Daphne in the Brilliant Blue

Original Title: 光と水のダフネ -DAPHNE IN THE BRILLIANT BLUE-
Romanized: Hikari to Mizu no Dafune - Daphne in the Brilliant Blue
Literal: Daphne of Light and Water

Plot Synopsis

Just-graduated 15-year-old Maia Mizuki has had a rather unfortunate life--her parents were killed in a car accident, and her grandfather, who'd raised her since then, recently died of a heart attack. Fortunately, she's she's kept a cheerful outlook and thanks to brains and talent she's headed for big things in the Ocean Agency. Until she fails the exam.

Now she's homeless, unemployed, and desperately looking for a job that'll keep her off the street. Fortunately, Nerids All-Around Service, Kamtchatka Branch, is hiring--room and board included. Unfortunately, they're staffed by psychos and the work all too often seems to involve guns and hostages.

There's Gloria, a gun nut whose attempt to apply bullets and screaming like a maniac to all problems is as nonfunctional as it sounds. Luckily she spends most of the time knocked unconscious to keep her from shooting everything in sight. The knocker is Yuu, an icy martial artist who has no life whatsoever... when she's not in prison. Shizuka gets along better with technology than people, but at least she's friendly--just don't eat out with her. They're all kept in line by Rena, a woman who puts herself above all else and business above everything but herself.

Such is the beginning of poor Maia's daily battle to stay alive long enough to retake the exam and get a job that doesn't involve getting shot at before even leaving the office.

Quick Review

Rating: 4 / 5
Reviewer: Marc
Review Date: 2008-06-02

Daphne in the Brilliant Blue is exactly what it looks like: another cheesy action-sci-fi-comedy featuring an assortment of underdressed women thwarting villains and wreaking havoc on the general populace while doing so. It is also among the most cheerfully and hilariously merciless series I've ever seen. Somewhere between poor, hapless Maia's repeated dodges face-first into the ground, the heartlessly businesslike Rena's use and abuse of anyone and everyone when it benefits her, and the rest of the team's attempts to apply bullets and martial arts to everything from rent collection to baby care, it goes from being cliche to completely awesome. Filled with plenty of action, a colorful voice cast, nice-looking characters and art, and capped off with a surprisingly satisfying bit of actual plot balanced just right with the humor, this makes for one heck of a sleeper comedy. The only possible downsides are that it's almost totally episodic and the women's work clothes consist of three postage stamps' worth of opaque cling-film, both of which work just fine anyway.

The combination of hilariously brutal lack of sentiment, cheerful sadism, fun action, offhanded humor, and nice little realistic touches add up to a just-plain-awesome action-comedy from the first episode to the last.

US DVD Review

Geneon's DVDs get the job done, but not much more than that. No problems technically--the video transfer is clean and bright and the two-channel audio is crisp. My complaint is that they really stiff you on the last two discs--instead of wrapping the series up in six discs, they put only three episodes on volumes six and seven, and if that wasn't bad enough one of the three on each is a bonus episode. Admittedly, the bonus episodes are darned funny, but that's still cheap. There isn't much in the way of extras--clean credits, and on the last couple of discs the original previews (same audio, but a still picture instead of random clips), which is better than it sounds, since they're even funnier when you watch them back to back (they consist of Maia trying--and failing--to get her coworkers to give a proper promo).

Content Guide

Ridiculously skimpy outfits are the norm and there are a number of mature themes and a few borderline-dirty jokes, but there is never any actual nudity and the violence, while wanton, is largely bloodless. It earns the 16-up rating Geneon puts on it, but barely.

Violence: 3 - There is mayhem galore, but it's largely bloodless and the actual body count is surprisingly low.

Nudity: 2 - Hard call; there's technically no actual nudity, but some of the outfits are so skimpy it'd probably seem less dirty if they were completely naked.

Sex/Mature Themes: 2 - Nothing overtly graphic; Occasional mature themes (mostly Rena shown getting out of bed with random attractive men, never more) and a couple of rather dirty visual jokes.

Language: 2 - Light profanity.

Notes and Trivia

There is a one-book manga prequel by Satoshi Shiki. It's available in English from TokyoPop.

The title of every episode is a play on a movie title. Some of these translate directly into English, some were replaced by a different word-play in the translation, and some didn't make the jump.

The proper English used goes farther than just Rena's phone conversation and some background characters with native-English-speaker accents; near the end, there's a scene where Shizuka is scanning through an English government report. The text is only onscreen for a second, but if you pause and look, not only does it say what it's supposed to with correct grammar, it's even written well enough to read like bureaucratic paperwork.

There was one bit of language in the other direction that Geneon had a bit of trouble with, though. This is a tiny bit of a spoiler, but in the episode where Gloria is told she doesn't have long to live, the misunderstanding works better in Japanese. The overheard doctor comments on the "gan" in her scan--gan is the Japanese word for cancer. But of course, if you say "gun" with a Japanese accent, you get "gan," an exact homonym.

A couple of science notes. First, the setting: While there isn't enough ice on earth to submerge that much of the world's land if it all melted, the series never even hints at what the disaster was, so it could theoretically have been something far more violent than just global warming. Thus, unlike Waterworld, it gets a pass. We also don't know that everything is submerged--presumably because it's too hot, the remaining cities are all near the poles.

Second, the low-flying passenger jets, interestingly, have a basis in reality--if you weren't worried about hitting anything, the "ground effect" of anything with wings flying just above a surface means that low-flying aircraft (and birds) can fly farther with less energy by doing so. With nothing but open water between destinations, this would be a logical way to do long-range flights. In fact, the Soviet Union built a few exotic-looking planes using this principle, and more recently Boeing has considered building a cargo plane designed to operate this way, the Pelican ULTRA.

Availability

Available in the US from Geneon on 7 individual bilingual DVDs, the first of which also came with a box for the rest of them, or in a complete set of all eight DVDs in the box. RightStuf has the box set, but they also have stock of the individual discs for a paltry US$5 each, which will get you the whole series for $35 while supplies last.

Looking to buy? Try these stores: RightStuf (search) | AnimeNation | Akemi's a(nime)Store