Blue Submarine No. 6 FAQ (Version 1A)
The purpose of this document is to provide my answers to the questions that I came up with while I was watching this four-part OAV series, and to also offer my perspective on some of the issues brought up in the movie. I also want to help out people who haven’t taken as many years of chemistry and science classes at college understand some of the terms that they use in the movie. (When I first saw Blue Submarine No. 6 just after I got into Junior College, a lot of the movie, especially the last episode, didn’t make much sense at all to me. Now that I am rewatching it after going to school for six years and studying Chemistry (and hanging out with the Biochemistry students) the movie is a little easier to understand.)
Author Information:
May 22, 2004: This FAQ version 1A (with Plot Summary) was written by Merle Zimmermann Today’s work got us through Episode 2, about 2/5 of the way through the series and 1/6 of the way through the FAQ writing.
Usage:
Please make copies and mirrors of this document if you find it useful. If you make any changes or edits, please add your name and information to the Author Information above and increase the version number of the FAQ file.
Intended Audience:
Since the anime is rated 13-up (although I believe that it is much less suitable for 13-17 year olds than Card Captor Sakura, which is rated 16-up for some bizzare reason) I will try to keep the discussion here to cover only topics that would be suitable for those who are 13 and older. Of course, there will be seperate appendix that would cover topics best suited for 16-up and that sort of thing. There is a later disc available from Bandai that is rated 7-up, which suggests editing might have occured since I got my copy of it.
NOTE TO PARENTS:
If you are a parent though and want to see if your kid should watch Blue Submarine No. 6, I would recommend saying No until you can watch it first and make sure it is okay for them to see. The copy of the animation I have contains nudity and unpleasant innuendos and graphic violence with blood, so I wouldn’t show it to anyone underage myself, but I know that different families have different standards for such things. There also might be different versions of the anime too, so my dire warnings might be utterly misplaced. You have been cautioned : D
The Blue Submarine World:
I believe that the anime was based on a comic by Satoru Ozawa, but as I have only seen the animation included on the four OAV DVDs which were apparently released here in the US (Region 1) in 1999-2000, and I am obviously not an official company source of information. But after doing some internet searches I had trouble finding much of anything about Blue Submarine No. 6, so if you need more help or there are other questions you are curious about, you can send me an email (at vaaleron @ hotmail o com ) and I will think about the question some then try to get back to you.
Questions To Be Addressed:
FAQ:
What is Blue Submarine No. 6?
Blue Submarine No. 6 is an anime, or Japanese Animation, which was made by people in japan. Anime has a distinctive style, and you can read about it elsewhere. Blue Submarine No. 6 is an OAV or Original Animation Video. This is a type of anime that is usually made with a higher budget than the TV anime of the period, and also is often only a few episodes long. Usually an OAV is equivalent to a two or three hour movie.
Blue Sub No. 6 follows the story of several of the high ranking officers on the submarine as they go in a war against the forces of Zorndyke, a renegade scientist who works in biochemistry. The main characters discover along the way that the reasons for their conflict and their attempt at resolving it are misdirected, and they successfully change their approach and end the war with a conclusive victory.
This particular OAV is interesting because they use a lot of computer graphics for the submarines and ship battles in the movie. Since the CG was so good, it makes the series pretty cool to watch even if you skip over some of the philosophical/violent parts.
What sorts of ships and weapons are there? How do they work?
There are two sides in the war. Zorndyke’s forces and the human forces.
Each side has a different theme.
The humans are mostly technological and fight with submarines equipped with torpedos. They also have a few different kinds of moblie ships. All of the human ships are painted with different colors and patterns, so sometimes they look different when they are really the same sort of ship.
Zorndyke’s forces are bio-engineered animal people and biological warships as well as sea-creature based fighters. There are four different kinds of Zorndyke ships in the first two episodes of the anime:
1. The Phantom Ship (see below)
2. The Crab/Lobster Land-Capable Fighters (these have claws and a beam gun)
3. The “Musca” whale-creatures (see below)
4. Some odd green undersea fighters that were in the second episode (have to watch it again to get more familiar with them)
Only the main command ship of Zorndyke’s fleet is made to look like a machine. It is a large warship with cannons and a stealth-type drive that the humans call “The Phantom Ship.” A lot of times only the top of the ship is shown. In episode 2 we get to see that the bottom half of the ship is actually a super version of the whale type bio-ship.
Weapons of the Humans:
The humans mostly use torpedos to fight the enemy, but they have small fighter ships that have other weapons too like rocket bombs, a large blade, and some machine guns.
There are two main types of torpedos (launched from Blue Submarine No. 6), regular torpedos and enzyme torpedos. The regular torpedos are used to break the shells of the attacking whale-type warships, then the enzyme torpedos can kill the creature.
Later in the anime the submarine gets equipped with nuclear torpedos which can kill the whale ships without needing to use enzyme torpedos.
The small human fighter ships have blades and several different kinds of guns and missile launchers. There is a long part in the first episode that shows all the abilities of the human fighter ships.
The humans have some planes too but the anime is mostly about the undersea ships so the planes do not get to do much.
