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| Overall | Art | Animation | Character Design | Music | Series Story | Episode Story | Reviewer | |
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| Buy | 9 | 8 | 9 | 8 | 8 | 8 |
 Ggultra2764
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[series:4341#1552] |
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(Buy-/ Rent+) Aquatope on White Sand focuses on two teenage girls with their involvement working in an aquarium. The first, Fuka Miyazawa, is a former idol attempting to sort out what she wants to do with her life until she comes across the Gama Gama Aquarium. The second, Kukuru Misakino, is the assistant director of Gama Gama to support her grandfather in running the aquarium, which is struggling financially with attracting visitors. The two girls develop a bond as both work at Gama Gama and undergo their different developments with the tribulations each face. Aquatope is essentially a slice-of-life series with some coming of age drama elements in exploring the developments faced by Kukuru and Fuka. Despite what I may cover from the plot summary above, the series devotes more focus on Kukuru’s developments as they are more central to the show’s story developments. Kukuru is shown to have a strong passion for learning about and preserving the aquatic life within the aquarium that she maintains. At the same time though, she is still a teenager dealing with her own growing pains as she is trying to prevent the aquarium’s closure due to the strong emotional connection she has to it, while ignorant of some of the realities involved with maintaining things for it such as generating business and the building infrastructure. Getting over this hump serves as the major crux of Kukuru’s development for the first half of Aquatope and making for the more heavier drama in the title’s story. There are points she does selfishly do things to try forcing things to go her way, but learns reality will not always allow things to be as such and she must learn to work with the circumstances of life as best she can, making her character story rather relatable. While Fuka’s story focus has some relatability in regards of her struggle to sort out what kind of future she wants, her developments are a bit more straightforward as a result of Kukuru’s greater character focus. She is a pleasant character and the bond she develops with Kukuru is a touching and genuine one. But as she largely serves as more of a pillar of support for Kukuru as she better understands the situation with Gama Gama, she doesn’t get equal focus and development time. Plus with the handling of her character story for the first half of Aquatope, it felt like this was resolved and her return for the title’s second half seemed almost unnecessary at points since she seemed to mostly exist again to serve as emotional support for Kukuru. I mention a second half of this and this one will require me to dabble into some spoilers. Essentially, Aquatope does a timeskip eight months after the events of its first half to explore Kukuru now in the working world working at a larger aquarium. As an adult, Kukuru’s main conflict comes from learning to compromise with her personal desires and others to maintain work at the aquarium as she becomes part of its marketing department due to her prior experience as Gama Gama’s assistant director. The series does a solid job dabbling into the challenges that come with marketing operations with getting the finer details and all parties involved all together to make major events and opportunities a success for the aquarium, challenges Kukuru has to learn to sort through. As far as other supporting characters go in Aquatope, they are a bit of a mixed bag. While many of them are rather likable as far as their personalities go, they don’t have much to show in the way of dimension as they largely exist to support and assist Kukuru and Fuka with whatever challenges they are dealing with, with this applying to both halves of the series. Probably the only supporting character I took an interest to was Chiyu Haebaru, an aquarium attendant with serious aspirations on wanting to learn to work in her profession and is initially dismissive of Kukuru due to assuming she isn’t taking a career in the field seriously. But despite her seemingly hostile character, the series shows there is more to her character beneath the surface and helps add an interesting angle to the second half of the series with exploring work-life balance. The other angle to the series I also have some gripes with is the supposed supernatural angle for it. There are instances that Kukuru, Fuka, and others who visit Gama Gama experience mysterious illusions involving either the aquatic life in the aquarium or flashbacks of their past, as well as some cameos from a trickster spirit known as a kijimuna. This angle to the series largely felt like a gimmick for me as it doesn’t add much to the story and clashes with the more believable, down-to-earth storytelling that