It's a good thing my suspension of disbelief has been finely honed over the years, otherwise I would have stopped watching anime a long time ago. The list of the not-quite-believable is long and incredulous as you might expect. Giant robots piloted by boy detectives, schoolgirl assassins, robot maids/war machines...do I need to go on?

However Daphne in the Brilliant Blue somehow manages to top them all by sinking to new depths of ridiculousness. And yet there aren't any giant robots, magical girlfriends or anything of the sort to be found here. In fact the post-post-post apocalyptic world that Daphne in the Brilliant Blue presents (mankind has created an island paradise after years of exile on the ocean floor) is actually fairly believable, if a little too idealistic.

This makes it all the sillier when Nereids - an organisation of bounty hunters that will take on any job so long as it pays - appear dressed as what can only be described as cheap hookers. Actually, most prostitutes in Amsterdam's red light district would probably be embarrassed to

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She must be too busy to notice the wardrobe malfuction

wear some of the costumes on display here. All of which would be perfectly acceptable if the series made a point of their silly attire, yet not once during entire the 24 episode series (actually 26 if you count the two surprisingly decent bonus episodes) does a single character say something along the lines of 'Why are you dressed like a cheap hooker? Does it help distract the bad guys or something?'.

Oh no, wait. It's to sell more DVDs, right? Now who exactly would be shallow enough to fall for that trick? *cough*

Which is a shame, because although Daphne in the Brilliant Blue is in no way a great series, it still deserves better. The story revolves around the shy and retiring Maia, a young girl hopeful of gaining entry to the UN-like organisation, the Ocean Agency. But when she unexpectedly fails the entrance exam her luck takes a turn for the worse and she finds herself evicted, pennyless and unemployed. Enter Nereids to the rescue who inexplicably offer her a job and a place

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These are the comic relief bad guys that pop up once in a while

to stay after a chance encounter and trial by fire induction in to their barely legal world of pseudo espionage and detective work.

If this all sounds very exciting, in truth the bulk of the story could frankly be told from start to finish in around 90 minutes and is little more than a distraction compared to the show's want for frivolous adventure. Occasionally we'll get a hint of the central storyline which involves Maia's attempts to recover her lost memories after a fatal accident, but in honesty there's little in the way of pay off until the final few episodes. The finale is actually quite well played and manages to spark some unexpected emotion from an otherwise vacuous series, but don't go expecting much from the previous twenty-odd.

Here it's all about entertainment, and Daphne in the Brilliant Blue manages this with varying degrees of success. When it does work it's not thanks to the disappointingly average animation and almost anonymous direction, it's thanks to the balanced characters and well judged pacing of the show. Maia

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A rarity: more clothes than skin. Just about.

may be the typical shy and retiring lead, but she's counter balanced by the general mayhem that makes up the rest of the Nereids branch; from the cash obsessed, gun toting maniac Gloria to the silent yet possibly homicidal Yu, it's a cliched yet relatively entertaining mix that works perfectly fine in the context of the series.

This might be all too familiar to fans of Burn Up or any such similar series, and sadly Daphne in the Brilliant Blue doesn't have quite enough going for it if you haven't already had your fill of T&A detectives. Or girls with guns or whatever you want to call it. If I were in a less generous mood I'd even lambast it for being too generic by far and maybe even representing everything that's wrong with anime - both valid arguments and equally applicable to Daphne in the Brilliant Blue. But instead I'm going to cut it some slack and say that this is nothing more than a very average anime with some very silly costumes.