Anime / Blue Submarine No. 6

"A world of endless blue..."

A four-episode anime, very loosely based on a manga by Satoru Ozawa. The story takes place after the apocalyptic flooding of Earth by Emperor Scientist Dr. Zorndyke. With the remaining cities ravaged by Zorndyke's army of fish-human hybrids - his "children" and intended heirs to the new world - the last hopes of humanity fall on the remaining submarine fleet, the eponymous No.6, and cadet-turned-slacker Tetsu Hayami.

Aired on Toonami back in its glory days. After Bandai Entertainment completely ceased DVD production, the rights are now in the hands of Discotek Media, who have so far re-released the series on DVD and Blu-Ray.

Also available are the video games Blue Submarine No. 6: Antarctica and Blue Submarine No. 6: Time & Tide, on the PlayStation and Sega Dreamcast, respectively. The former takes place during and after the events of the OVA, while the latter is a prequel that takes place a short time before the anime. While both games were only released in Japan, a fanmade English translation has been released.

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Tropes:

• Aborted Arc: The whole Mutio/Hayami subplot is quickly swept under the carpet after the first scene of episode 4, and the fact that Hayami saved Mutio and vice-versa is never even mentioned when Hayami confronts Zorndyke.
• A Dog Named "Dog": In the Japanese version, Mutio's species is referred to as...Mutio.
• After the End: All coastal human cities are underwater as a result of Zorndyke's arctic melting.
• All the Other Reindeer: Mutio isn't exactly popular among her kind for being a pacifist that interacts with a human. Being the only one of her sisters with red instead of blue eyes makes her stand out even more.
• Amazon Brigade: Mutio and her sisters, who are elite pilots for the Umigumos in Zorndyke's navy.
• Apocalypse How: A Class 1. Zorndyke flooded earth's coastal areas. And he is planning to turn it into a Class 4.
• Arrow Cam: In the fourth episode, Blue 6 fires a barrage of torpedoes down at the Ghost Ship. The camera then cuts to the POV of one of the torpedoes as it races towards the vessel, then fades through the exterior to reveal a surprised Verg as he watches the torpedo make a direct hit, the camera zooming in on him the entire time.
• Art Evolution: Mutio goes through a few tweaks in her design from the third episode onwards. She looks younger, her head is less round, and the red mark on her nose is now a small dot above the tip instead of a line that runs along the entire bridge and joins with the lines on her brow.
• Artificial Animal People: Fish-human hybrids are a big part of the setting, being the "children" of a Misanthrope Supreme Emperor Scientist who intends for them to inherit the Earth in place of humanity.
• Badass Fingersnap: Admiral Bayard from the Dreamcast game when he is confronted by Hayami, which cues the surfacing of Submarine X right behind him.
• Batman Gambit: Zorndyke anticipates that Blue Fleet will launch nuclear weapons against him, so he rigs the pole shift device to activate if the nukes hit it.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Averted. Mutio receives a lot of bruises and scars (including having a piece of her ear bitten off) between episodes 3 and 4, even before her No-Holds-Barred Beatdown by Verg.
• Because You Were Nice to Me: When Hayami is separated from the Blue Fleet and left drifting in the Pacific, he is saved from drowning by Mutio. Why? Because he saved her in Tokyo Bay, only two days earlier.
• Big "NO!": Verg lets one out in the final episode as Blue 6 bombards the Ghost Ship with torpedoes.
• Big Sister Instinct: Kino is hinted to have this towards Huang.
• Bittersweet Ending: The war is over and the crisis has ended, but it's unclear how well future interaction will go between human and hybrids, or if Hayami and Mutio will ever get back together.
• Bodyguard Babes: Mutio and her sisters, who are elite pilots for the Umigumos in Zorndyke's navy.
• Body Horror: Katsuma after being mutated. He has an abundance of scars, stitches, and gills scattered throughout his body.
• Break the Cutie: Mutio. In a span of four episodes, she is nearly killed in battle, later finds out that one of her sisters was killed during that same battle, is sexually harassed by Verg while she's catatonic about said sister's death, loses her friend Red Spot to Poor Communication Kills, is captured and beaten twice in a row by her own kind for saving the life of a human, is nearly killed again when Blue 6 bombards the Ghost Ship (where she is being held prisoner) with torpedoes, and survives only to find that her creator was killed by the very man that she saved.
• The Call Knows Where You Live: Zorndyke's navy attacks Tokyo shortly after Hayami turns down Kino's offer to join Blue Fleet.