Aquatope largely dabbles into with its characters. In short, Aquatope is a solid series with its exploration of Kukuru’s character undergoing some trials of growing up while experiencing the passion of working in aquariums and exploring different angles of being in the working world within this sort of environment. This said, the series still has its fair share of hiccups that bring down its quality some involving some elements of Fuka’s role in the story, not doing much to explore more with the supporting cast, and the supernatural elements of the series contributing little to the story. Still with what else the series otherwise offers up, it’s still a relatable slice of life series exploring the challenges of looking for and being in a career one greatly desires. Last updated Monday, January 01 2024. Created Monday, January 01 2024. | ||||||||
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[series:4341#628] | ||||||
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(Watch+ or Rent-) (All episodes watched): Fuuka is demoralized after her idol career comes to an ignominious end, and rather than face embarrassment at home she flies to Okinawa on a whim. A fortune teller accurately describes her as an 'insular, studious type without street smarts and who can't say no' (a clever way of developing her personality). I thought I detected something magical and mystical about this aquarium--there would have to be for a young girl, Kukuru, to be its director, wouldn't there? But I was imagining too much. Episode two clarifies the premise somewhat: Kukuru is the temporary director of a struggling small aquarium that is expected to go out of business soon. Rather than being 'magical and mystical', as I had first thought, the aquarium is quite realistic and we learn a bit about how aquariums function. And there was nothing wrong with Fuuka's performance as an idol, rather she nobly sacrificed her chances to help a fellow performer. That revelation sort of irked me; it sort of makes her seem like a goody two-shoes sort of girl when I think a genuinely flawed one (like the rest of us) would have been more interesting. Fuuka would rather keep a low profile but her modest fame keeps catching up to her. The two girls come clean with each other about where they stand. The theme of this show is supposed to be dreams; Kukuru's is to keep the aquarium going, Fuuka's was not yet clear. Does she want to become an idol again? Or will her dream become the same as Kukuru's? It was too soon to be certain, but I got the feeling that this just might be the star series of the Summer 2021 season; at least the competition would be weak. I just hoped all the supernatural elements would 'click' and the show would both make some sense and be fun to watch. The artwork and animation was sharp and high quality. Definitely an original plot, after no less than four isekai series this season. One reason I got the distinct impression that this show would have a fanciful side was that some sort of gremlin-like creature (which apparently no one can see) appears several times. It seems to be known as a 'Kijimonaa' and these like to play tricks on people. It shows up a couple times but we still have no idea what it may have done or may do in the future to affect the situation at the aquarium. If little more than magic or the supernatural will be involved, can the girls really claim credit if they manage to save the aquarium? In the end, the Kijimonaa never says a word or directly affects anything, so I was left wondering why it had been included at all. Fuuka's mother tracks her down, but contrary to what I was expecting she is a fairly sympathetic person rather than the domineering parent that all too many anime characters have. They make a deal to allow Fuuka to remain in Okinawa for a while. I didn't really see why two children needed to be introduced in episode seven; it seemed unlikely that they would play any part in the ultimate fate of the Gama Gama aquarium. Maybe just as filler? Kukuru keeps hearing predictions that the aquarium will close sooner or later, sometimes even from people who she had thought were enthusiastic supporters. It was beginning to look like nothing less than a miracle would be needed to save it. Is that where the Kijimonaa would come into the story? (no). But to have all the girls' hard work come to nothing and win this critical battle via magic wouldn't exactly be inspiring or admirable. It might be about the only way it could actually happen, however. Things seemed to be lagging a bit compared to the tension of the early episodes. In a sense, the supernatural plays a part after all. A number of people have experienced strange 'illusions' while at the aquarium; these have been mentioned before, but didn't seem all that important. Kukuru hopes to use them as a desperate measure to keep Gama Gama open. But, like the Kijimonaa, these illusions ultimately make little or no difference to how the story plays out. Fuuka has a difficult choice to make after getting a phone call