Ranked #2370

Umi Monogatari ~Anata ga Itekureta Koto~

Man's relationship with the sea has always been one of awe and fear. Awe from its immensity and depth; fear from its power. Because we cannot explore it easily its mysteries that captivated our ancestors still resonate even today despite our technological advancements and control of our surface environment. Umi Monogatari ~Anata ga Itekureta Koto~ tells the tale of two worlds fated to be apart but still must coexist as part of the same planet.

Umi Monogatari's story is part magical adventure and part romance. Marin and Urin are mermaid sisters from the sea world. One day they discover a ring that has fallen from the sky world and they resolve to go to the surface to return the ring to its owner. They don’t know that the ring was thrown into the sea by the heartbroken girl Kanon, who has just broken up with her boyfriend. Marin soon finds Kanon and returns the ring but she is unwilling to accept it back. Through these actions, a dark power is accidently awoken and both Marin and Kanon discover their secret destinies.

I was quite satisfied with the way the story unfolded overall. Unlike a lot of similar series the show manages to stay on task for every episode and not devolve into a series of filler and service episodes only to return to the main story near the end. There aren’t any "Marin and Urin go to school" or "Mermaids at the Hot Springs" episodes which I found quite refreshing. For the most part the story is told at a very relaxed and pleasant pace. There isn’t a lot of action though so I suspect some people will find its pacing to be boring at times. However, I felt there was a lot of powerful and complex drama, particularly near the end that kept me interested throughout. While not all of this necessarily works it was still quite enjoyable. The ending was also satisfying and complete, wrapping up all of the important story elements.

Marin and Urin are both sweet and likable girls. They are naive to the surface world’s ways though perhaps not as much as they probably should have been. We get a decent amount of back-story on the relationship between the two sisters and their past but it still doesn’t feel like you really know them that well. Towards the series climax the drama surrounding them is much more compelling and powerful.

Kanon feels like the most emotionally deep character in the series. She is a bit of a dark character, especially when compared to someone like Marin who is full of love and energy. Kanon is a girl who wants to be liked but just doesn’t know how to show it to people. Often what she does show is the opposite of what she feels and leads people to have the wrong impression about her. She’s referred to quite a bit as "evil" which I found a bit strange. Perhaps it is something that just can’t be translated well because she’s not an evil person. Her character grows tremendously over the series as she is able to overcome some of her emotional scars and accept and receive love as well as return it.

The supporting cast is very well done. The story does a nice job of making many of them fairly deep and interesting while keeping their actual screen time to a minimum to focus on the main storyline. Kojima specifically, as he appears briefly in the first half of the series, he doesn’t speak and he is seen through Kanon's perspective. So by the time we actually see him talking, the audience will have her view about him. Though we find that Kanon's viewpoint is skewed from the truth do to her own personality quirks. For a character that probably had less than 15 minutes of screen time through the entire anime he left quite an impression.

As a villain I found Sedna to be intriguing. Despite not having a physical form, she is a terrifying presence. Mainly because you can relate to that dark inner voice that everyone hears from time to time. She remains suitably mysterious throughout until the truth of her existence is finally revealed.

Visually Umi Monogatari is very beautiful. Both the surface and sea worlds are lovely and the magical effects and action are gorgeously animated. The character designs are also cute and realistically proportioned. I think my favorite piece of animation though was the EN theme which was just completely adorable and matched the song perfectly. The OP theme is a bit sleepy but I thought was very fitting as an introduction to each episode.

I enjoyed this series quite a bit and would give it my recommendation. Though I suspect it will not necessarily appeal to everyone due to it's pacing and lack of action. If you are in the mood for a relaxing series with good drama and romance and some lite action, then you should give this Sea Story a try.
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Hans Christian Anderson once wrote a tale about mermaids. It turned out to be heralded as one of the greatest morality stories ever written as it addressed issues of self-sacrifice and the consequences of free will. While Umi Monogatari ~Anata ga Itekureta Koto~ is not as heavy-handed and despairing as Andersen's immortal offering to the literary world, it takes its own spin on similarly large themes. And mermaids, of course.

