Blue Submarine No. 6 #1 - Blues Bandai 30 minutes English/Japanese English Subtitles Released: 04/04/2000 Reviewed: 09/07/2005

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On Tuesday afternoon, short is good. Now that I've taken up the auspicious mantle of updating this site on a semi-regular basis I assume that it'd be most beneficial to me to continue on a regular clip. Plus, I can't exactly rail into Skabs about taking forever to do the comic if I'm shirking on my own responsibilities. When you only have about seven hours until you need to update, something as short as Blue Sub No. 6 is a godsend. It's also good that it's intensely easy to write about it. Without more than the briefest thoughts from me words just seem to flow from the page, and there's some stuff in this write-up that you'll probably never see in any other article about the show on the rest of the internet. That's how much I love you, that I'm willing to go the extra mile just to see you smile. IT helps when a show contains a short haired redhead that spends a handsome portion of her time with her eyebrows furrowed. In that situation I'm positively powerless to resist. Also: Cute little hats are my kryptonite and I make no apologies for it.

 

In the future the world is practically covered in water, a lot like Agent Aika but with an actual legitimate reason why (and less panties). People walk around on the rooftops of buildings and ride little tug boats around everywhere. It's a delicious era to be alive in. Though they don't explicitly state this, I assume the main occupations of humanity during this future time are kelp farming and mermaid porn. Everyone else goes around salvaging crap from the deep that nobody really wants anyway. Apparently there's big market in the future for broken TVs and dead pets. Tetsu Hayami is one of those salvagers. He lives in the top floor of a building that looks like it was rather high class back before the whole submerging thing went down. Living with Testu is a cute little dog who gets forgotten about almost as soon as he's fed his bowl of whatever it is that people feed dogs in the future. It looks like slop to me. Hayami and the dog eke out a meager existence by spending their days salvaging up whatever they can find in the briny depths. During the night they go on wonderful adventures with Hercule the talking teddy bear and a robot named Zimbabwe. That's just a bunch of crap that I made up though, so it may or may not be true.

 

There's a big secret Mr. Hayami has though, he's a former submariner, ex-crew member of the illustrious Blue Submarine No. 6. And what are these Blue Submarines, you might ask? Well, they appear to be the only thing that does jack when put up against a group of evil fish people determined to take over the world by attacking with ant robots and giant whales with supersonic weaponry. Not only that, but there's an evil shark of an unclear gender wandering around in a wrecked battleship and alternately spending his/her time between blowing everything up and going apeshit wild on naked mermaid girls. As if that weren't enough he/she sounds freakin' scary as hell. I'd give eternity and a day in a life with every girl I've dated/ridiculed in the past in preference to having to listen to that Japanese voice actor (actress?) again. So what's Hayami got to do with anything else? Seems like the evil sharks and ant robots are kicking some ass around the globe and the captain of his former sub wants him back, because obviously he's the last great hope of humanity. Thus Ensign Mayumi Kino, a girl whose role on the ship is to constantly look perturbed (see also: above), and her black friend (who doesn't get a name for the entire series) are sent out under the code-name Mega Mouse to get him back on the boat. Captain Iga (pictured left), having already given up one dream to live life as the world's greatest Cheech Marin look-alike, won't accept failure. So he lights up a fat cheeb and sends team Mega Mouse to get the boy back. Problematically, when Kino refuses to show him "the b00bies" Hayami is notably unimpressed.

 

Kino and her large black compadre are dejected. They throw in the towel and trundle on back home. Fortunately, disaster strikes before they can reach their sub! It's the attack of the killer robot ants! Scary, until Hayami comes in and saves the day like one would expect the grimy ex-hero to do. All it took was the deaths of a few townspeople to secure his trust (and cure his drug addiction). From then on in it's nothing but fish girl's nipples and moral dilemmas abound! Unfortunately this does not translate well into anything useful, as we're given not even a glance at Kino's eighteen year old mammaries. Blue Submarine No. 6 is just what you need to question exactly what humanity means while sating the natural human desire to watch fish people blow up at the same time, which are two things that I've found relatively lacking in my life as of late. If I've learned anything from watching this show it's that I loathe fish people more than ever. And evil sharks in ghost ships too. Prepare yourself for a wonderful journey of submariner, hot redhead, washed up weed addict, and the cigarette lighter that never freaking lights! But forget about the dog. He's trapped up on a rooftop somewhere in the middle of the ocean. If he's lucky the ant robots ate him, otherwise he better start rationing out that bowl of slop.