of the show.

A slight flaw in that the subtitles for the second half of the disc are about half a second ahead of the dialogue. It's problematic when a bunch of characters are exchanging snappy chitchat.

Extras

The Region 1 disc had a slideshow of Japanese disc art, which given the look of the girls would have amounted to a centrefold collection. But we in the UK get nothing at all.

Conclusion

What can I say? Ditto, more of the same, rinse and repeat? Daphne is ineffectual, ephemeral, forgettable, bubblegum nonsense that is fun in its own way, but you wouldn't want to fashion a three-course meal out of it. It's decidedly lightweight fare, all about the fan service, with more thought put into the female flesh on display than the tired and creaky stories. I've said all of this twice before, but it bears reiterating, just in case you happen to be browsing in an anime aisle and are briefly tempted by the premise of the show. Turn back to the front cover. That's what the show is really about.


This disc begins with a comedy staple, the wrong end of the stick, medical death sentence cliché. It's where an idiot overhears a doctor talking about something completely different, but gets the wrong end of the stick. So it turns out that Gloria has a week to live, so it turns out that her dying wish is to find a nice, innocent, upstanding young man and corrupt him, and so it turns out that none of the other girls know any nice young men, so they get Maia's best friend Tsukasa to dress up as a guy. Oh, the mayhem! My sides split. More character comedy ensues as the girls go on vacation, and then go about fulfilling their particular character quirks. Rena sleeps her way through the male population, Shizuka eats, Yu actually becomes a tourist, while Gloria spends her vacation in prison. And then there's Maia, and all of a sudden the writers realise that she doesn't have a character. So out of the blue, she gets amnesia and a missing childhood for a back-story. This is the sort of thing that we need to know early on, not discover halfway through the series. I'd say that what follows is a pointless flashback episode, but I'd be stumped in coming up with a suitable episode with a point to contrast with. Daphne In The Brilliant Blue is all pretty pointless.


The final episode on the disc is the weakest in terms of plot, but it delivers in the little character moments, and we do finally get to hear the story behind the future world. It turns out that global warming and sea levels rising really did put pay to our civilisation, pretty much following the Waterworld scenario of getting rid of all the landmass. The survivors escaped to the bottom of the ocean and set up nine cities. 100 years prior to this series, the cities finally rose to the surface after an indeterminate time beneath the waves, and re-established human civilisation under the sun. Except that one of the cities, Elpida was destroyed before it could surface, and the anniversary marks that tragedy as well as the establishment of the Cities Union. Of course being anything other than a cause for celebration in the episode is beyond the remit of the story. I'm sure it's the sort of plot point that comes back to haunt us later on as the series concludes. And the ominous looking guy in shades pops up again, looks ominously at something, then vanishes. There's also a hint on this disc as to who Daphne might be, it's one of those tantalising mysteries that is so easy to ignore.


I can happily watch Daphne in the Brilliant Blue, it's perfect television to switch your brain off at. For some odd reason, it reminds me of an awful series I once reviewed called Cleopatra 2525. It has the same ridiculous sensibility to it, although the production values are higher. But I don't particularly care for the show, or care about what happens in it. It exists, it entertains, and it then vanishes into whatever dark hole un-rewatched DVDs languish in. As Bob Hope never sang, 'Thongs for the mammary'.