Weapons of the Zorndyke:
Mostly the weapons are like the human weapons for The Phantom Ship. Although I didn’t see it using torpedos, it has deck guns and cannons that can be used to bomb the shoreline artillery style. There is more than one Phantom Ship, I think, but one of them is followed a lot and is much stronger than the others.
The whale ships which are often surrounded by a shield can attack with torpedos that seem like sharks to the listening station people on Blue Submarine No. 6. But soon they can tell that they aren’t sharks at all. At close range, it can attack with a sonic beam that destroys many things very easily. It is especially dangerous to fight in underwater territory with flooded cities or ice blocks, because the sonic beam can release a lot of rubble into the ocean which then pelts the human ships.
There are also lobster fighters too. They have claws and an energy gun which makes things explode, sort of like a rail gun with napalm. They have ground-to air lock-on missile capabilities as well. They are hard to fight on land but worse to fight on the sea. The ships explode easily, however, so the humans have a chance at defending against them.
Who are the Main Characters?
There are about six main characters in the anime. Since I am not very good with names I’ll just describe them by what they do. I tried to copy the names from the back of the DVD boxes based on what they say, so if I made a mistake I am sorry.
MAYUMI KINO: The first main character is a girl who was sent from Blue Submarine No. 6 to get an old crewmate who quit being on the submarine. Most of the people in the movie call her Kino, but I’ll follow the american style of referring to people here and call her by her first name, Mayumi.
TETSU HAYAME: The crewmate turns out to be a super depressed drug user who self-describes himself as “a hyena of the sea” in the first episode. Even though he is in poor shape, he is trying to improve himself and become good. At the end of the series he atones for his sins by getting beaten up by Zorndyke’s general while trying to keep him from starting the war again. Tetsu has a pet dog in Episode 1. Most of the people in the movie call him Hayame, so be sure to learn both of his names.
The Captain: The third main character is the captain of Blue Submarine No. 6. He is the main leader and has to do his duty even when he doesn’t believe in it. However, even if he can not himself do what he believes is right, he has a strong enough will to let someone else act in what he believes to be mankind’s best interests. In the last episode he lets Tetsu Hayame steal one of his fighter ships to make an embassy to Zorndyke.
MUITO: This is the name of the name of the sea girl that Tetsu rescues during the first episode. She bites Tetsu because she thinks he is attacking her, but he is only trying to put her in the water where she can use her gills to breathe. Later in the series she rescues Tetsu from his sinking life raft and takes care of him by bringing him fish when he is shipwrecked on an island waiting for his friends to find him. Also see the 16-up notes for more information on the sea girl, Muito.
Professor Zorndyke: He is a scientist who was working on Project Blue, a project to make food that would grow in challenging places like “Wheat that grows on ice, potatoes that grow in the desert” as he describes (in the last episode of the series) to Tetsu Hayame. But Zorndyke got disillusioned with how people were acting and went crazy, then used his research base in the south pole to melt the ice caps to flood the cities and kill most of the humans. He then made animal people at the research base and acted as their “Father.” Although he is the leader of the sea people’s forces, he doesn’t give them direct orders to fight. Mostly they fight because they want to get his approval but do not know how.
Zorndyke’s General: This is a shark person who is on The Phantom Ship as its captain. He is very bestial and growls a lot and hits people with things. He is upset with the sea girl that she saved Tetsu and tries to hit her but she is too quick. He beats on Tetsu at the end of the series before he decides that Zorndyke probably actually did want them to end the war. He is very violent and my least favorite character in the anime. (And he was actually the reason that I sold the anime a month after I first got it. But on DVD it is easy to fast foward past the parts where he is in the anime so I got it again.)
(I found Tetsu, Mayume, and Muito’s names next to their pictures in the leaflet of DVD 1, so I believe I am okay on their names.)
Episode Summaries:
Often you might not get a chance to watch all of an episode or you might not understand everything that happened, so here are my summaries of the main things that happened in each of the episodes of Blue Submarine No. 6
Blue Submarine No. 6 Episode 1: Blues
This episode introduces all of the main characters except for Professor Zorndyke and Zorndyke’s General. They are saved for episode 2.
At the beginning of the anime the boat girl Mayumi goes on orders from Blue Submarine No. 6’s Captain to get Tetsu out of his crummy apartment. She finds Tetsu, but has to fend of his drug-addled unwelcome advances and his poor attitude towards the world. She is at first unsuccessful at re-recruiting him, and they leave.
Then Zorndyke’s forces attack, trapping her and her escort and some civillians on the shore! They are about to die from the lobster napalm-railgun-cannon when Tetsu comes on his cutter (a type of boat) and saves them with his machine gun and grenade. Then they go to Blue Submarine No. 6 and meet the captain.
The enemy is still out there, so Mayumi and Tetsu go out again with Tetsu in the first seat and fight the lobster creatures in a beautifully animated CG (computer graphics) sequence blending both hand-drawn anime and advanced computer effects. This part shows off all the nice weapons and abilities of the human fighter ship.
