Blue Drop 1, Lost memories.

 

     Blue Drop starts off with a young girl named Mari being told by her grandmother that she needs to have friends to share her life experiences with, she can no longer just stay with her, and that her parents would have wanted this to happen. While being driven to school Mari sees a young girl being surrounded by a flock of sea gulls on the seashore. When Mari arrives at the school and it seems to be an elite private girls school called the Kaihou Academy (anytime I think of a private girls academy in anime I start to think of yuri).

      Immediately Mari’s lack of socialization becomes apparent to the headmaster, and he assigns a girl to show her around the school. Kouzuki Michiko shows Mari around the school and give her the basic information on the school, Mari is not very friendly towards her. Mari feels that her grandmother was glad to be rid of her, but we learn that she’s concerned for Mari’s future and that she might not be able to care for her in a few years. We also learn that all of Mari’s memories were erased as a result of an accident that happened five years ago, Mari’s homeroom teacher tells the headmaster that she’ll act like a counselor for her. After Mari is shown to her room she meets the one of girl’s in charge of the dorm, a student like her called Senkouji Hagino, Mari thinks she’s the girl whom she saw along the seashore. When the girls shake hands Hagino gets a vision about Mari’s past, then acts like she wants to kiss her, and then proceeds to try and strangle her.

     Later at dinner the dorm mother introduces Mari to everyone and Hagino tries to shake Mari’s hand again, but Mari attacks her in retaliation for the near strangulation that happened earlier. Hagino’s posse of girls attacks Mari for the retaliation and bedlam ensues, then all the girls involved in the fight are sent to their rooms without dinner. During the night Mari sees Hagino sneaking out of the dorm and follows her to the harbor where she sees Hagino meet a mysterious ship(?) at the water’s edge.  That’s all for episode 1, below are some screen shots.

     Now for the review, I found Blue Drop quite interesting. The feel of the animation varies greatly, when Mari’s moods are subdued the animation is muted with a water colored like feel to it, and when Mari’s emotions are freely flowing the animation takes on a vivid sharply sharply drawn nature. It will be very interesting to see this story develops, lost memories, a private girls school, yuri undertones, and mysterious ships, this series has  great potential. Now for my rant, whats the deal with anime’s obsession with yuri occurring at private girl’s schools, and yaoi occurring at boy’s schools? When I was in high school one of my neighbors’ daughters went to a catholic girls school, and she and her friends did more drinking, partying, and fooling around with us than the public school girls did. When I was eighteen years old and in the army I lived in a three man room, with 48 guys to the building and all we thought about was how pickup girls, anything that could wear a dress and had breasts were a target of opportunity. If I was a high school guy again and a place like the Kaihou Academy really existed I could think of no better place to live next to. Well that’s all, I continue to watch this series.