Shiroi Suna no Aquatope

After leaving her idol career behind, Fuuka Miyazawa finds herself on a spontaneous flight to Okinawa instead of returning home to her pity party in Morioka. Bearing a heavy heart and nowhere to go, she aimlessly wanders around the area until she stumbles upon Gama Gama Aquarium—an aging aquarium on the verge of closing down.

With a lack of visitors and costly but necessary repairs needed to keep its doors open, the director is faced with shutting down the establishment for good by the end of the summer. The director's aquatic life-loving granddaughter—Kukuru Misakino—cannot stand the thought of the aquarium closing and is determined to make enough money by the end of the season to keep the doors open.

Seeing the unique magic of the aquarium, Fuuka begs Kukuru for a job; however, she soon finds that her lack of experience makes her more of a hindrance than anything else. At the same time, Kukuru realizes that her ambitious goal might be more than she can handle. With mounting pressure from all around them, will Kukuru and Fuuka be able to save the one place they hold close to their hearts?

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Misakino, Kukuru Main

Itou, Miku Japanese

Miyazawa, Fuuka Main

Aida, Rikako Japanese

Yakamashi, Kuuya Supporting

Azakami, Youhei Japanese

Kudaka, Karin Supporting

Lynn Japanese

Nakamura, Kai Supporting

Tsuchiya, Shinba Japanese

Haebaru, Chiyu Supporting

Ishikawa, Yui Japanese

Shimabukuro, Kaoru Supporting

Komatsu, Mikako Japanese

Teruya, Tsukimi Supporting

Waki, Azumi Japanese

Maeda, Akari Supporting

Yasuno, Kiyono Japanese

Yonekura, Marina Supporting

Touyama, Nao Japanese

Nagatani, Takayuki Producer

Ogata, Mitsuhiro Producer

Usukura, Ryuutarou Producer

Oomori, Shinji Producer

Reviews

Dec 16, 2021

Stark700

Recommended

They're back again. After taking a half year break, Shiroi Suna no Aquatope (aka The Aquatope on White Sand) aired as one of the key projects celebrating PA Works' rich body of accomplishments. Or can it be called that? After all, P.A. Works can be a hit or miss sometimes based on their track record. But one thing is for sure, P.A. Works is no stranger in the anime industry. They've produced memorable adaptations and original works all the way back in 2008. Founded since 2000, you can bet that the studio brings their wealth of experience again to Shiroi Suna no Aquatope.

Let me preface ... and say that if you're a familiar fan of P.A. Works, then you can easily tell the show dives into a slice of life story with coming of age themes. There's a bucket list to check off and of course, cute girls is among them. Shiroi Suna no Aquatope is yet, much more about cute girls doing cute things. It's about characters following their dreams and making a difference in their world. It all starts when an eighteen year old Fuka Miyazawa escapes to Okinawa and meets Kukuru Misakino, a high student with a passion for aquatic life. It doesn't take long for the two to become friends and she develops her own passion and finding her place at the Gama Gama Aquarium.

With slice of life stories like this, we have to realize and set expectations clearly. The show tells a realistic story that depicts how characters live. P.A Works is known for both their realism and fantasy naturalism. But for this anime, they decided to go with realism by telling their story, and focusing on the cast with their dreams. To the surprise of no one, Kukuru and Fuka represents characters that met by fate. The director obviously set up this show for the two main cast to meet through chance and added the texture of chasing a dream as part of the plot. Watching this anime made me realize how quickly Kukuru and Fuka became close together from the very start. Despite coming from different backgrounds, it's obvious the show wanted to see how both characters develop as a pair and individually. And let's just say, both characters learn a lot from each other. What's more important is how much the two characters affect each other in their own way. With Fuka's support, Kukuru discovers herself and continues to follow her dream regardless of any obstacles in her own. Similarly, Kukuru is able to show Fuka that there's a life outside of being an idol and that becoming part of the aquarium gives her new opportunities. That's what life is about, seeking opportunities, and following dreams.

With a total set of 24 episodes, the anime is structured in two parts with the first half taking place at the Gama Gama Aquarium. After certain circumstances, we get the second half of the story taking place at the Tingaara Aquarium. Despite the change in setting, the anime still retains its themes and knows no boundary about its love of aquatic life. From taking care of dolphins, nursing sea turtles, to cosplaying to attract an audience, every episode has its passion. To be honest, the anime does have its subtle yuri-tones but the relationship between Fuka and Kukuru eclipses so much more than that.

One thing I want to mention about Shiroi Suna no Aquatope is that while Kukuru and Fuka are the two characters that stand out the most, the rest of the cast seems to be here and there adapting their roles in the most safe way possible. What I mean is, the majority of the cast are introduced as who they are but receive little development overall. This is especially true in the second half of the show when the Tingaara Aquarium is introduced. Characters such as Karin, Chiyu, Kuuya, among others only get some involvement with the plot. After the first half of the show, it seems they are very much overshadowed by Fuka and Kukuru. Now, I don't know how the plot was created from behind the scenes but it became obvious that the director wanted to shift its attention entirely on the two main leads. It's just a shame that there's an overemphasis on Fuka and Kukuru than almost anything else.

But, don't let that distract from the gorgeous chereography and high quality stellar visuals. P.A. Works and their talent of crafting lustrious visuals is once again present in their latest work. It rewards fans with stunning quality of the aquarium waters to natural look of the outdoors. It remains that way throughout the series as there are no episodes with noticable drop in quality .Character designs are also decorated with simple yet mature look for its cast. Human emotions are protrayed with realistic expressions and every episode has its share of its behaviors. From a technical perspective, this is a breathtaking representation of classic P.A. Works anime and you're in for a treat.

If there's an answer to making a solid slice of life anime this year, then it's P.A. Works. From this original TV anime of 24 episodes, we see what their talent bought to us. And with Shiroi Suna no Aquatope, the show proved itself to be a simple yet effective story. It gave us a story that matters, a story that we can find ourselves relatable to, and a story that we can all share about following dreams.

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

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Dec 16, 2021

Gween_Gween

Mixed Feelings

A sudden weight on our shoulders comes when taking a decision about our future, the myths of following a straight path to success and happiness infect our decision-making by following a unique dream. The disruption of that dream by an external force is something that is bound to happen to most of us who decided to take a path, breaking the comfort zone of following an established and known path and leaving us in a multidirectional crossroad, obnubilating our sense of future. The Aquatope on White Sand tries to untie this assimilated conflict through the usage of a mysterious yet recognizable common place, the marine ... world. By using a set of parallels coming from the experiences that the animal world can grant to us, while also applying a deeply human form of relationships and communication, the anime delivers a compassionate and warm place to fall into, installing simple yet helpful perspectives of how to confront the different paths, allowing the spectator to break free of judgement and fear to the unknown. Sadly, the anime is far from being perfect, with a concrete problem coming from the inconsistency of its building blocks, which concludes in uninteresting climaxes, redundancy issues, and wasted storylines that didn’t amount to anything.

The first impact from the series come from its appealing and full of life color palette, the white of the sand, the blue of the sea, and the green of the nature. The color palette let the anime to intersect with the common place of Okinawa, and to generalize, with the idea of being in a subtropical island. Okinawa is a place that is heavily affected by human action, coral bleaching has severely affected their ecosystem, and the purposeful intertwining of the story and the setting through the experience of the marine life make some sense out of it, forwarding a wish to protect the wildlife. The full of life landscapes are made so to fully appreciate the beauty of nature, using didactic representations of the biological ecosystems as a manner to express love to the theme and deepening the characters. The animation is sometimes rough, which can be justified by the complex and distinctive designs of the characters. The marine representation is a hit or miss, the penguins, otters and turtles look gorgeous, but the fish tends to pop up too much, getting a sudden contrast that shouldn’t be there and look unnatural. Overall, the intoxicating warm of the first impact provokes a beautiful invitation to deal with the unknown story, melting us up with the green and drowning our view with an intense deep blue.

The story comes then with two main characters, but it can be assumed that Kukuru is the most relevant one, since it grabs most of the screentime. And I could say that Kukuru is the embodiment of the inconsistency of the series, being particularly controversial because of its strange childish wrongdoings, almost like a person that has never been held accountable of anything. Of course, the main character faces the broken dreams mentioned before, through the departure from her childhood place to the capability of facing new issues, dealing with the idea of letting her character absorb new perspectives, breaking the walls of judgement and stubbornness. Many questions come around with her position, like the validity of our past path as the only possible path, or the adversity of the unknown, or the sometimes unavoidable meddle into the wrong conflicts. To do so, the series uses an extravagant metaphorical perspective about the issues, by using parallels between the struggle of the marine life and the struggles of Kukuru, which is one of the strong aspects of the show. The development of the conflicts of her are a fantastic way to study and teach the symbiotic relationships inside the marine life, the complexities of their mystery, and similarities of their behavior to the human nature (Watch the Orangutan School for something like this) and dealing with her problems through fully-fledged emotional impact. Examples like the obvious parallel with the turtles hatching, the lonely dolphin, the meddling crab, the impact of changing to a new environment portrayed by the penguin, it is both educational, entertaining, and provoking. Sadly, the resolutions of her character are either unrealistic or forced, providing just cop outs to keep the plot afloat because there were either no time or no intent to do something more fruitful and credible, which makes the whole experience a double-faced sensation, we have a full of life development, and the climax of the conflict is a montage of words and events, flat as a stingray.

