For me, Blue Drop was one of the major series to watch out for for the Fall-season. In the end, I can’t really say that this is among the best series of the season, but yet there are enough reasons to give this one a shot. It’s basically about the captain of a ship that’s part of an alien-invasion who is on a reconnaissance-mission on an all-girl high-school, and the people she makes friends with.
The best thing about this series is definitely the cast of characters. The overall pacing is rather slow for a thirteen-episode series, but because of that it has enough time to not only flesh out and develop the main characters, but also the side-ones. At the end of the series, it feels that every character on the good side has gotten enough attention to be more than just a one-dimensional cardboard box. There’s a lot of angst in this series, but because the characters are fleshed out so well, it really works turning this series into an excellent tragedy.
I wish I could be so positive about the alien-subplot, though. It lacks fleshing out and explanation, and for some reason one huge outer-space-battleship can be piloted and maintenanced by just one person, which doesn’t really sound that realistic to me. Most of the aliens and especially the major villain also seriously lack development and aren’t fleshing out enough. In the end, it just feels incomplete, and the only positive thing I can say about it is that it provides enough dramatic tension for the characters to work with.
Thankfully, the characters don’t get dragged down along with the alien-subplot, though it remains a nasty thorn for this series. The music, while alone not that spectacular, does fit the overall mood perfectly, and there’s also enough eye-candy in this series. The ending also doesn’t leave a bad taste, so there are enough good points for this series. Too bad about the bad ones.
The only real let-down in this show for me was some of the school scenes, which tended towards the cliched and annoying (particularly Hagino’s cardboard-cutout fangirls). I actually thought the alien invasion worked quite well, although there is clearly a vast amount of back-story left to explain (which is mostly in the various manga, I suspect).
The central relationship between Mari and Hagino was wonderfully developed, though, and Hagino/Ekaril herself made an outstanding tragic heroine.
Blue drop really requires that you look to the mangas as well for more information. It doesn’t heavily touch upon the alien storyline in enough detail, but neither do most of the manga short stories. This really feels like a stretched version of the original manga stories.
Quite a nice series, but I have to agree with you that there were bits that were a bit unconvincing, like the whole space ship controled by 1 person.
I agree that where the aliens were concern, it left heavily a lot out. No real fleshing and therefore seems terribly forced every time they tried to explain why the ship was different.
As for the relationship development, thank the gods that it was the focus of the anime or this would have been a total loss. But because of it, it turned into a good watch.
I felt that it was a great tragic anime but it was too short and the ending was incredibly sad and left a huge time gap for those 30 years and could have had more to it but was a magnigicant tragedy not many that are that dramatic.
I thought this series was too bland, and boring. It was a series that literally killed my will to watch anime. I’m so glad I finally finished it. now Im watching 7 series a week again.