Blue Drop / First Impressions

Summary:

One rainy day, Wakatake Mari is on her way to a new school after her grandmother had talked to her about the importance of having a good friend. As the car she’s riding in passes by the waterfront, Mari senses something and notices a seagull flying above their car. Her eyes follow the seagull all the way until she sees a dark-haired girl standing on a rock in the middle of the bay with a pack of seagulls swirling around her. Mari’s eyes meet with this girl’s eyes for a brief moment as the car drives by, but when Mari asks her driver about it afterwards, he doesn’t appear to have seen anything. The car soon arrives at the school, and Mari gets to meet the school principal as well as the head of the instruction department Maiyama, but she has to be coaxed by her driver to formally introduce herself. As Maiyama then starts talking about how this is a prestigious school, Mari’s attention turns to the seagull she notices outside the window. This gets the old woman angry at her for not listening, but the principal diffuses the situation by changing the subject to how this is the first time Mari will be experiencing campus life. To help her out, he recruits the girl gardening downstairs to show her around.

Mari, however, isn’t particularly interested in being told about the school by this Kouzuki Michiko girl because she doesn’t intend to stay at this school for long, and she runs off by herself. She really wants to leave, but she stops running when she realizes that she doesn’t know what to do, and Michiko eventually finds her standing alone in their classroom. The two then see off Mari’s driver, and Maiyama instructs Michiko to take Mari to the dormitory. During this, Mari’s new teacher Sugawara Yuuko discusses with the principal about how Mari doesn’t have memories of her family or the accident five years ago, so they have to treat her with great care. At the dormitory, Michiko shows Mari her room and goes to get the dormitory leader. While Michiko is gone, Mari meets the same girl she saw earlier by the sea and actually introduces herself to this girl whose name is Senkouji Hagino. The girls reach to shake hands, but when their hands touch, Hagino suddenly gets visions of a large ship and of a young and crying Mari standing in front of a great fire. With her eyes now blue, Hagino grabs Mari’s throat and starts choking her. She proceeds to push Mari onto her bed and doesn’t return to normal until after she gets another vision of Mari crying.

With Hagino backing off, Mari regains her breath and is quite angry at the sudden assault. Hagino stays quiet when Mari asks her what she was trying to do, so Mari throws the nearby bunch of hydrangea flowers at her. After the two are interrupted when Michiko brings back the dormitory leader, Mari leaves the dorm. Michiko runs after her and eventually finds her sitting by a lake. Talking about how big the school is and how all the students are upper-class young ladies, Michiko reveals that she was born in this town to a normal family and had passed the exam for this school. Nevertheless, she still thinks that the students are good people, particularly Hagino, and although she doesn’t know what happened, Michiko thinks that it had to have been a misunderstanding. She feels that if this misunderstanding gets cleared up, then Mari will definitely like Hagino too. Mari eventually agrees to go back to the dorm and gets introduced to everyone at dinner that night. However, when Hagino tries to shake her hand again, Mari slaps the hand away and then throws water into Hagino’s face since Hagino doesn’t seem to know what she’s angry about. This in turn angers the other girls in the room, and three of them get into a brawl with Mari. The fight is finally stopped when an older girl arrives and punishes everyone who fought by giving them no dinner and sending them to their rooms.

Later that night, a hungry Mari hears someone leaving the dorm, and after she realizes that it’s Hagino, she follows her all the way to the city docks. It is there that Mari sees a huge ship suddenly appear from the water, and Hagino turns around to reveal her now glowing blue eyes.

OP Sequence

OP: 「BLUE」 by Suara
Watch the OP!: Mirror 1, Mirror 2
The OP was used at the end of the episode here, and it’s a really powerful Suara song. It makes me want to hear what the full version sounds like.

Blue Drop isn’t quite what I was hoping for, but a lot of it has to do with not watching this in HD. Some of the 3D scenes looked like they could have been amazing, but ended up rather bland. Just compare this shot from the official site with this shot from the broadcast. The difference was quite discouraging, at least for me. As for the story, the first half of the episode was introduction that moved a bit too slow for my tastes, but things got a lot more interesting once the girls shook hands and Hagino started choking Mari. Given the supposed yuri nature of this show, I assume they’ll be brought together by their pasts and make up or something, but who knows if it’ll become that kind of relationship (see: Strawberry Panic).
Overall, I’m not sold yet on this show since nothing really stands out for me yet, so I’m going to need at least a second episode to decide if I’ll keep blogging it.

42 Comments

  14. “Something tells me this isn’t going to end happily.”

    They can just coop out on the whole thing that would not surprise me.

    And this seem exactly what I expected it to be …

    Drakron
    Reply

  16. Huh, seems like nearly all the stuff from the trailer is footage from this first episode. I wonder what other crazy directions it might go in then. The manga had some incredibly cool post-apocalyptic settings/backgrounds, I wonder if we’ll see the full force of the alien war and all their nanotech stuff.

    Anonymous
    Reply

  17. Wow people chocking other people
    Blue Eyes White Dragon?
    A shirt that says “Keep weight”
    a dude with purple hair and has a gross hairstyle

    Conclusion: not going to watch

    ASDDAS 3.0
    Reply

  18. wererat2: it could have a happy ending. The aliens are all lesbians, so as Yuri story it could have a happy ending. Now for the male half of the population, the ending is not that happy.

    Xellos-_^
    Reply

  30. @Wererat42
    Where do you know this from, the manga?

    Btw, is the manga finished or still going on?
    Just from the screenshots it looks interesting to me, moreover as Omni haven’t had yuri for a while so I’ll give it a try.
    Story could become epic later, huge war and those two in the middle of it, dunno though, haven’t read the manga.

    mutio
    Reply

  31. Ah and sorry for the double post, but would also like to mention that those “yuri” shows can be awesome. The best example is Simoun. First I though some yuri show but then it turned out to be a very dramatic and thrilling series and I loved it in the end.

    mutio
    Reply

  32. yea.. i’m betting that this ius one of thos yuri anime.. the first episode does have much progress just some character intro… nth much i think we have to wait till atleast 3 episode befor we can decide if this is good or bad..

    padfoot135
    Reply

  37. Not the same, but a prequel to it.

    In fact, there are TWO Blue Drop manga series, both taking place after the war against the aliens (the aliens won, BTW). The anime, on the other hand, takes place before the war.

    Kazu-kun
    Reply

  41. I finished all 13 episodes. At first, I was a little confused, but as I kept watching it began to make sense piece by piece.
    I’m really glad I watched it. It was.. really good. :]

    Hagino-sama. ;____;

    Peter
    Reply

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