Blue Drop: Tenshi-tachi no Gikyoku

Five years ago, something horrifying happened on Kamioki Island. Something so nightmarish that it stripped all memory from Mari Wakatake's mind even as it left every other human on the island dead in its wake! Now enrolled against her will at an isolated girl's academy, Mari is unaware that hidden eyes are watching her, waiting for her memory to return.

Buried in her psyche is the most terrifying secret of all: while Mari was the only human who lived, she may not have been the only survivor! As something in a female skin invades Kaihou Academy, Mari's only hope may lie in a strange girl to whom she is inexplicably drawn yet cannot trust.

(Source: Sentai Filmworks)

Senkouji, Hagino Main

Sawashiro, Miyuki Japanese

Wakatake, Mari Main

Uechi, Aki Japanese

Kawashima, Akane Supporting

Watanabe, Akeno Japanese

Tsubael Supporting

Gotou, Yuuko Japanese

Funatsumaru, Hiroko Supporting

Saitou, Kimiko Japanese

Azanael Supporting

Orikasa, Ai Japanese

Fukamachi Supporting

Nakata, Jouji Japanese

Shivariel Supporting

Ichiryuusai, Harumi Japanese

Sagawara, Yuuko Supporting

Yamada, Miho Japanese

Hasegawa Supporting

Inaba, Minoru Japanese

Nakamura, Shinichi Producer

Yamazaki, Fumiki Producer

Ookura, Masahiko Director, Script

Tsuruoka, Youta Sound Director

Reviews

Aug 20, 2008

KaminaKai

Recommended

The following review would never be written if it weren't for the ending...it was very touching...it brought the show to a whole different level...anyway...

Blue Drop (BD) is a combination of slice of life school drama and sci-fi water action anime. In a nutshell, BD is not meant for those who only seeks action (slice of life HINT HINT). I would say about 70% of the show is slice of life-ish and 30% action.

Story:
The story itself is pretty easy to follow. Nothing too complicated, though I didn't expect the ending to be like that... It was a bit lacking at the end though due to ... the lack of follow up to what happened at the end. Also, I just didn't quite like the Yuri stuff throughout the show (should be good news for all you Yuri lovers).
People should also appreciate the events leading up to the ending (mainly the preparation for the drama and how it never get to finish) as that's what really makes BD shine

Art:
One of the stronger points of the show. Some may argue the drawing of the characters are not very original (actually, a few faces does remind me of some characters from older anime), but when one consider the creative art of the spaceships, environment settings, etc, one should agree that solid efforts were applied to the show.

Sound:
The OP and ED are not particularly outstanding to me (in fact, it took me quite a while to "accept" them). But the occasional soundtracks fit the settings perfectly.

Character:
The strongest point of this show. There are tons of character development for the main characters (namely Mari-san and Hagino-sama!) and what they experience throughout the show is what truly makes it worth watching. A lot of the background story get uncovered as the main characters develop themselves. In particular, one will see a great deal of maturity in Mari-san at the end compare to how she started in the beginning.

Enjoyment + Overall:
There were some silly parts like

having BLUE (the ship) act like a whale jumping in and out of water

but all in all, the story has a satisfactory ending and most of all it wrap things up which is always welcoming. I was able to sit through the entire show in a day, so I don't think it is really that boring as some people has suggested. Again, I don't recommend this anime to those seeking for intense action as the show is rather calm until the end when all hell break lose.

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

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Aug 4, 2013

Katsumi3

Mixed Feelings

I admit right now that I came into this anime expecting something quite different than what it was. The summary seemed like it would make for great tragedy at the end, and while it did, I still felt like it was sorely lacking. The whole ending of the show seemed like it downplayed the relationship built between the two main characters, something that felt like a cop-out to me since the relationship really did grow in a very believable way.

Story: 8
From an unbiased perspective, this story really was more than decent. There were a lot of things going for it, disregarding my feelings on the ... ending. I thought that they accomplished something difficult, balancing tension, impending doom, and tragedy with some levity and a love dynamic. That is something I feel a lot of shows try to do and fail at. For the length of the show, it did a good job with plot.

Art: 8
At first glance, you might think this anime is older than it is. However, despite the relative antiquity of the art, it managed to be very beautiful in it's own way. I thought that the battleships looked very alien in a good way and all of the scenery was well done too. The art fit the tone of the anime quite well.

