Daphne in the Brilliant Blue

"A tree planted near the water bears fruit, but only when its time is right.
Its leaves won't ever wither, and it brings prosperity to all."

—Maia Mizuki

In an unspecified future year, long after global warming has inundated the world, a young girl named Maia Mizuki is expecting to get a job at the prestigious Oceans Agency. She's an obvious shoo-in for one of the limited number of positions available, having passed the grueling qualifying exam (which is offered only once a year) with flying colors. But she is inexplicably rejected and within days finds herself not only jobless but homeless, too. An amnesiac orphan whose only living relative, her grandfather, died shortly before, Maia has no one to turn to, and faster than she can comprehend she finds herself stumbling penniless (thanks to a pickpocket) through the seedier side of the city she's lived in all her life. And just when it seems like things can't get worse, a criminal takes her hostage and she is shot by the women chasing him.

Maia comes to some hours later on the couch of Nereids ("Neres" in the original Japanese), a troubleshooting agency which is staffed by the women. Manipulated into helping with their case against the criminal and her brother, Maia shows quick wit and ingenuity in the field and soon finds herself offered both a job and a place to live at Nereids. Although her days seem to alternate between boring scut work and life-threatening danger, and her coworkers are often rude and volatile, Maia (to her surprise) starts to find a certain satisfaction in her job -- although she is intent on reapplying to the Oceans Agency when the next set of positions open up in a year's time.

But when a company vacation to tropical Siberia Island seems to awaken memories she had thought forever lost, Maia begins to wonder what secrets her forgotten past holds, and what they may do to her hopes for the future.