from an old comrade from her idol group. I had figured that the battle to keep Gama Gama open would be the central theme of this show and would go on 'til the end, and wasn't exactly looking forward to that. But no, the plot goes off in another direction at the halfway point. That is both refreshing and confusing; apparently the girls will need a new dream or dreams, but I have little idea what those will be. If she's going back to Tokyo anyway, why didn't Fuuka accept the fantastic opportunity that was offered to her? It wasn't exactly a lifelong commitment, and Kukuru herself had recommended she do so. This story does not make complete sense. I liked the first episode of the second season, in which Kukuru starts her new job at the much bigger Nigaraa aquarium. This place is more like a corporation than the mom and pop sort of business that Gama Gama was, and after being assigned a public relations job that she feels unqualified for amidst strangers she feels disoriented and demoralized. It seems all too realistic. Her lifeline is the several Gama Gama employees, including Fuuka, that have moved there along with her. Still, I sort of wonder where this is all going, because no critical conflict that absolutely must be resolved has been made clear. Slice of life rather than drama, I guess. Would the Kijimonaa step in at the last moment to fix everything? But that would be totally out of step with the otherwise realistic theme of struggling to overcome real world problems. Kukuru tries to defuse problems by understanding where other people are coming from and making friends with them rather than losing her temper and/or giving up. This seems to be a skill that is prized in Japan. Yes, 'Slice of life' is an appropriate keyword for this show, in the sense that it seems to be more about solving little day-to-day problems than some big conflict which might have serious implications. I wasn't sensing much of a climax approaching as the show passed the 3/4 complete mark. About the worst thing that I could conceive of happening would be Kukuru giving up and quitting her job at Nigaraa, which wouldn't be the end of the world. Indeed, she is increasingly becoming disillusioned with her job and feeling less and less satisfaction from it. Fuuka, on the other hand, seems perfectly satisfied with her position and gets relatively little attention. Even a visit by the girl who she allowed to replace her as an idol doesn't stir much regret within her. So, she's at peace but peace is kind of boring. I was tiring of this story at this point, but episode 21 reinvigorates things somewhat. A demoralizing event leaves Kukuru feeling burnt-out, but she discovers a new source of inspiration: a small aquarium much like the now defunct Gama Gama. This is obviously the sort of place where she would like to work, not Nigaraa. But, based on all the anime I had seen before, I couldn't help thinking that her giving up on her place at Nigaraa would be seen as an intolerable betrayal of the ganbare spirit and wouldn't be allowed to happen. Sure enough, in the end the experience does more to reinvigorate her determination to do the job that someone else has chosen for her than to choose a new one for herself. Seems more like 'conforming' than chasing a dream to me, but not everyone can mold the world into their own image. Time was rapidly running out for this two-season series yet I was still getting little sense of any sort of climax approaching. In episode 23 we finally learn where the word 'aquatope' comes from. An opportunity presents itself, and Fuuka (who has seemed to me to play second fiddle to Kukuru for a good while) goes for it, but is torn by a certain doubt. I guess this will be her 'dream', but it came out of nowhere and was achieved all in the space of one episode, and while Fuuka had been becoming more interested in topics like oceanic ecology there hadn't been much foreshadowing that she was in any way dissatisfied with her present position. On the contrary, she had seemed perfectly satisfied while it was Kukuru who was having problems at work. ...and the story comes to an end. Everybody's fine, nothing to worry about—but it felt kind of disappointing. There's no crisis, no climax other than Fuuka and Kukuru making some important but not exciting decisions. The Kijimonaa briefly appears but nobody can see it and it doesn't really intervene, so... what for? Visitors to Nigaraa experience a collective 'illusion', but it's basically a reflection of their wonder and curiosity this time. I guess in the end the message is more of what a great place aquariums are, not that the main characters have achieved amazing dreams. Eh, could have been much worse. But if I had known that I'd be getting this sort of reward for watching for two seasons, I'm not sure I would have. Last updated Sunday, December 26 2021. Created Monday, July 12 2021. | ||||||||
Other Sites
| Name | URL |
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| Official Japanese Series Web Site | https://aquatope-anime.com/ |