After Tetsu fights the last lobster ship, it crashes on the beach but doesn’t explode. The side of the ship opens and the sea girl falls out onto the rooftop* with weird goo all over her. Tetsu runs up to the girl and she starts gasping for breath so he tries to help her get into the water. She bites him, but he keeps the boat girl Mayumi from shooting the sea girl with her gun and takes her to the shoreline. When the sea girl is safe in the water she looks at Tetsu then smims away.
*(Since the world filled with water a lot of the shoreline is really the tops of skyscrapers that were in the big cities near the edge of the water today. I think that probably the anime takes place pretty soon after the water rose, because some of the characters are pretty young and mention the deaths of their families when the disaster happened. Also, the buildings would probably fall down after a while, no?)
Then the enemy whale ship attacks Blue Submarine No. 6. The battle is very exciting, and you get to see how outmatched the human ships are by Zorndyke’s bigger ships. So the captain of the ship has to use all his skill to not get bombed out by the enemy ship. After the battle is all over Mayumi argues with Tetsu about how he let the sea girl, Muito get away, and they look at the weird but beautiful sunset.
The end of the episode shows how Zorndyke’s forces in the phantom ship are plotting their revenge for their defeat. Then there is some credits, music, and a Next Episode Preview.
Blue Submarine No. 6 Episode 2: Pilots
This episode starts with an attack on Blue Submarine No. 6 by the Phantom Ship. The ship attacks with both bombs and tracking spores. A second submarine comes and starts trying to attack the Phantom Ship to defend the local base, and the captain of Blue Submarine No. 6 wants to help his friend but has to follow his orders and the ship ends up being defeated, followed by the loss of the base.
Then we get to meet Zorndyke on the teleconferencing tube, where he fails to give orders to his general. His general decides that maybe destroying the main headquarters of the Blue Submarines would please his “Papa.” This is followed by one of the scenes that I dislike in the series, which I will discuss on my 16-up page.
Since the bubbles got on the submarine, when it goes back to the main headquarters it reveals the location of the base. The submarine comes down to dock and everyone is happy because they are finally home.
The advisors come to discuss Zorndyke’s evil plan to destroy the world. Zorndyke has a base on the south pole and is using a giant machine to disrupt the earth’s magnetic field. The disruption is causing aurora borealis effects all around the world and, if it is completed successfully, will destroy all of mankind.
They then discuss their attack plan - there will be a whole hearted attack against Zorndyke’s forces at the south pole from the human fleets. The destruction of the base will save the humans by preventing the pole shift.
However, during the meeting, Zorndyke manages to hack into their battle network and gives a long speech that manages to remain ambiguous about his real motives. The people in the base think he is talking about bombing them out with his magnetic pole shifting machine.
(However, since I am revisiting this speech after I watched the whole OAV through twice it seems to me that it is probably just another part of his main ending speech. In the interests of not putting too much analysis into this summary, please see the later question “What are Zorndyke’s Motives?”)
There is some speculation between the crew members as to Tetsu’s motives, but they all agree he is okay.
The humans are using a psychic girl to try to detect the biological ships of Zorndyke. She is always sitting in a room with weird circular tiles on the walls (probably to amplify her psychic powers) and she often looks worried.
Mayume tells Tetsu that the attack plan is to use nuclear bombs on Zorndyke’s forces, then they meet an old enemy of Tetsu’s and the part of the story that deals with Tetsu’s first embassy to Zorndyke starts.
Apparently, before Tetsu quit Project Blue, he was on a mission with a friend to go see Zorndyke. But their embassy was attacked and destroyed. After Tetsu escaped, he was court-martialed for deserting his friend, who was captured and mutated by Zorndyke into an animal-person.
Unknown to Tetsu, his friend later himself escaped from Zorndyke’s base through secret tunnels under the south pole ice and knows a the way to get back. The humans plan to use his friend’s information to make a sneak attack on Zorndyke and destroy the pole shift machine.
Then Mayume meets the psychic girl in one of the hallways of the base. She has wandered out of her little pod and is crying because she heard something scary while she was in her little room. Moments later, there are explosions as Zorndyke attacks the humans’ headquarters.
The beast-people bomb the heck out of the base and Tetsu decides to go mano-a-mano with the phantom ship in an attempt to buy time for the fleet, which is trapped in the dock by a malfunctioning bay door.
But as soon as Tetsu goes out, he starts having flashbacks of the sea girl that he rescued in Episode 1. He tries to attack the main flagship to keep it from destroying the human base, but he is hit by the deck guns and his ship goes down.
Zorndyke tries to convince the Admiral in the base to admit defeat, but instead the Admiral tries to turn on the Plan B emergency system, and the base is detonated by the Phantom Ship’s cannons.
Tetsu’s escape pod slowly floats to the surface and he sees the pieces of the destroyed base and knows that he failed to protect Blue Submarine No. 6 and the fleet.
The credits roll as the pod deploys a life raft bubble and Tetsu sees the enemy Phantom Ship sail away. But the sea girl, Muito, has stayed behind and they see each other, then the camera pans back and all that we see after that is the stormy ocean until the credits are all done.
-- FAQ to be continued -- (end of work day on May 22, 2004)