ARPEGGIO OF BLUE STEEL Made Us Wish There Weren't Oceans

Every now and then a show comes along
that you just can't get out of your head; that fascinates you because
you simply cannot wrap your head around it. In the case of ARPEGGIO
OF BLUE STEEL, I couldn't understand how all the elements came
together to form one single, malformed entity. I gazed upon the first
three episodes with a sort of perverse fascination, unable to
rationalize almost any of the creative decisions that went into its
production.

ARPEGGIO has so many elements in it
it's fit to burst, but like a poorly made puzzle nothing fits
together. To extend that metaphor, at first you can't even believe
someone would sell you a puzzle like this in the first place, so you
keep attempting to put it together thinking there must be some sort
of logic that you're just not seeing yet. When you finally come to
grips with what's actually going on, you get offended because it's
just that stupid as you feared and you lose a little faith in
humanity.

== TEASER ==

TL;DR - Glowy ships = bad guys.

Let me try to pear this down for you.
In this military drama, the world has been invaded by aliens that
have cut off all long-distance commincations and blockaded all sea
and air transport, landlocking all the countries of the world. Known
as the Fleet of Fog, the aliens have painstakingly recreated some of
the most famous battleships of all time and inexplicably retrofitted
them with their advanced A.I. technology, allowing them to run
without crews.

Enter teenager Gunzo Chihaya and the
Blue Steel, a submarine from the Fleet of Fog that for whatever
reason switched sides. Armed with Mental Model technology, the Blue
Steel has a living human avatar (the petite Iona) who has a psychic
interface with the sub and acts as the helmsman. Since the Blue Steel
is the only ship around that can penetrate the blockades, they
receive missions from the Japanese government to do whatever their fleet can't.

So yeah, plenty of material for the
military-style otaku out there. There's lots of swooping shots of
lovingly rendered battleships and the depictions of naval combat are
intricate and flashy. We don't see much naval style action these
days, anime or otherwise, so that aspect of the show is refreshing.

FIRE *ALL* THE THINGS!!!

It's the whole "Mental Model"
thing that's the crux of the show. You know how ships are always
referred to as "she" by the people that work on them? The
Mental Models are an extension of that concept; they are
anthropomorphized versions of the battleships they represent. They
are also all archetypical female anime characters and are all
obnoxious or boring.

And this is where things get really
ugly.

The ship avatar girls make a HUGE deal
about the fact that they are weapons. Several of them, including and
especially Iona, talk about how they are tools to be used by their
commanders and nothing more. By anthropomorphizing these ships, the
show actively objectifies women.
All women.

Unacceptable.

I hope you like white walls because they're in about half the shots.

I'll give you an example. Takao, the
show's poster girl, forms a massive crush on Gunzo when he defeats
her in battle because of his tactical superiority. She realizes that
only when she has a commander (or "human unit" as she calls
it) will she ever be complete like Iona. Not only that, but only
Gunzo is fit to "command" her. So, yes, this show also has
harem aspects to it, since none of the ship girls will really be whole without a man to tell them what to do!

There's an ocean's worth of other
reasons not to watch this show. It's all done in CG, for instance,
giving all characters a wooden stiffness to their movements and
poses. There's the fact that the plot takes enormous leaps through
time without any indication, making you wonder how you missed the
fact that Gunzo gathered an entire crew or found the resources to
construct prefect to-scale decoys. You might be incredibly bored by
Gunzo's extensive and dry tactical breakdowns of every situation,
whether he's on the bridge or not. Or maybe the ship avatar girls
getting just as much if not MORE screentime than Gunzo and crew will
grate on you.

But nothing really tops the deep
misogyny at the heart of this show. It's creepy and fetishistic,
tainting every piece of the show like a bad case of red tide. Scuttle
this boat, and quick.

Matt Murphy is a freelance nerd who has contributed to many nerd websites. You can reach him by going to where the light meets the shadow, by sending out zeta-brainwaves or by following him on Twitter @Murphix.