This duality comes with Fuuka and the incorporation of the other characters too, and it is quite amazing how consistently disappointing the development of some of them is. Fuuka has the reverse problem, her conflicts completely pale in comparison to the main character, coming normally from her emotional fragility, and the series doesn’t provide her enough screentime, but her resolutions are always emotionally strong, by intertwining her position with the main character and giving us lyrically expressive conversations, touchy and delicate. The cast has this same issue, some part of the cast, like Chiyu or Tsukimi, have interesting appearances with a purposeful proposition, either by validating the conception of a new perspective and understanding of the unknown, or by being a bridge of communication with a non-aquarium related person, deploying a projection of the struggles in another area. Then, characters like Kuuya or the guy who just talk in marine lingo are just absurd comedy device that barely works, and the later one main feature is being snubbed out of a completely deserved scholarship, which is kind of sad.

The story is then in a limbo. Through 24 episodes we explore the dreams and the parallels, integrating a bland but welcomed ecological message in the way. The first cour is about keeping the dream alive, while the second cour is about dealing with the shattered dream and going forward, and while the idea behind of such structure is alright, the series extended itself way too much, padding some episodes with some redundancy or delivering half-assed narratives or explanations to keep the episode count. The main problem is that the stories are not slowly building but approaching either at full speed or slow-motion. The full speed manifest through the latest episodes, where Fuuka and Kukuru resolved their struggles in the most absurdly rushed way, by imposing a strange sensation of injustice to the viewer. The slow-motion defines the middle part, where barely anything but a good redemption arc was obtained, filled with misery porn that didn’t achieve anything powerful. The full speed also comes in the final part of the first cour, when the hopelessness invaded the story, chaotic but full of expression. The slow-motion defines the mid part of the first cour, when they decided to extend the concept of Gama Gama not being able to stay afloat with the properties of a gum, through a bunch of backstories that didn’t amount anything but maybe a tearjerker or two.

I suppose that the score could be the conclusion of the review, the series is average, doing some excellent episodes and some plain, awkward, or even enraging ones. While the series failed at many points because of its own ambition or rigid structure, the overall feeling is that this is worth to watch if you are into the position that the story tries to explore. If you are lost, nostalgic, or overwhelmed, then the story can fit an interesting niche to allow you to explore your own emotions and have another outlook of life. If you are not into such position, then the story can’t but feel extremely dry, with failing comedy and please cry drama, kind of ironic since the theme is water.

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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Dec 17, 2021

SanaeK10

Not Recommended

Aquatope is one of those pretty but boring shows that PA Works seems to enjoy putting out. Except this time with even less likable characters to string the whole thing along.

Aquatope has two distinct halves, one focused on Kukuru struggling in vain to save Gama Gama, her grandfather's aquarium, and a second half focused on her working at a large aquarium and acclimating to the conditions there. While not too dissimilar in tone and content, both halves still felt very different from each other but not in a good way. The second half especially has some pretty lousy workplace conditions, highlighted by a terrible manager ... and Kukuru herself being incredibly stubborn and immature. If anything, Kukuru being very unlikable is the biggest detriment to the whole show. I'm old now, and I used to be in similar positions to Kukuru when I was younger, but for God's sake people change in harder times. Maybe if this aired 10 years ago I'd have been more receptive to it, but now from my perspective seeing Kukuru act the way she does is no different to seeing a junior employee mess up and complain all the time.

The other episodes, few as they are, that turn the focus away from Kukuru to our deuteragonist, Fuuka, are more enjoyable, though not by much. If anything, Fuuka's journey from a failed idol to working in an unfamiliar environment is given very little focus and screentime after the first few episodes. And while I do appreciate the show does resolve and keep the drama down to a minimum, with the exception being the agonizing long workplace drama, with very little actually going on in the show, it becomes very difficult to even establish a connection to the characters. No romantic development beyond some light teasing and the "FRIENDSHIP/JUST BEST FRIENDS" bullshit is mildly frustrating. And the magical realism thing teased in the very beginning and is so much tied to Gama Gama gets zero payoff in the end. It's no different if they had attached a hidden camera onto a random aquarium worker and animated it.

A Slice of Life live and dies on how interesting it can make even the most mundane activities seem, or how tightly it depicts the connections between the various characters in it. Aquatope's biggest failings is that it achieves neither, despite its impressive production values. It may make you want to take a vacation to Okinawa, but definitely not work there.

4/10

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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	Poll: Shiroi Suna no Aquatope Episode 5 Discussion ( 1 2 3 ) Stark700 - Aug 5, 2021	102 replies	by SerrainV »» Sep 7, 4:09 PM
	Poll: Anyone else getting a little bit sick of it? GakutoDeathGlare - Sep 10, 2021	48 replies	by SakurakoMikage »» Aug 23, 11:03 PM
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	Poll: Shiroi Suna no Aquatope Episode 22 Discussion ( 1 2 ) Stark700 - Dec 2, 2021	75 replies	by KursedArcana »» Aug 1, 1:05 PM