Tropes used in Daphne in the Brilliant Blue include:
  • After the End: The story takes place after the world's been flooded. Only five or so cities exist.
  • Against the Setting Sun
  • Amazon Brigade: Nereids
  • American Accents: used liberally
  • Arc Words: The "tree by the water" incantation, "Daphne"
  • Armor Is Useless: The staff of Nereids -- including Maia -- all strip down to disturbingly skimpy and improbable outfits when they go into the field. Half-heartedly justified by the characters needing to dive underwater frequently.
  • Badass Normal: Pretty much all the adult women in Nereids
  • Barbie Doll Anatomy
  • Bifauxnen: Tsukasa, pretending to be a guy in one episode
  • Big Fancy House
  • Bird Run: Maia does it as a child.
  • Blasting It Out of Their Hands
  • Boke and Tsukkomi Routine: Gloria and Yu; Yu prefers a Boot to the Head to the Paper Fan of Doom, though.
  • Catch Phrase: Gloria's "Ha-ha and ha!", at least in the English dub. Maia's little "why me?" moan/whimper may count as well.
  • Charles Atlas Superpower: Yu
  • Cool Ship: The Yomogi-1, a submarine the girls "acquired" from a certain band of dumb criminals.
  • Debut Queue
  • Die Hard on an X: two-part episode "Die Hard, Play Hard"
  • Door Step Baby: Left on Yu's doorstep. Ultimately subverted.
  • The Dulcinea Effect: Gender flipped. Shizuka finds a guy injuried near trash cans and quickly becomes attached to and protective of him. The guy's a con artist and calls this his "lonely engimatic spy" routine.
  • Evil Laugh
  • False Camera Effects: Particularly the Lens Flare.
  • The Family for the Whole Family: The team of half-siblings -- see Running Gag.
  • Fan Service: Vast, vast amounts of it.
  • Finagle's Law: Vast, vast amounts of it.
  • First Kiss: Gloria and Tsukasa
  • Five-Man Band (Women, actually):
  • Flashback to Catchphrase: In the eleventh episode, showing Maia's recovery from her amnesia, her grandfather recites the "tree near the water" incantation when she's upset about her lack of progress recovering.
  • Flung Clothing: In particular, Yu is shown in the opening credits literally ripping her outer clothing off to reveal her "work clothes".
  • Freaky Friday Flip: Gloria and Maia, in one of the Omake episodes.
  • The Future
  • Gondor Calls for Aid: Every ally (and Friendly Enemy) comes to Maia's aid when she's kidnapped.
  • Government Conspiracy: Maia is from a city that was sealed off by the other cities. And by 'sealed off' I mean they stationed submarines at the gates and shot anyone coming out. It was because of a plague outbreak they didn't want to spread to other cities. Afterwards they said it merely 'failed to surface'. Maia could reveal the truth if she recovered her memories and this would be 'embarrasing' so they make her life shit.
  • Hair Colors: Shizuka's purple; Rena's red and Gloria's blonde may well be "real", though.
  • Here We Go Again: Subverted: In the last minutes of the last episode, we see the Ocean Agency exam held a year after the one that started the series; a girl who appears to be Maia with the same applicant number clocks in with as good a score on the field exercise as Maia had a year previously -- but the moment she reports in, we can see it's someone else entirely, and Tsukasa subsequently worries about Maia making the application deadline.
  • Hidden Eyes: Maia, several times.
  • Holographic Terminal: Desktop and larger systems all seem to use projected screens rather than physical ones.
  • Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Many episode titles are plays on the names of famous movies or literary works: "The Old Kook and the Sea", "Anger's Aweigh", "Die Hard, Play Hard", "Five Heavily Armed Women and a Baby"; this editor is unsure if this is specific to the dub.
  • Impossibly Cool Clothes
  • Laser Sight
  • Limited Wardrobe: Almost every character who appears in more than one scene. Oddly, minor character Tsukasa seems to have a realistically diverse wardrobe. Even more oddly, the contents of Maia's closet are shown to be extensive and widely varied -- but she only ever wears either the Nereids Battle Bikini or a somewhat formal-looking pink-and-white dress -- or both at once.
  • Mascot: Mammo, for Siberia City.
  • Master of Disguise: Tsukasa, who manages to pass as a boy and Maia at different points.
  • The Men in Black: They work for the Ocean Agency and kidnap Maia near the end.
  • Mistaken for Dying: Gloria.
  • New Eden: Variant, a century before the opening of the story.
  • Not with the Safety On, You Won't: How Maia was captured in the second episode.
  • Panty Fighter (Effectively)
  • Promotion to Parent: Maia's grandfather is actually her brother who defrosted sixty years before she did.
  • Running Gag: The gang of criminals who are all half-siblings but look nothing like each other.
    • That Other Wiki lists several:
      • Rena deducting pay off salary for any botches, usually Gloria or Maia.
      • Yu hitting Gloria when in disagreements.
      • Maia hitting or falling on her head.
      • Maia being kidnapped by the Wong-Chang-Lee brothers as bait.
      • Yagi being terrified by Yu's presence.
      • Hanaoka's daughter getting angry at her father.
      • May and the Wong-Chang-Lee brothers taking the submarine back from Nereids who do the same.
  • Siblings in Crime: The Wong-Chang-Lee brothers.
  • Sick Sad World: For every scene of someone happy, there's five or so of something bad.
  • Stock Footage: Various establishing shots and hovercraft race sequences, among others.
  • Stripperiffic: Just about everything any of the adult women wear.
  • Surrounded by Idiots: Rena feels this way at times.
  • Survival Mantra: The page quote.
  • Suspended Animation: Maia and her big brother.
  • There Are No Therapists: Averted -- we see a pair of psychologists who work with the young amnesiac Maia for two years. Then again, they are part of the conspiracy trying to ensure that Maia's memory never comes back.
  • True Companions: No matter how much grief Nereids gives Maia, they really do care about her deep down. Milly and Tsukasa even more so because they don't give her such grief.
  • Underwater City: They play an important role in the backstory of the world of the series. And in Maia's backstory, as well.
  • Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Nobody ever seems to notice the extremely skimpy outfits the Nereids wear while on the job. Possibly justified by the fact that the cities all have tropical climates where it's summer all year; skimpy clothing is presumably common (although we never see anyone else in clothes quite that skimpy...).
  • Whole-Episode Flashback: Episode 11, "The Long Stay".
  • X-Ray Sparks
  • Zany Scheme: Several of them.
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