Vkfan

Premise and notes: If you heard someone saying "this is an harem anime, hurr durr", or something of the liking, mark them as plain idiots: Gunzou falls in love with Iona, Iona with Gunzou, Takao with Gunzou, and Hyuuga with Iona; Haruna and a rampaging teddy bear Kirishina protect a little girl. Nothing more. No more love, no more harem. And two raindrops (literally, two) don't make a storm.

Told this, let's start with the serious stuff:

Plot (no spoilers): Everyone knows that, already, but yet... in a not so distant future, the Fog ships attacked, conquered all the seas and jammed any mean of communication between the countries. The I-401 Fog submarine (a "rebel" one) has a human as captain, and this guy (Chihaya Gunzou) and his crew wander aronund the world doing jobs of unspecified nature; the 12 episodes all are about the main characters trying to deliever an experimental torpedo from Japan to America, where it will be mass produced and deployed.

Animation & Graphics: Awesome Horrible It depends. For example, there are the ships, shiny and pretty awesomely drawn, with an extra topping of explosions, missiles/torpedoes and laser beams flying everywhere.

On the other sides, there are the character, who are plain bull**** kind of horrible; those 3D models are, huh... I guess they put all of the budget on the ships.

Characters: Nothing really extraordinary; the cool and skillfull main character, his quiet and silent "first lady", the stupid friend, the computer phreak friend, the 2 female friends... standard stock, then.

Not even the enemies models (exception made, maybe, for Kongou), are out of the levels; only thing, at the end, they all become friends with the I-401 crew, but that was an almost obvious outcome from the first episode. Where else do you see a show based on a worldwide war when there are a total of 2 people dying (and you pretty much don't care about them, they appear for 2 episodes and then vanish in a pointless way). This is the thing i found most interesting in this anime (again, Power of Friendship™>>>>>>>>all), since there is nothing else to see here...

Audio: Only thing i can say is: i found the opening really enjoyable.

HEAVY SPOILER ALERT

Ending: Disappointing is the best way to describe it. "Hey, a huge airship is raining death upon us, our super-forcefield is down and the only way to stop hundreads of torpedoes of doom flying toward us is a teddy bear playing a reaction speed-based game. What can we do (obviously excluding giving the audience a last freakin'huge fight, with ground to air torpedoes and uber-scaled laser beams)?"

Do you even ask that? That's so easy! We can solve everything by launching a single character to talk with the enemy captain and, using the Power of Friendship™ backed up by the Power of Love™(wrrrrrrryyyyyyyyyyyyy?), getting him to stop the attack. That way, the superboss will become part of the big family formed by the Blue Steel fleet crew.

Ok, but then? What is the Fog fleet? Why did she got created? Why was the I-401 "abbandoned" with the order to obey the main character's orders? Why do they have to take full control of the seas? Why some of them (not all of them, ony a few) got the Mental Models? Why was the I-401 "abbandoned" with the order to obey the main character's orders? What is the Admirality Code? What is that other dimension where the Models love drinking tea while chatting? Did the human fleet actually put that sonic torpedo in good use? How did the war end? Why was the I-401 "abbandoned" with the order to obey the main character's orders? What happened to the evil japanese guy who betrayed tried to kill the little girl? And to the other one who wanted to aquire the I-401 control? But, even more important: why was the I-401 "abbandoned" with the order to obey the main character's orders?

But who cares about all these unanswered questions! There are laser beams, flying torpedoes (can they actually fly?), Power of Love™ and everyone alive and happy at the end (everyone but the 2 Iona's sisters and the fake Model girl, but who cares about them, they were useless after all), how can i still pretend some anwers about what's behind everything that's happening on screen:3

NO MORE SPOILERS AHEAD

After all, a simple and enjoyable show (just don't pay attention at those characters, duh... who knows, just stare at the background), a good time waster if you want to see cool graphical effects and a happily ever after kind of ending.

One more thing, don't even try to ask yourself any question, you'll end really disappointed.