Isoroku Takano, a Japanese pilot shot down over Bougainville Island in 1943, is thrown through a time slip and allowed to relive his life, retaining all the memories of his former existance. Teaming up in 1941 with another time-traveller, Yasuburo Otaka, he seizes power in the Japanese government. With Otaka as prime minister and Takano leading the armed forces, the Japanese demand that Western powers pull out of Asia. When the Americans refuse to comply, the Japanese declare war and bomb Pearl Harbor.
Foiling the evil American plans for the atom bomb, the Japanese push the enemy back to Christmas Island, using the foe's own weapon against them. As the fighting rolls down from the Torres Strait to the Tasman Sea, U.S. President Roosevelt has a heart attack and dies. Scared at the Japanese victories, Hitler declares war on his one-time allies. The Japanese navy blows up a Third Reich atomic facility on Madagascar, and, in a desperate attempt to curb Nazi advances, launches suicide attacks in the Red Sea. By 1946, a stalemate leads to espionage operations in California and Manchuria, and the Nazis launch a U-boat counterattack in the Indian Ocean.
Based on the long series of novels by Yoshio Aramaki, Deep Blue Fleet takes a very different approach toward the pacifist posturings more commonly seen in English-language anime. Ironically, this "alternate history" has more in common with genuine WARTIME ANIME, but it coyly extricates itself from the real issues of WWII. Mixing the second chances of EMBLEM TAKE 2 with the historical reenactment of ANIMENTARY, the series dispenses with the Allied enemy relatively quicklythere is just enough time to self-righteously shoo them out of the Pacific before more acceptable foes enter the fray. From that point on, the story is an excuse for a series of battles utilizing Axis weapons and vehicles that never left the drawing board. Compare to Ted Nomura's U.S. comic World War II: 1946, which places similar emphasis on "what-if" technology.
A one-shot special, Secret Launch of the Sorai (1997), features two engineer brothers working on a secret project, who see American planes in the air and launch ahead of schedule to thwart the 1942 Doolittle bombing raid on Tokyo. It is Deep Blue Fleet in a nutshella famous Japanese defeat turned into a victory. Though some may claim that the series' value lies in its painstaking research, the Doolittle raiders are flying B-30s instead of historically accurate B-25s.
After the initial 19 episodes, the series continued as Fleet of the Rising Sun (Kyokujitsu no Kantai), directed by Hiromichi Matano and backtracking a year to 1945 and the launch of Japan's latest battleship, the Yamato Takeru, which immedietly trounches Germany's Bismarck II. The flagship soons leads a fleet to Europe where, amid its spats with Hitler, it takes time out to shell Britain. As with earlier episodes, the result is an unnerving window on a very different world, one that holds the sick fascination of a traffic accident.
****
Oh, yeah, won't be seeing that fansubbed soon. But I'd really like to watch it in a train-wreck watching sort of way.
Foiling the evil American plans for the atom bomb, the Japanese push the enemy back to Christmas Island, using the foe's own weapon against them. As the fighting rolls down from the Torres Strait to the Tasman Sea, U.S. President Roosevelt has a heart attack and dies. Scared at the Japanese victories, Hitler declares war on his one-time allies. The Japanese navy blows up a Third Reich atomic facility on Madagascar, and, in a desperate attempt to curb Nazi advances, launches suicide attacks in the Red Sea. By 1946, a stalemate leads to espionage operations in California and Manchuria, and the Nazis launch a U-boat counterattack in the Indian Ocean.
Based on the long series of novels by Yoshio Aramaki, Deep Blue Fleet takes a very different approach toward the pacifist posturings more commonly seen in English-language anime. Ironically, this "alternate history" has more in common with genuine WARTIME ANIME, but it coyly extricates itself from the real issues of WWII. Mixing the second chances of EMBLEM TAKE 2 with the historical reenactment of ANIMENTARY, the series dispenses with the Allied enemy relatively quicklythere is just enough time to self-righteously shoo them out of the Pacific before more acceptable foes enter the fray. From that point on, the story is an excuse for a series of battles utilizing Axis weapons and vehicles that never left the drawing board. Compare to Ted Nomura's U.S. comic World War II: 1946, which places similar emphasis on "what-if" technology.
A one-shot special, Secret Launch of the Sorai (1997), features two engineer brothers working on a secret project, who see American planes in the air and launch ahead of schedule to thwart the 1942 Doolittle bombing raid on Tokyo. It is Deep Blue Fleet in a nutshella famous Japanese defeat turned into a victory. Though some may claim that the series' value lies in its painstaking research, the Doolittle raiders are flying B-30s instead of historically accurate B-25s.
After the initial 19 episodes, the series continued as Fleet of the Rising Sun (Kyokujitsu no Kantai), directed by Hiromichi Matano and backtracking a year to 1945 and the launch of Japan's latest battleship, the Yamato Takeru, which immedietly trounches Germany's Bismarck II. The flagship soons leads a fleet to Europe where, amid its spats with Hitler, it takes time out to shell Britain. As with earlier episodes, the result is an unnerving window on a very different world, one that holds the sick fascination of a traffic accident.
****
Oh, yeah, won't be seeing that fansubbed soon. But I'd really like to watch it in a train-wreck watching sort of way.