• Casting Gag: In the English dub, Mutio's voice actress is Juliet Cesario, whose first name is the same as a certain female character that's also known for being in a forbidden romantic relationship with the member of a rival faction.
• Catchphrase: Zorndyke's "daughter" constantly recites a poem from the Manyoshu throughout the OVA. There are only two sentences she speaks that aren't lyrics from the poem, both of which are in her first scene.
• Cat Girl: A few of these, including a lynx-woman aboard the Ghost Ship, and Zorndyke's "daughter" that recites poetry. Mutio and her sisters also have elements of this trope, in addition to being Fish People.
• Censor Decoy: When the show ran on Toonami, the censors objected to the line "Go to hell!" by Iga in the final episode. It was replaced by "Suck on this!", which has much worse implications.
• Changed My Mind, Kid: Hayami shows up to save Kino from a rampaging Umigumo, even though he initially turned down her offer to re-join Blue Fleet.
• Chekhov's Gun: In the first episode, Hayami's first scene has him pointing a pistol at Kino when she enters his apartment. He later uses this pistol to kill Zorndyke in the fourth episode.
• Child Prodigy: Huang Mei-Ling is ten years old and operates complex sonar machinery for a military vessel.
• Child Soldiers: Huang again.
• Clueless Aesop: Something about a cycle of revenge when the enemy really is Always Chaotic Evil (good or at least nice members are killed), are killing the remains of humanity, and is enjoying it greatly.
• Cool Shades: Deidson and Yamada.
• Cool Ship: Blue Sub No. 6, and many others.
• Cute and Psycho: The Mutio Twins from the PlayStation game are cute and playful when they're not fighting. But once it's time for combat, they can become completely Ax-Crazy.
• Cute Monster Girl: Mutio and the other fish-girls, as well as the furry girl at the end.
• Cute Mute: Mutio, just about. The only word she can say is Hayami's name.
• Defeat Means Friendship: After Hayami cripples and maroons her Umigumo, Hayami saves Mutio, and she becomes smitten with him later on.
• Defecting for Love: Implied to be the main reason why Mutio saved Hayami at the risk of betraying her own kind.
• Domestic Abuse: Verg behaves like this towards Mutio and her sisters.
• Dragon Their Feet:
  • Verg shows up after Zorndyke is killed to give Hayami a beating, but eventually changes his mind and leaves to mourn his creator.
  • Attempted a second time in the PlayStation game, when Marcello plots to use Sub Zero's missiles to detonate Zorndyke's pole shift device. However, Verg stops him before he carries through with his plan.
• Driven to Suicide: Dr. Morinami blew himself up, rather than join Zorndyke.
• Emperor Scientist: Dr. Zorndyke is the poster boy for this trope.
• The End of the World as We Know It: What sets of the main plot of the series, is Zorndyke plan to reverse the magnetic poles of the earth, thus rendering it completely uninhabitable.
• Evil Redhead: Verg, who has a series of red, curly dreadlocks-like hairs on his head.
• Evil Sounds Deep: Averted with Verg, who (due to his speech synthesizer) has a screechy high-pitched voice that resembles "the otters from South Park if they were Autotuned". Played straight for Marcello from the PlayStation game.
• Extra-Long Episode: The first three episodes have a length of nearly 29 minutes, counting the credits sequences. However, the fourth and final episode is 40 minutes long.
• Fanservice: Hayami's shirtless scene at his introduction and in the third episode, plus Kino's skin-tight body suit, which she often unzips halfway for some cleavage. Mutio speaks for herself...
• Flooded Future World: The series takes place after the apocalyptic flooding of Earth by Emperor Scientist Dr. Zorndyke, with the few remaining cities ravaged by his army of half-human Fish People, his "children" and intended heirs to the new world.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: In the third episode, when Mutio's massive swarm of sisters all scatter back into the ocean when Red Spot arrives, one of them can be seen running perfectly upright on her legs, instead of on all fours like the others.
• Friend-or-Idol Decision: Implied in the opening of episode 3. Mutio is carrying the dying body of one of her sisters when she sees Hayami's safety capsule floating in the water. Since we don't see the sister's body when she rescues Hayami, it appears she abandoned her sister just to save him. Happens again at the end of episode 3, where Mutio decides to stay with the dying Red Spot rather than go with Hayami to Blue Fleet. This results in her being captured and taken back to the Ghost Ship where she is beaten by the other hybrids.
• Full-Frontal Assault: Most of the hybrids in Zorndyke's navy are completely nude. Verg himself also becomes this at the end of the fourth episode, during his No-Holds-Barred Beatdown of Hayami.