The story opens with two sisters, merfolk, who find a ring from the Sky World and make a mission to return it to its owner. But Umi Monogatari's story, while it opens here, actually begins before that. Stinging after being dumped by her boyfriend, the embittered Kanon throws a ring he gave her into the ocean. This is the event that causes the tides to turn and bring these girls together.

Umi Monogatari then becomes a mish-mash of genres, though primarily, it is a mahou shoujo anime. With that in mind, the story takes the typical "battle a day" approach with heavy dollops of fantasy. There is a romantic air that runs throughout the anime, but not the conventional meaning of romance. There is a beautiful mood of melancholy that shadows the entire anime despite its brightness and humour. Soon the episodic story-telling becomes a little more than just single moral dilemmas to be overcome. The anime's story starts to focus on the development of Kanon and Marin, and showing them each that being too reserved is no good just as being too unguarded is no good as well.

The series is rather bright and pleasant to the eye. There is the stunningly beautiful island setting filled with the lovely blues and greens of the ocean, the overgrowth of cane, shrubs and trees. If it is one thing this anime does is create a lovely ocean village that makes you want to loosen the tie around your neck and go on a vacation. The animation is fluid, and the action scenes end up looking more like dances than fights. Perhaps the biggest grouses with the art is that the characters often spoke underwater with their mouths open, and yet no bubbles appeared at all. Technicalities like that might not bother some viewers, but for the nit-picky, it is glaringly obvious that these merpeople are expelling air from their lungs in water and the water is unaffected. Also, for mermaids, they sure do lack tails. Those wanting more fish-like designs might be a little disappointed that these mermaids are more like human maidens than merfolk.

Possibly the greatest aspect of Umi Monogatari is the score. It is absolutely beautiful. The melancholy cello pieces sound like sad or stormy stories from the sea. It aches with sorrow that seems to transcend time and distance and strikes the listener on a deeper level. The piano pieces are soft, and complement the mood entirely of the anime. There are no modern techno sounds or poppy acoustics. Just traditional music that is composed very well. The OP and ED themes are extremely gentle, though perhaps the OP theme is a little TOO slow for being an OP theme song.

As per the characters, they are not the most complex or unique, but they certainly stand their own as individuals within the anime. Kanon is a paradox. She is nice and hardworking but very aggressive and cynical. Labelled by everyone as having a generally negative vibe (an "evil aura" they claim in jest), she is the very image of a teenage loner with a hostile attitude. But Kanon is not who everyone thinks her to be. If anyone pays her a little more notice, they will not see a girl trying to isolate herself from others, but a girl trying so hard to be accepted and be loved that she is willing to be the bad guy and do all the dirty work for them. But not everyone is blind to who Kanon truly is, as Marin very clearly sees that she is a good person.

Marin is a healer. Marin has a deep and profound love for everyone and everything that makes her very Messianic. Though this is extremely detrimental, as she leaves herself open to be manipulated and broken. The supporting cast is fairly decent, though none of them are particularly as strong as Kanon or Marin. The exception perhaps is Urin, who becomes a major plot point.

Umi Monogatari will not be winning any awards for innovation or unusualness. It is simply very, very pleasant. It is a spin on the magic girl genre, as the mahou shoujo in question is a lot different than what you would expect from traditional heroines. The series may best be enjoyed by connoisseurs of the genre who can recognise all the mahou shoujo tropes and see the way that the anime bypasses nearly all of them without losing the touch of magic or fantasy. It is an imperfect anime, but very much worth the watch if you can stomach something that is just... nice to watch. Surprisingly, many viewers do not like "nice".

Umi Monogatari ~Anata ga Itekureta Koto~ even has a satisfactory though unavoidable conclusion. It may not be as depressing as Anderson's vision and thoughts on inevitability, but it keeps in the grand tradition of morality stories between two worlds coming together. Most importantly, it seeks to address issues of identity.

Just as Kanon is herself and Marin is herself, the sky is the sky and the sea is the sea. They are two deep and separate entities. They only touch at one point, but the moment and place that they do is special. read more