On rare occasions, I will watch an anime that isn’t what it seems.  And when I do, it’s hard to tell if it’s by design or not.  Blue Sonnet is just such an anime… in many, many ways.

The anime wastes no time blasting the nonsense with its opening.  We’re treated to a tragic backstory set to rocking 80’s music.  It’s kind of like the Say Yes! video for Bubblegum Crisis, only even more inappropriate.

So uh, our heroine is walking down a dark alley alone at night because… that’s just what anime girls do (SEE: Silent Mobius) when she’s attacked, kidnapped, raped, and sold as a kind of forced prostitute, I guess.

But then her psychic powers awaken and she kills her rapist… then follows the gang member that sold her (I hesitate to call him a pimp when his actions are closer to a medieval slave owner) and she becomes some kind of superheroine.

What a wonderful lesson to teach our young girls.

Here’s the intro in full:

So, right after the intro we see Blue Sonnet in action.

For some reason, she’s walking alone in a wild west scenario…

…when suddenly, she’s attacked by tanks.  So she transforms to take them on.

There is no one else in the town, and there is no banter at all.  It should be utterly obvious to everyone that…

Yep, it’s a training simulator.

Our heroine, Blue Sonnet, works for the brilliant and blatantly evil Dr. Merikus.

Merikus tells Sonnet that she should prepare for a mission… a mission that he WOULD have assigned to her cool-looking predecessor, but he went rogue.  Not that she needs to know this, just saying.

Sometime later in Japan, two bland schoolgirls talk about the mysterious new exchange student.

So… yeah.  Fresh out of Generic Anime 101, we have Sonnet transferring to a Japanese high school.  She is immediately introduced to our other heroine, Lan.  No jacking in is involved, however.

When the two shake hands, Lan senses something off about the transfer student.

We then move on to the next cookie cutter scene: TENNIS!  Lan and Sonnet have a tennis match and Sonnet delivers an absurdly powerful spike straight to Lan’s head.  She manages to put her racket up to her face and stop the ball in time… then collapses.

When Lan hits the showers, she… has an obligatory shower scene, natch.

Er, so when she returns to the locker room to get dressed, she tells her friend that she just had her first period.

I’m sure this awkward bit of information is completely relevant.

When Lan returns home, she tells her guardian about her experience.  But not before he and his friend exposition about everything relating to their relationship and how it came about.  Because that’s just a natural thing to repeat to each other from time to time.

Lan talks about the new student and the strange things she senses from her.  Oh, and she can move things telekinetically now.

 

Then Lan has a bizarre dream where she’s stripped naked and paraded by druids in front of a statue of what I assume is some sort of Pagan diety.  This doesn’t get revisited.

By the way, remember when Merikus mentioned that predecessor of Sonnet’s that went rogue and is probably a good guy?

He’s in the same town.

While driving by Lan, Sonnet uses her telekinetic powers to drop a lit sign on her.  The uh… hero, I guess… Shuichi Torigai doesn’t want to expose his abilities, so he simply shouts a “watch out!” at Lan.  Lan responds by using her own telekinesis to move the sign harmlessly away.

So uh… Yeah.  For some reason, Sonnet is trying to kill this chick.  Or test her.  Either way, it’s pretty evil.

She’s the… villain?

Okay.  That’s new.  I mean, I don’t think it’s the first time we had an anime named after the villain rather than the hero… but didn’t the intro kinda present her as a hero?

Whatever.  Sonnet’s a villain.  We can work with this.  Moving on…

Lan, her friend, and Lan’s little brother Wataru are watching a Formula One race live.  Little do they know, also watching is Sonnet.  In the skybox just behind and above them.  Sonnet uses her powers to cause a crash.  She also uses her powers to look through impossible angles.

 

 

Lan awakens her powers once again to toss the car away from her.  She notices Sonnet but doesn’t have time to go after her, as Wataru is injured.

 

The next day, Dr. Merikus arrives in Japan, and we are told that Sonnet’s mission is to uncover the identity of the “Red Fang” and apprehend it.  Also, they meet up with a fellow with an amazing mustache.

It doesn’t take long before their limo is attacked by a random biker gang, complete with Mad Max style spiked shoulder pads.  Because… those guys are totally all over Japan.

 

 

As soon as Merikus gives the psychic signal, Sonnet turns on her would-be captors and…

Uh… wow, holy crap.

So uh… we already kinda knew Sonnet was crazy-strong, so we really didn’t need this scene to establish that, making it utterly pointless.

In the next scene, we find out Lan’s guardian is a writer and has some reason to be investigating whatever company Merikus just allied with.  Because he has to be important to the plot somehow, right?

The next day, Sonnet is approached by a couple of ridiculously over-the-top thugs.

Sonnet considers murdering them, but decides it probably isn’t worth the effort to go all-out against weaklings like them… so she’ll probably just maim them.  But before she settles on a course of action, it’s classmates to the rescue!

Oh hey, time for another cliche… Inviting the new girl to eat lunch on the rooftop.

Sonnet muses that she never felt anything like this before.

Stop.

Seriously, stop.

Sonnet is a psychic with cybernetic enhancements.  SHE IS NOT A ROBOT.  She is a human being.  We saw her freaking backstory.  She was a student probably in her mid teens before her powers awakened.  You’re honestly telling me that HER ENTIRE LIFE UP TO THAT POINT was so depressing that she NEVER felt the simple happiness of sharing a meal with classmates that she obviously feels superior to?

No.

NO.

You just went with a robot character archetype, changed her character so she was a cyborg, and then COMPLETELY FORGOT THAT SHE WASN’T A ROBOT ANYMORE.  That’s the only way I can make sense of that.

Anyway, the fact that she felt too much happiness caused her to collapse, and Merikus had to show up at the school to prevent anyone from examining her body.

