A few minor stories that either stand-alone or hint at larger things play out before the show moves into more serious territory that may be key to the final storyline.
What They Say:
Ridiculously impossible missions just seem to fall into the laps of the sexy female agents of Nereides. Yu is usually the calm and collected one, but she nearly loses it when stuck with an abandoned baby.
Shizuka, while trying to protect an injured undercover agent, falls in love hard. Then, the Wang-Chang-Lee Brothers plus their little sister May return again in an attempt to steal Nereides’ submarine, Yomogo-1.
Meanwhile, Maia’s partial recovery of her lost memory is making some people high up in the Ocean Agency very nervous…
The Review:
Audio:
The audio presentation for this series brings us the original Japanese language in stereo along with the English dub. The series sports a fairly active stereo mix that has a number of good moments of directionality both in action sequences, notably with the guns and sniping style shots, but also with a fair bit of dialogue that moves across the screen. The mix isn’t completely immersive but it’s well done and a bit more active than we’re used to hearing since so many shows are dialogue-driven these days. In listening to both tracks, we had no problems with dropouts or distortions during regular playback.
Video:
Originally airing in 2004, the transfer for this series is presented in its original full-frame aspect ratio. At the time of release and coming so soon after the Japanese broadcast, the show looked great and held up well as the blues in it are very lush and layered well, both when it comes to the water sequences and to the skyline sequences. They do a wonderful job of fading it into a lighter color as it goes farther into the horizon. Some of the material at times looks a bit like it’s lifting off of the background but most of the time the meshing is pretty well done and the show maintains a good solid feel to it. The transfer is essentially problem-free as there’s hardly anything noticeable for aliasing, cross-coloration, or even the gradient problem. Add in no noticeable blocking during the large areas of color and you get a pretty solid-looking show.
Packaging:
Using the artwork from the regular edition of the Japanese release, Yu gets the front cover this time with a mean look to her face as we get mostly a full body shot where she’s making a thumbs-down gesture. The back cover provides a large illustration shot of the mystery man from this volume next to a brief summary of the premise and a rundown of the episodes and titles. A few small shots from the show and the disc features fill out part of the bottom while the usual production and technical credits take up the rest of the space. The insert has a cute shot of Maia running with the animal in her arms while the chapter listings are to the left of her and it opens up to a two-panel shot that has the character artwork from the Japanese limited edition first volume cover but set against a blue-green background. The back of the insert provides street dates for all volumes of the series. The cover for this release is reversible and the main side has the artwork of Shizuka from the second volume to use in all its glory while the back cover goes minimal and has an illustrated shot of Maia in her work outfit and the basic technical information.
Menu:
The menu layout is done in an interesting way that keeps it in-theme but goes off in its own direction. The background is actually a brief clip of the scene underwater from the opening with the bubbles flowing up but its underneath a couple of layers of angled pink and purple lines where small face shots are located and beneath the white sections of menu navigation while in the center there are full-color clips from the show cycling through all set to a bit of music. The navigation is fairly straightforward though without it being linear you can find yourself moving in unintended ways.
Extras:
The only extra included in this round a clean version of the new ending sequence.
With the last volume of four episodes before going into the two sets of three episodes that will close out the show, we get a few episodes that are essentially standalone pieces but have some subplots running through it that culminate in the last episode here that can potentially be what the final storyline of the show will be, which as we’ve slowly gleaned along the way is something to do with the real past of Maia and what exactly happened to her and her family.
Before they get into that too much they do have a bit of fun though as someone has left a baby outside of Yu’s apartment and she’s taken to caring for it. Initially, she was all set to take it to the police and let them handle it but a chance meeting with Gloria caused her to change her mind for a bit. Gloria goes on about her own past and the way orphanages really are as well as making a rather good case for why the parents of the child will come back for her. So Yu takes on the challenge in her straight faced deadpan nature of caring for the nameless little baby boy. Enough of it is just comically bad enough, such as going an entire day before doing the first diaper changing or feeding scene, but the number of spit-up and whizzing scenes against Gloria make it worthwhile. It may just be having experienced a lot of this myself in the last few years that I find a bit more humor in it than I would otherwise. They do miss out on a chance for some serious fan service though when Yu takes up breastfeeding the child as they barely really do anything but make it seem sweet. It’s got a good gag ending and the material up to that is fun overall but it is mostly just a toss-away episode with some extra snarky moments in the dub.
Shizuka gets a tale to herself as well as on her way home from work one night she comes across her usual round of stray kittens that she wants to take in only to find a very handsome wounded man in the alley. She takes him in as well as he claims to be Trevor, a spy who is now on the run from a criminal organization that he escaped from after finding out some nasty things about them. He tells her a few tales and she plays up being a cute innocent office lady and just enjoys having his attention and time. Naturally, there’s something bigger going on here and there are various people combing the streets for him so it doesn’t take long for her to really learn the truth about him as Maia and Gloria find themselves caught up in what’s going on. It’s a simple and cute episode but is incredibly formulaic and predictable from the start to finish.
What that episode does have that starts to show up throughout the rest of the episodes here is a mysterious man in black and sunglasses with white hair that seems to have some kind of interest or relationship with Maia. He’s there to save the day for her just in time on several occasions and doing it mostly off-screen at that, such as during the episode when May and her three wacky brothers show up and swipe the Yomogi-1 submarine so they can resume their plans for getting to Elpida. Maia ends up kidnapped along the way and circumstances put her in a life-or-death situation that the rest of her friends aren’t able to deal with but he mysteriously shows up and saves the day. And at the time he does this, without Maia’s knowledge, she starts to have cracks in her sealed memories about a brother of some sort when she was a little child. The flashbacks start opening up more and more which sends Maia on an interesting chase into her past again as she starts putting together things and visits her old friends who helped her after her parents died.
Little by little we’re seeing more of her past but the possibility of it being interpreted wrong or just being made up memories is still strong. The drive for it though is very strong within her now that she’s at a certain age and gained some level of confidence having worked for Rena for so long now that she’s adamant about pursuing it, which leads her back to Siberia City so that she can look up links that may reveal something about her family. It’s all very tenuous at this point and it plays out in small bits up until the last episode that gives her the full time to really start getting into it, all while the mystery man shadows her.
In Summary:
Even this far into the show, I’m really not sure what to make of Daphne in the Brilliant Blue. Its storylines have been uneven at times and some of the things it’s done in terms of revealing background have taken far too long but I’ve adjusted to the character clothing designs and even the sometimes far too rigid character designs themselves. There are some interesting aspects to the world they’ve created here but it’s often kept to the background and minimal as well as some of the more interesting characters that need more time such as Rena. It feels like it has some real flashes of creativity and neat ideas but is trapped in a shell of mediocre storytelling and a plot that’s too thin to handle the number of episodes that the show is running. It’s easy to see why it has the fans it does but just as easy to see why it isn’t able to break into a larger audience.
Features
Japanese 2.0 Language, English 2.0 Language, English Subtitles, Japanese Home Video Artwork
Content Grade: B
Audio Grade: B+
Video Grade: B+
Packaging Grade: B+
Menu Grade: B
Extras Grade: B
Released By: Geneon Entertainment
Release Date: November 22nd, 2005
MSRP: $29.95
Running Time: 100 Minutes
Video Encoding: 480i/p MPEG-2
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1 Anamorphic Widescreen
Review Equipment:
Sony KDL70R550A 70″ LED 1080P HDTV, Sony PlayStation3 Blu-ray player via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.