• A God I Am Not: Zorndyke doesn't think of himself as one because he thinks he is "not nearly so arrogant as that".
• Heroic Sacrifice: The Japanese SSGN that attacks the Ghost Ship.
• Hidden Elf Village: There is a village of hybrids hidden behind the mist where the South Pole formerly stood.
• Hypocrite:
  • Zorndyke believes Humans Are the Real Monsters and would screw everything up. He was the bastard that screwed everything up and refuses to own up and instead continues on like some Straw Nihilist.
  • The various hybrids show a hatred for humanity, despite the fact that they willingly serve and idolize a human themselves.
• Interspecies Romance: Hayami and Mutio. Enforced or at least friendship for humanity and Zorndyke's creations even though most of Zorndyke's creations are evil/do nothing in the war.
• Karma Houdini: Verg. Despite killing many innocent people in Tokyo, destroying Blue Dome, allowing Red Spot to be torpedoed by Blue 6, and beating both Mutio and Hayami to a bloody pulp, he still manages to get away in the end, with nothing more than a few scars and bruises for his troubles.
  • Though, considering how much Verg loved his "Papa" Zorndyke, it might as well be said that losing him would be the worst punishment imaginable to Verg.
• Lecherous Licking: Verg does this to Mutio and one of her sisters in episode 2, during his Villainous Breakdown.
• Literal Change of Heart: Turns out that Dr. Zorndyke removed his own heart and used it to power the Earth's destabilizing magnetic field.
• Massive Numbered Siblings: Mutio has dozens of sisters that are all identical in appearance.
• Mickey Mousing: Hot Sub-on-Sub Action choreographed to bossanova. It's as awesome as it sounds.
• Misanthrope Supreme: Why Zorndyke created his fish-people and flooded the world in the first place.
• Mix-and-Match Critters: Zorndyke's hybrids are made up of human and animal DNA. Often, they sport the features of more than one animal. For example, Verg is clearly a Shark Man, but he also has the eyes, snout, and ears of a wolf. Mutio and her sisters have Koi fish DNA, but they also have a number of cat-like features.
• Ms. Fanservice: Kino and Mutio.
• Multinational Team: Blue Fleet consists of people from various countries around the world.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: See below. No. 6, unintentionally, leads Verg and the Ghost Ship right to the secret base of Blue Fleet.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown:The severe (though short) beat down Mutio receives at the beginning of episode 4 (and just before the start of the episode) with a sheathed, heavy sword. Leaving her just enough strength to limp-swim away, bloody and injured.
  • Verg to Hayami at the end.
• Non-Standard Character Design: Most of the human characters have realistic designs. Except for Dr. Morinami, who combines Miniature Senior Citizens with My Brain Is Big in a way that reminds you that you're still watching an anime.
• Not Even Bothering with the Accent: The English dub has most of the characters, despite being from different countries (e.g. Yuri is from Russia, Zorndyke is from Albania), all speak with American accents. The only characters that actually are American are Deidson and Gilford (the latter having emigrated there from Africa).
• Not Worth Killing: Verg was beating Hayami to near-death, until he sees Kino crying with Hayami in her arms. He then no longer has any desires to kill any more humans.
• Nuke 'em: Humanity's back up plan to finish Zorndyke.
  Hayami: "So that's the plan? Nuke the psycho? That's original."
• Organic Bra: Mutio and her sisters are all naked, but they do have pink wing-shaped appendages growing out of their necks that come down over their breasts.
• Our Mermaids Are Different: Mutio and her sisters.
• Overdrawn at the Blood Bank: Red Spot spurts extremely large amounts of blood out of his body when he gets torpedoed by Blue 6.
• Palette Swap: Mutio's sisters are all identical to her in appearance, except they have a duller color scheme and blue eyes. The Mutio Twins from the PS1 game are also different colors. One is blonde-haired with an orange color scheme, while the other has a gray color scheme. Also, the one sister that Mutio finds slain after the attack on Tokyo has pink hair and Monochromatic Eyes (though the latter is likely because she died).
• Parental Favoritism: Implied with Zorndyke. He views Verg as a "troublesome boy", underestimates his ability to take care of himself, and sends him away to fight his war for him. Meanwhile, he keeps his feline daughter close by and teaches her to read poems to him, and praises her when she does so.
• Perfect Pacifist People: Shows up towards the end. Rule of Symbolism makes the place where they live seem like Heaven. Did we mention they've found by the protagonist at the end of a war?
