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.