Arpeggio of Blue Steel takes place in a future version of Earth where climate change has caused sea levels to rise catastrophically. While humans fought over the remaining land mass, a mysterious fleet of ships with incredibly advanced technology emerged from the shadows and wreaked havoc on the human forces. Dubbed The Fleet of Fog, these ships prevent all passage over the Ocans. Humanity unites to fight the fleet, but find little hope of defeating their superior technology.
But Chihaya Gunzhou, a cadet in the United Earth fleet, is unexpectedly handed control of a submarine from The Fleet of Fog. He forms a bond with the submarine's mental model Iona, its artificial intelligence. With a small crew he sets off on a mission to deliver a potential weapon to the United States and possibly end the war. Standing in his way is The Fleet of Fog, but Gunzhou seems to have a special effect on the mental models of each ship, causing these weapons to question their primary purpose.
If this sounds like a lot of ground to cover for one movie, that's because it is. Arpeggio of Blue Steel (with its nonsensical subtitle Ars Nova: DC) isn't actually an original movie. It's more like a clip show, putting together highlights from the twelve television episodes that have aired on Japanese television. There is reportedly some new footage in here, but they are clearly just minor additions at best. The film acts as a basic summary of what’s gone on so far, and pretty much ends on a big cliffhanger just teasing things yet to come.
It's tough to tell who this is for, exactly. Fans of the show have already seen most of this, in a format more suited for the sheer size of the narrative. Newcomers to the property will likely just be confused. The movie compresses whole episodes worth of story into much smaller chunks, providing little clarity or explanation along the way. And this is actually pretty heady stuff. The core of the story involves a vast mystery concerning the very nature of these mental models. The film plays out all sorts of big metaphysical and emotional moments, minus all the buildup that would have made them work.
The animation is pretty good for what it is, though these sequences never really get the room to breathe. There's a compelling sense of scale, but the action can feel jumpy and disjointed. More baffling is the choice to crop some of the animation. It appears that to achieve a lower MTRCB rating, some scenes have been altered. And those scenes really stand out, because they look awful. The animation gets choppy, or it starts to look badly composed and blurry.
If one is at all interested in Arpeggio of Blue Steel, then it would make much more sense to look for episodes of the TV show. This is clearly an inferior way to experience this story. In having to summarize a season's worth of narrative, the film is unable to showcase much of a personality apart from its design sensibilities. Add the fact that some of the animation has been tampered with, and there's just no reason to go out to cinemas for this particular experience.
My Rating:
