Anime Review: Blue Drop

Anime loves to experiment with genres, and it’s quite common to see an anime that combines aspects of many different genres. Higurashi (When They Cry) is an example I love to use in this case, as I feel that it creates a perfect balance and blending of both moe and horror. Who would’ve thought that could work? Unfortunately, it doesn’t always work out so well. Blue Drop attempts to be a crossover between slice-of-life and sci-fi. It’s an interesting and fairly unique concept that I could see working if executed properly. Blue Drop, however, fails to do so.

Five years ago, the residents of Kamioki Island were mysteriously massacred. Mari Wakatake, the only survivor of this incident, lost her memories, and has been living with her grandmother since. Mari is forced to transfer to a new school by her grandmother, much to Mari’s resentment. In the new school, she gives her classmates a cold attitude, and is even more upset when she meets Hagino Senkouji, who upon meeting Mari, immediately tries to strangle her. It is soon revealed that there is much more to Hagino than meets the eye. Essentially, Blue Drop tells two stories: The slice-of-life story about Mari’s school life and the sci-fi story about the mysteries surrounding both Hagino and the destruction of Mari’s hometown five years ago.

This would work if the two stories were related to each other in some way, but they aren’t. The show is littered with awkward “genre shifts,” where, for example, we’ll go from an epic sci-fi battle to a scene about girls preparing for a school play. Even then, the sci-fi aspect isn’t all that great, as most of the scenes consist of little more than just simple dialogue, where not much really happens. There are some good battle scenes, but they don’t come in until the second half of the series, and even then they are few in number. As for Mari’s school life, the pacing is overall very slow, but it was at least interesting enough to keep me watching the show.

What I liked about this show are the characters. Mari’s got that tsundere-ish personality that I enjoy so very much. Hagino’s a very mysterious girl, and trying to find out what her deal is kept me interested in her. Overall, the story is actually pretty good, I just wish it were presented better. This is another series where I feel that if it were less episodes, it could have been free of pacing issues. However, even at only 13 episodes, the story still seems very stretched-out.

Blue Drop is good if you think you can stand the awkward genre shifts and don’t mind slow pacing. The entire series is available from Sentai Filmworks at an affordable price, so I would say it’s at least worth checking out, as you won’t have much to lose if you don’t enjoy it.

Blue Drop is currently on sale and is licensed and distributed by Sentai Filmworks. Also available at TheAnimeNetwork.com.

ENJOYMENT – Interesting enough

RECOMMENDATION LEVEL – Probably not

REWATCH VALUE – Probably not

Purchase Blue Drop at RightStuf

Also available with new English dub