• Pirate Parrot: Verg has one during a few scenes. It is unknown what happens to it later on.
• Plant Person: At least one tree-woman hybrid lives in Antarctica. She even has Non-Mammal Mammaries.
• Poor Communication Kills: Red Spot gets torpedoed by Blue 6 just before they learn that he's carrying Hayami, and they only discover this because of Katsuma and Huang.
• Psychic Link: Huang has one with the mutated Katsuma.
• Psychopathic Manchild: Verg. He wants to please Zorndyke, whom he calls "Papa", but is extremely violent and prone to throwing temper tantrums.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Averted. Mutio has red eyes that more then once glow in the dark underwater scenes, yet she is kind and quite harmless. Her blue-eyed sisters on the other hand...
• Royal Harem: Mutio and her sisters have this sort of vibe with Verg.
• Scavenger World: As a result of many of the former cities being underwater now.
• Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale:
  • While 1 billion people seems like a lot, given the effects of the flood (enough to half-way sink a skyscraper) it should've killed a lot more. To get an idea: there are about 7 billion people currently in the world.
  • The English dub over-corrects and claims 10 billion people died. Though they did mention that humanity basically solved world hunger some time before the war started, so that could explain a population boom.
• Security Blanket: Huang's stuffed bear.
• Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: Zorndyke believed Humans Are the Real Monsters and would ruin everything. Naturally he ruined everything.
• Sexy Packaging: The blu-ray cover shows Kino in an overly sexy outfit◊ which she never wears in the anime.
• Shut Up, Hannibal!: Mutio lashes out at Verg when he yells at her. It didn't help her situation.
• Soundtrack Dissonance: It's debatable whether the rather discordant, wailing jazz soundtrack fits the tone of the series. However, the more funky parts certainly do make the apocalypse feel way cooler. There are some toned down emotional pieces however.
• Star-Crossed Lovers: Though at least it's implied by the final episode credits that Hayami and Mutio will eventually get back together once things finally settle down.
• Suicide Attack: The Mutio Twins in the PS1 game launch one against Blue 6, but both of them are blown up before they can do any damage.
• Sunken City: Tokyo. One early episode even features Hot Sub-on-Sub Action within the cramped man-made canyons of the submerged skyscrapers.
• Title-Only Opening: The OVA doesn't have anything resembling the typical anime opening (or any opening, for that matter), instead showing the current episode's title a few seconds into the first scene. Seemingly in compensation, each episode also has a three-minute credits sequence of Mutio swimming in the ocean (except the second episode, which instead shows an extended scene from the OVA itself of Hayami floating helplessly in the ocean while Mutio looks on) to make up for it, followed by a short preview of the following episode.
• Tokyo Is the Center of the Universe: Tokyo is where the series starts, and where we first meet the protagonists and most of the antagonists.
• Underwater Base: The headquarters of the Blue fleet. It is destroyed minutes after it is introduced, by Verg, who followed No. 6.
• Underwater Ruins: See above. We see mostly Tokyo, but is implied that most of the world is flooded.
• Villainous BSoD: Mutio in episode 2. After being saved by Hayami and finding out that one of her sisters had been killed during the battle, she becomes catatonic for the remainder of the episode. She doesn't even try to run away like the rest of her sisters during Verg's Villainous Breakdown.
  • Verg has a complete Villainous Breakdown and beats Haiyami to near death after he kills Zorndyke.
• Walking Shirtless Scene: Hayami, at several points in the anime. Also, Verg in the last episode.
• Was Once a Man: Katsuma was a human before he was captured by Zorndyke and mutated for undisclosed reasons.
• Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: Verg's definition of "banishing" Mutio appears to be "holding her prisoner on the Ghost Ship and having twenty of her sisters guard her, even when there's a battle raging outside", when it would have been significantly easier to either kill her or really banish her from the ship.
• Why Isn't It Attacking?: On the way to Zorndyke's residence, Kino and Hayami find themselves surrounded by a group of hybrids. However, the hybrids don't attack, since the mutated Katsuma shows up and somehow persuades them not to attack.
• You Killed My Father: Kino loses her father, as well as her mother and sister, to Zorndyke on account of the floods, and has a personal vendetta against him because of it.

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