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Blue Drop Complete Collection Released By: Sentai Filmworks Released: 11/17/09 Reviewed: 3/12/10 Rated: 13+

The Story

Before transferring to a prestigious all girls high school, Mari Wakatake was being raised by her grandmother. A few years prior, she was living on a small island when it was completely destroyed by a mysterious tsunami that left Mari as the only survivor. Now a teenager who has never been to school before, she must learn to acclimate to the new environment which includes a mysterious girl named Senkoji Hagino.

Despite an initial rocky start, Mari and Senkoji eventually learn to co-exist after Mari learns her secret: Senkoji is actually an alien who commands her own ship. What she doesn’t know is that Senkoji actually played a direct role in the event that changed Mari’s life completely and there is an even larger, looming threat waiting for them on the horizon.

Good and the Bad

If I were to describe Blue Drop in one word, it would be ‘uneven’. From the beginning, it’s obvious what the staff behind this series wants to do: skate the line between Sci-fi action and high school romance effortlessly. Unfortunately the result comes across as an awkward wobble which manages to incorporate trademarks of both genres but still never manages to do either one particularly well thanks in large part to unlikable characters which keep early episodes moving at a crawl.

Representing the high school side, Mari Wakatake is a stereotypical heroine; brash, introverted and suffering from amnesia. In the first couple of episodes, Wakatake is presented with a terribly rough exterior but given multiple opportunities to break past that. Instead though these moments are constantly downplayed with dialogue which snaps her right back to the ‘a little less than irritating’ level she was at previously. Even in her most vulnerable moments (i.e. after being rescued in episode 4), her selfish personality ends up standing out more than anything.

On the Sci-fi side of the series, Senkoji is the perfect student with a secret. The cause of the accident that Waketake survived was her ship and she wants to share her secret but is afraid. All the while, pressure is coming from her superiors to resume her investigation of the planet making her go rogue to protect her new home.

And this is where Blue Drop completely drops the ball. With the constant shifts between the two genres, the series tries hard to keep the Sci-fi elements an important focus but always manage to derail it with weak links between the two. This is the most apparent when you realize just how unimportant to the overall narrative the main characters really are. As much as the relationship between Hagino and Mari is supposed to be the central point, it’s actually the supporting cast that moves the story along the fastest.

While Hagino and Wakatake are constantly trying to get closer; the high school is preparing for their culture festival and a shy girl named Michi is in charge of writing a play for the class to perform. All the while, their homeroom teacher is actually working as a secret agent trying to learn the truth behind the tsunami that Waketake survived. With these two story arcs, Blue Drop has all the momentum it needs to move forward and that in itself is a huge problem.

Between the play, the investigation and the secret alien politics; this is a story that would happen regardless of the relationship between Hagino and Wakatake. I’m not saying that they are completely unneeded to the overall story, everything is still connected to them after all. However once these characters are together, their interactions with each other are never what it feels like the series is moving forward on but rather their interactions with other characters.

Music

The music in Blue Drop was composed by Japanese music group The Kintsuru. Mostly consisting of soft piano and string scores, I found the music mostly working towards keeping the series as low key as possible. Even in the tensest moments (besides in the final episodes), the music never let the atmosphere of the scene get too dramatic allowing the characters to attempt to do that on their own. Beyond some interesting pieces that sound as though they were performed on an old keyboard early on, the score never comes across as particularly intrusive, distracting or even standing out against the background of the music.

Extras

Disc two contains an art gallery and clean animations.

Overall

Blue Drop has one mission to accomplish by the time it’s finished: to make its audience feel as absolutely dreadful as possible. Between the characters on screen and the audience watching, there is no one who will escape this series without feeling punished in one way or another. Between the half finished plot holes, uneven pacing and an ultimately unsatisfying ending there aren’t any particularly great reasons to pick this one up. Even if you watch this and actually buy into the relationship between the two heroines, the final destination will not be worth the journey it takes to get there.