Ao no 6-gou

What is really interesting is that this OAV is based on a manga from the 60s! As I read this on the web, one could take issue with its credibility (the page I got that tid-bit from is here" href="http://www.amo­tokyo.com/ao6/index.­htm">here">http://www.amotokyo.­com/ao6/index.htm">here), but the character designs are so odd, that I tend to believe it.

There isn't a lot of time for character introductions in five 22 minute programs. This little problem was brilliantly solved by making the characters standard archetypes, so archetypical in fact that they need no introduction. They could just about wear name-tags: Hi I'm the grizzled captain; Hi, I'm, the spunky young idealist, etc. This would include Hayami Tetsu, the bitter and jaded, yet brilliant, loner who is called back to Help Save The Earth. Of course he eventually does, and proves another anime law while he is at it. If you are a good guy you can blow-up anything with a simple machine gun -- including stuff that couldn't be dispatched of by numerous aircraft with ridiculously high caliber weapons.

In the first OAV, "Pilots", there is a really good crowd scene when our hackneyed heroes are running back to Blue 6. The crowd they are running against was really well drawn with every person having identifiable features and moving independently of everyone else. I think this was done with cels. At lot of the show is not, instead using computer animation. I, for one, am a cel-based anime fan, though it did have its moments.

This included the really neat shell bombardments, and a great under/over water fight scene in the first episode where Tetsu takes on some of the bad guy mechas in this neat little transforming mini-sub/Valkyrie thing. I really have to admit that it looked good, and it would have been impossible with cels. In fact, the only cels in a lot of this segment were the head shots of the pilots. Of course all the explosions look like those in Quake II, which is a little irksome. I think I like the way they still used cels in Cowboy Beebop for blowing stuff up :).

I'm a bit of a cold-war era submarine otaku, and as such I was a bit disappointed with the sub warfare in the show, at least the first two episodes, which are all that I've seen thus far. I mean the States spent 30 billion dollars (yes, that is a B) to wire the oceans for sound during the cold war. Yet, these guys can't hear the "phantom ship", despite the fact that the crew is a bunch of bizarre (and, really, very inane looking) Wes Craven like monsters that run around beating pipes and drums. Ever hear of run silent, run deep guys? Geez.

Ok, I could go on quite a bit about that, but why bother. I was happy with how well the under water topography was rendered. The torpedoes and the subs looked great (image wise, I think the Blue Subs' designs were kind of silly), and I found the mechas and the bad guys' biological weapons to be pretty doggone cool. The character designs of the bad guys themselves, with the notable exception of the sort of female humanoid things, were just dumb. Whenever the big Talking Shark was on I cringed and hoped the scene would be over soon.

The background music was really neat. I'd consider getting the sound track if I still lived in Kansas and made futile attempts at chasing tornadoes. I guess this was done by a studio or a production company called Toshiba Emi. Anyway, it was really unique. Just find a couple MP3's and see for yourself.

In the end this gets a rent, though I'll likely go through quite a few other titles first. I found the plot to be just a little too silly for my liking. The science was just wrong (I guess if I go into details that would be a spoiler) and that always bugs me. Couple that with a female lead whose character design I couldn't stand, and I'm not in a big hurry to see more.

Last updated Sunday, January 30 2000. Created Sunday, January 30 2000.