Speaking of examining her body…

Anyway, a teacher barges in mid-examination and notices that something’s way off about Sonnet.

So uh… they totally panic and use Sonnet’s powers on the teacher, causing her to scream in pain.  Which of course alarms the concerned students outside.  So they come up with a brilliant, non-suspicious plan: mind control.

Then to make absolutely certain that the teacher can’t reveal Sonnet’s terrible secret, Merikus tells Sonnet to force her to commit suicide.  Because that’s not suspicious at all.  Sonnet protests, saying she’s just an innocent bystander, but fuck it.  Merikus.

So uh… the teacher goes to the roof and jumps to her death.  Way to go.

At home, Lan is told by Wataru that their guardian was in an accident.  Lan decides to go to him with some men who claim to be policemen.

The notPolicemen shove Lan into a room in a ship.  Inside that room is a bomb.

Basically, they’re dead certain Lan is the Red Fang, and if they’re right, she’ll manifest her powers before the bomb kills her.  And if they’re not, that means she was in fact not a witch but a pure maiden who died doing God’s work, I guess.

Well, at the very last second, Lan teleports out.  The people who kidnapped her were watching this via camera, BTW, so they saw the teleport.  Now they have proof that she’s the Red Fang!  But… for some reason Merikus needs more proof… not that he ever explains what that proof is… and regardless, his plans are still to capture Lan.

Anyway, Lan conveniently teleports in front of her guardian, and they’re met with Wataru and Shuichi Torigai, who is concerned for reasons he doesn’t fully explain.  Oh yeah, I should mention that Lan gave Wataru a blood transfusion, and this somehow gave him telepathic powers, which led Shuichi to Lan for the almost rescue.

Together, they go on the run.  Or rather, they split up on the run, leaving Wataru with Shuichi, which is about as good an idea as any.

Lan gets taken to the mansion of Dr. Onagara, an expert in the field of psychics… because that too is about as good an idea as any, especially if we’re interested in moving the plot forward.

Lan senses another presence looking at her… but then it turns out it’s just a kid.

The girl is Yumi Onagara, the doctor’s granddaughter.  She’s not important, but she’s cute, and apparently that’s all that matters.

Dr. Onagara subjects Lan to one of his experiments designed to draw out her latent powers.  It works too well, and Lan seems to remember some suppressed memories involving a plane crash and some wolves.  Dr. Onagara’s assistant shuts the experiment down and gets verbally chewed out for not being SCIENCE enough.

Onagara then calls a contact saying that he found a real psychic.  Then he says he’s not going to hand her over.  I’m sure that sounded like an absolutely brilliant thing to do at the time.  Guess who gets contacted about Onagara’s bragging?

Mericus.  Fuck yeah.

The night before the inevitable raid on Onagara’s mansion, Yumi comes to her grandfather about a premonition of them dying and Lan getting taken away.

The next day, we are subjected to the comic relief we haven’t been getting.

Dat typo.

Anyway, the existence of adult female underwear means there’s an adult female to wear them.  But they haven’t seen any women other than Yumi.

Whelp.  Turns out Onagara’s daughter Yuri is also being kept in the mansion… but no one talks about her much.  Also, due to her father not agreeing with her taste in men (and scaring off her last boyfriend after telling him she has psychic powers), she thought it was a good idea to attempt to kill him, then set her face on fire.  Unfortunately, both of them survived and now live together, and Yuri is blind and mute (but still a powerful psychic).

Stop.

To recap, we have a mansion owned by an old man.  He’s raising a little girl.  There is a mysterious woman being kept in the house.  Is there anything else you would like to rip off of Jane Eyre?

So uh… Mericus and Blue Sonnet arrive along with hired soldiers, and Sonnet has Lan immobilized because she’s a stronger psychic.  Not sure why this couldn’t have been settled way before it came to this.  As for everyone else in the mansion… Mericus doesn’t need them.  So he has them all shot.  Sonnet comments that KILLING THE LITTLE GIRL could be pointlessly evil, but… yeah, she gets shot.

Wataru sensed the danger, but he and Shuichi arrive too late.  But they manage to find Yuri, still alive somehow.  Oh, and the bullets shot at Yumi were stopped before they hit the skin.  Presumably thanks to Yuri’s powers.  Yet apparently they still caused Yumi to bleed internally and get knocked out.  Whatever.

Anyway, that’s the end of episode three.  Yeah, there were three episodes of this on the tape.  What do we have in store for episode four?

Emotion: 2
It was hard to find myself emotionally invested in ANY of the characters, and that… that takes effort.  Not even one.

Pleasure Rating: Guilty Pleasure
After all that, I have to say that it wasn’t necessarily bad.  Lazy, perhaps.  I couldn’t help but notice it reminded me of a little-known title called Mai, the Psychic Girl.  which had a similar psychic-on-the-run premise, but wasn’t nearly as entertaining.

Rewatchability: 2
It wasn’t particularly painful to watch, and it does have a few scenes that are pretty fun.  It’s pretty much one of a number of fairly forgettable mindless action anime of the era.

Music: Forgettable

Marketability: 2
The character designs can stand out, but they usually don’t.  Blue Sonnet’s design is utterly ridiculous and is missing something to really set her apart.  Out of all the characters, I would say only Lan in Red Fang mode strikes me as particularly appealing.

Overall, it was meh leaning on above average, but not quite breaking through.  It’s hard to really explain, but it seems like it was missing a certain something to really tie everything together nicely.  True, there are still two more episodes I have to watch, but I figure there should’ve been a strong hook in the first three, and the mystery of what Lan is just isn’t intriguing enough.  If I had to wager a guess, I’d say the piling up of nonsensical details just creates too much of a disconnect between the viewer and the world it’s trying to portray.