My father got this for me from the library when I was beginning to gain an interest in anime. At first, my attitude was "cool, it sounds interesting." Then I started watching it, and most of the excitement wore thin. There's not a lot of bad here, but there isn't a lot of good, either. The whole the Earth-is-Flooded business has been done before, and what we got was "Fishtar". Still, this was anime, so it ought to be good, right? Not necessarily. The characterization was almost non-existent. Hayami is a stoic greeny drug addict, but we barely have any clue why. Huang is a cute sonar expert and I think she would make a great little sister, but we barely know anything about her. The captain's characterization is limited to him looking longingly at a picture of his family. If you want to find out anything about the characters, get it on DVD and read the character bios, but skip the behind the scenes thing on the Playstation game thing (I hope I'm not the only one who's wanted to strangle that squeaky bobble-head girl.) The story is a bit of a mess. Basically the villain thinks, "Humans are destroying the world, so if I destroy the world, maybe they'll learn." yeeahh... Hayami's hopeless buddy-buddy ideas are irritating (I could almost hear the chorus to Kansas's "The Preacher" during his confrontation with Verg, who's reverb/octave dub is hellishly annoying. I couldn't tell if he was male or female.) Then, of course, there are the Muteo. You know it isn't an anime until there are half-naked cat-women, right? But these half-naked cat-women are special. They can swim and hum the theme from Dream Theater's "Metropolis Pt. 1: The Miracle and the Sleeper"! I felt like going "Ditdit doo doodoo ditdit doo doodoo ditdit doo doodoo doo ditdoo ditdoo!" In conclusion, if all you want is half-naked anthropomorphic women and homages to the greatest rock song since Supper's Ready from your anime, you're in the right place. If you want something more though, turn to Miyazaki and Cowboy Bebop.