Sound: 6
The reason I give this a six is because generally nothing stood out to me. The soundtrack was so much white noise, dramatic at the right parts, nonexistent in others. The ED was a little too upbeat for the feel of the anime, I think, but it wasn't glaringly bad. The OP, however, was really wonderful and suited the anime perfectly. As for the voice acting, I wasn't impressed, but I wasn't disgusted either. Every character had her moment, I guess, but there was once again nothing that stood out more than being just okay.

Character: 7
This is, again, one of those things that was really quite good until the ending. While character designs were very run of the mill, I thought that the character development far exceeded the design. The growth of relationships was believable, especially between Mari and Hagino. Most of the motivations also got eventually explained which is more than most anime can boast, and unlike most shojou-ai, not everyone was motivated by love of the cute little moe girl (thankfully there was none). However, as I stated before, the yuri relationship between Hagino and Mari came- in my opinion- to practically no end. Thus, the seven.

Overall:
I would have enjoyed this anime a lot more had it actually acted like the shojou-ai it claimed to be. I left it feeling unsatisfied and cheated which I don't like in my anime. I prefer to leave an anime feeling sad and depressed and wanting to write fanfiction. However, if you are not looking to watch something specifically shojou-ai, this is probably the thing for you, as the rest of the story is interesting and preludes the manga well.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Jun 6, 2008

Ranivus

Not Recommended

Blue drop is hard to put into words. One moment you think you're watching a slice of life school drama, the next moment you feel like watching some sci-fi space/water action show. When these two things intermingle badly it feels like you're trying to watch two different shows at once.

Story (Decent)
Having said that though, you will notice it will lean towards one or the other toward the end. It's basically a story about a sole survivor of a tradgic incident who has no recollection of her past or the incident. When she joins an all girls school, she happens to discover things about her ... past. ...And the wheel begins to start turning. The story starts out fine but then it starts to branch out to other stories involving other characters, and with the lack of episodes, it "sorta" gets a little overwhelming. But not to a point where you get lost completely, but to a point where you might have to pause and think about what happened before hand why certain decisions are made. Its not really a thinking mans anime but more of an attention to detail kind of anime. Either good or bad, is your decision I found it to be alright. But what helped me to watch this show was that it was an all-girls school.

Art (Poor)
The art style is kind of below average in my opinion. Although there is a large variation (but mostly cute) cast of girls. They're all drawn pretty weak. Almost reminds me of a late 1990's anime. Not much time is given to fully understand the technology and reasoning behind what is going on but for the most part makes the action scenes fairly decent albeit very short. If there was anything good out of the art department, that would have to be the paintings of the "spaceships" They're very detailed and show a large amount of time was taken to create them. Too bad they look like ridiculously inefficient machines. But one can't think too much on the Blue Drop universe, since a lot of details are left out. I will say one thing, for a slice of life school anime, the battles are pretty epic.

Sound (Fair)
The sound and music is average as well. Nothing spectacular. Aside from the girls talking and the orchestra pulling the strings to the viewers heart, nothing really stands out. Even the sound effects for the battles all sound like they came straight out of a final fantasy game. The electronic voices all voices sound perfect for this show, they didn't sound annoying like most war animes manage to do on a normal basis. The school girls voices all sound spot on as well, but they're typical. Just stereotypical voice casting but it was all done very well.

Characters (Mediocre)
The characters are neither memorable nor are they forgettable. With a drama, of course theres a love story involved, its incomplete. Well not incomplete but rather you wouldn't expect it to go the way it went. But when there was drama, it was pretty good and heart moving. But like i said, with so much going on in this show it kind of beats itself up on making this a well thought out show.

If this show as at least a whole season longer, or if they explained things better, or at the VERY least put more than two people to run such a gigantic warship maybe I could have grown to love it. I'll even admit I was almost moved to tears in this show, and almost enjoyed all the characters, if there was a little more polish to this show it would have gotten higher points. Unfortunately my score stands, this is one of the few shows I want to score higher but just can't.

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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yuri 👩‍❤️‍💋‍👩👭

by grrrlsrevolution

49 Entries · 89 Restacks

Blue....

by Uweewee

40 Entries · 5 Restacks

GL/Yuri anime that isn’t bait

by Armosaurus

41 Entries · 742 Restacks

	Poll: Blue Drop ~Tenshi-tachi no Gikyoku~ Episode 13 Discussion ( 1 2 ) Faust721 - Dec 30, 2007	55 replies	by Destroyer31 »» Dec 21, 2023 3:16 AM
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	Poll: Blue Drop ~Tenshi-tachi no Gikyoku~ Episode 9 Discussion Faust721 - Dec 1, 2007	11 replies	by CaptainKenshiro »» Jul 10, 2023 5:22 PM
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