Daphne in the Brilliant Blue Vol-2: Reunion (2004)
Animation Production: Bandai Visual/Group TAC
Released by: Geneon Entertainment
Running Time: 100 Minutes
By Jeffrey Couto

Introduction

Daphne in the Brilliant Blue is one of those shows that starts by trying to fool you into thinking its going to be about one thing, but then ends up being a completely different premise than was initially expected. What at first seemed like a story about a young girl going for her academic dreams and getting her dream job became more of a Burn Up-like series about a group of women who fight crime as vigilantes for hire.

Now, while this is not a terribly original setup, the story proved to be entertaining enough thanks to the cast of characters and the action scenes infused into the proceedings. With the second set of episodes that are at the center of this review the creative team finds a comfortable spot from which to develop the characters and advance the story via the use of loosely connected self-contained chapters in the story of Maia and the rest of the Nereids’ team.

Story

"Yuu Park, a deadly martial arts expert, returns to Nereids. She has been serving time for causing injuries to more than 20 bystanders while trying to capture a petty thief. She is the close range combat specialist of the team and rumored to be as dangerous barehanded as Gloria is with her machineguns. Until her private investigator license is reissued, she is put under house arrest, and Maia is ordered to watch over her. . . But can Maia keep Yuu under control by herself?" -- DVD Box

Review

The second volume in Geneon’s release of Daphne in the Brilliant Blue features episodes five through eight episodes in the series, which include:

Episode 5: Call Me Rough Neck
Yu Park, an extremely powerful hand-to-hand combat member of Nereids has finished serving her prison term for destroying several areas of private property and inflicting indirect physical harm to members of the local police department. Unfortunately she can’t come back to work until she gets her license back from the police. Can the rest of Nereids help get her license back?

Episode 6: In the Heart of the Night
An expert team of thieves is stealing rental cars from the local area and are now causing a lot of trouble for the rental and insurance companies in charge of these vehicles. Can Nereids get to the bottom of what is happening here?

Episode 7: All that Papa
The local branch manager! At Nereids he is treated harshly by the girls and the corporate office, but at home he is a brave hero that fights for justice, or so he has made it seem to his daughter. When she asks to come to the office though, he must come up with a plan to convince her that he is everything he has told her whenever he’s home. Can he pull it off and appear to be the hero that he tells his daughter he is?

Episode 8: The Speeding
There is competition to determine whose hover car will be the next one to be used by the Ocean Agency. Whoever wins stands to gain quite a bit, but when one of the two competing companies decides to pursue some shady practices to take out their opponent only the Nereids team can help and with Maia as the stand in test pilot for the newest hover car model things get crazier and crazier by the minute.

I half expected that going into this set of episodes in the series that the stories would stick to mission type plots, that is, that each episode would center around a particular case taken up by the Nereids team. In a way they lived up to that, but in another they had enough variety to them to make them feel less template-based than anticipated. In fact episodes five, seven and eight were quite unique in their approach to the premise of the series.

Episode seven, “All that Papa”, in particular was the best of these since it takes a decidedly different approach that focuses entirely on the branch manager character rather than the female cast, which has so far been the sole focal point of the series. By taking this approach we get an entirely new perspective on the majority of the characters who are basically forced to act differently than they normally would so as to make it seem to the manager’s daughter that he is fact the big man in the office and a real hero of justice who apprehends criminals whenever he’s at work. Needless to say this also makes for some good comedic bits and “fish out of water” gags.

Episode eight, “The Speeding”, also bears mentioning as it also takes a radically different approach to the series' standard stories thus far by taking Maia out of Nereids duty and placing her on the seat of an experimental hover car as a test driver. This one, like episode seven, allows us to take a peek at different personality traits for various characters and also serves as another opportunity to put Maia at the forefront of the narrative, which she really hasn’t done since the first couple of episodes. The hover car subplot also brings in some excitement in the form of fast paced racing visuals and action sequences.

Episode five, “Call me Rough Neck”, would probably fall into third place in terms of overall entertainment value here, but does serve an important role in the big scheme of things as it introduces the final member of the core cast in the form of Yu Park, a mostly silent, but quite powerful member of the Nereids crew. As one of the main protagonists she serves as an opponent to Gloria in terms of personality and fighting style (weapons VS physical combat) and also as the mysterious or enigmatic member of the group, who we don’t know much about early on.

Overall most of these stories stand on their own, but they do have some minor continuity built into them. The biggest mystery that keeps popping up throughout these episodes (and the ones in volume one) comes in the form of a strange man who is briefly seen in several scenes, particularly whenever Maia is onscreen. I would suspect that he is the one who arranged for Maia’s failure to get into the Ocean Agency, despite her “best student” status. Whether this is true or not, the answer is yet to come in one form or the other. I do hope by the next set of stories that this strange person comes to the forefront and start bridging some of these stories closer together.

On the animation front this series is very well put together. The frame rate is smooth and several visual effects are put to good use to bring the city and its water surrounding to life. The show starts with a very bright color palette that is heavy on the blues and greens, but then it moves to a darker range as we follow Nereides’ missions inside the city and at night time. The tropical setting of episode seven also manages to bring in some nice green hues.

The music soundtrack was suitable for what the show’s premise and features some beautiful instrumental pieces that share the stage with more pumped up action-oriented numbers. The voice acting was good on both the Japanese and North American ends. Overall the casts put in a solid performance.

The DVD package is well together in typical Geneon fashion. The exterior of the DVD case ports a great piece of the local Nereids' office leader striking a thoughtful pose afront a soft purple/pink background. On the reverse side there is an alternative DVD cover that features Gloria as the cover character. Inside the box there’s a small insert with the dates of all the other volumes in this release on one side, chapter stops info on the other and a mini poster on the inside that features the entire cast. DVD extras are limited to a clean copy of the ending theme and previews for other Geneon products.

Final Thoughts

With this second set of episodes Daphne in the Brilliant Blue becomes a more interesting series, but it still operates within a self contained story environment, which limits the potential for character development and plot evolution. Hopefully with the next set of stories they will begin addressing this.

If you love Burn Up-like action, definitely pick this one up.

Jeffrey Couto