Blue Submarine 6 (Ao no roku gô)-Volume 1 (1998)

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General		Extras
Category	Anime	Main Menu Audio & Animation
Rating
Year Of Production	1998
Running Time	58:14
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Mahiro Maeda
Studio Distributor	Shock Entertainment	Starring	None Given
Case	Scanavo-Opaque
RPI	$29.95	Music	The Thrill

    I've been reviewing a bit of anime recently. Most of the anime arriving in Region 4 comes from Madman. This is an exception - it's from a company I've not encountered before called Kaleidoscope, working with Siren. The original work comes from Bandai Visual.

    Blue Submarine No 6 is an unusual piece of work. The animation style is something I've not seen before. It combines fairly conventional character animation (not overly detailed - skin is a uniform colour, and there is only minor shading), with nicely painted backgrounds. But it is the depiction of fluids - water and fire in particular, but smoke and bubbles, too - that makes this unusual. These seem to be computer rendered - they look as they might in an FPS computer game. It's an interesting combination, and rather effective.

    The other thing that makes this different from ordinary anime is the soundtrack. The voice acting is nothing special. If anything, it's a bit below par, with a bit too much in the way of special effects applied to the voices of the non-humans. But the music is definitely above average, and the sound effects are excellent. Unfortunately, only the Japanese soundtrack is presented in full-range 5.1. And that's where the real problem raises its head: the Region 1 release includes subtitles in English, but this disc does not - that makes it a tad difficult for me to listen to the Japanese soundtrack, given that I can't understand the Japanese dialogue. The ideal way to enjoy this particular piece is to listen to the Japanese soundtrack and read the dialogue in subtitles. The lack of subtitles really destroys this disc's value.

    The storyline is interesting, although we don't get to see a lot of it in these first two episodes. What I've gathered so far is that something has caused the water level to rise, drowning much of the Earth. Humans are on one side, defended by submarines like Blue 6. The other side hasn't been revealed in detail yet, but seems to be mutated from a variety of species - we get to see a mutated human partway into the first episode (she seems to have gill-like breathing). The non-human side has a leader called Zorndyke - it is not clear yet whether he is responsible for the mutations, even though he is blamed for them (and for whatever caused the oceans to rise). The non-human side seem to be using a combination of hard (metal) and soft (biological) technologies - one of their attack vessels looks like a heavily modified whale, for example. Human technology, on the other hand, is all hard, but rather advanced over today.

    Humanity is at grave risk of complete destruction. They are going to attack Zorndyke's base in Antarctica to stop what he's up to. But Zorndyke's side strikes first...

    This is not a series I'd recommend for children - there are some suggestive elements in the behaviour of one of the lead non-humans, and there's quite a bit of violence. I think the PG rating is a bit generous - I'd have thought it would have scored an M rating.

    There are only two episodes of less than 30 minutes a piece on this disc. That's pretty meagre. I'd normally expect three or four episodes for this price, but it could be worse: the Region 1 discs have only one episode, and cost more than ours. I guess we should be glad. Still feels like a bit of a rip-off, though.

Video

    The DVD is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1, and is therefore not 16x9 enhanced. That's the original aspect ratio.

    The picture is very good - clear and sharp. There is no low-level noise. There is some minor pixelization on medium distance shots of some of the characters - I don't know what produces such an artefact, but it's not overly distracting.

    Colour is one of the attractions of this disc. There's a greater range of colours than normal for anime, and they are used consistently. Colours are a bit more subtle than usual, and are very pretty to look at. There is no oversaturation or colour bleed.

    There are no film artefacts. There's a little bit of aliasing, but it's surprisingly little, considering the black lines outlining the characters and much of the backgrounds. There's no moire, and no background shimmer. This video transfer is excellent.

    There are no subtitles. What a dreadful mistake! There's this fabulous 5.1 soundtrack, and we can't really appreciate it without subtitles. Drat!

    The disc is single sided and single layered. Given that there is less than 60 minutes of program content, and no extras, that single layer is not strained.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    There are two soundtracks. The English soundtrack is Dolby Digital 2.0, not surround encoded, at 224kbps - it sounds like mono, but I'm not sure. The Japanese soundtrack is Dolby Digital 5.1, at 448kbps. I listened to both soundtracks, despite being unable to understand the Japanese dialogue. The English soundtrack is a little quiet (I had to raise the sound level by at least 5dB to be comfortable listening to it), and is dull. The Japanese soundtrack, on the other hand, is fabulous - it has a marvellous score, superb surround sound, and excellent use of the subwoofer.

    The dialogue is mostly clear, but not always comprehensible. Audio sync is impossible to judge accurately on animation, but there are no obvious errors.

    The music is credited to The Thrill. That name is appropriate - the music is stirring, sort of jazz-like, and really emphasises the excitement of the story. It's brilliant on the Japanese soundtrack, and wasted on the English soundtrack.

    The English soundtrack doesn't use the surrounds or subwoofer. The Japanese soundtrack makes marvellous use of the surrounds (with excellent directional sound and ambience), and it has superb LFE - the submarine propeller throb as they pass, for example. The rating I've given is for the English soundtrack, however, because the Japanese one is not much use without the subtitles.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

    There are no extras, unless you count the teaser for the next episode as an extra. These teasers are not played automatically (they don't appear at the end of the episode) - you must select them from the scene selection menu (they are the last entry for each episode).

Menu

    The menu is animated with music - very pretty, and easy to operate.

    The Region 4 disc is missing:

• the vital English subtitle track

    The Region 1 disc is missing:

• the second episode (it has one episode per disc)

    Despite costing a lot more, I feel compelled to recommend the Region 1, because this is one title where you really do need to listen to the Japanese soundtrack and hence the subtitles are utterly vital. I just hope that Kaleidoscope see fit to include the subtitles on the next release.

    An unusual anime series, visually and aurally attractive. What a pity a simple oversight has destroyed the value of the disc.

    The video quality is very good.

    The audio quality is excellent on the Japanese track, but only adequate on the English.

    The extras are non-existent.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall