Story:
Wavering in the prospects in her idol career, Fuuka Miyazawa runs away from home to the island of Okinawa as a way to get away from everything and just take a breather not knowing what else to do. Here, she wanders aimlessly to the point of even sleeping on the beach on her first night before encountering the small, run-down aquarium known as ‘Gama Gama Aquarium’. Here, she meets the feisty and hard-headed girl named Misakino Kukuru, who swears that she’ll save this family aquarium of hers that’s on the verge of bankruptcy. In an outburst, Fuuka asks if she could work at the aquarium, getting a job there as an attendant as the two forge ahead on a journey to repair their dreams and/or find their paths in life.
At least that’s what the show wants you to think. I believe the intent that P.A. Works had when they were making Aquatope was to tell a story about a pair of lost girls that were trying to find their path through life with the use of fish and aquariums as its setting. From a broad perspective I think the show does give off that impression, but a lot of the smaller kinks when parsing through episode to episode really makes that idea fall apart.
This becomes more evident with the two halves of the show. As with all 2 cour shows that P.A. Works produces, there’s a significant difference in storytelling between part A and part B that Aquatope really does not stick the landing for.
Starting with roughly the first 13 episodes, Part A is what I regard as the better half as it’s got a more centralized focus that starts with Kukuru’s determination to save her family’s aquarium in spite of its aging equipment and building structure with Fuuka going along for the ride. In this part, every episode is basically a new scheme where the workers at Gama Gama attempt to raise the visitor count before the foreclosure, coupled with some character moments here and there that help build up the cast in a meaningful way whether or not it’d be requiring a skill that one of the side members have or just focusing on them because they previously hadn’t gotten much time devoted to them.
Part B on the other hand feels like a significantly messier show that doesn’t have an end goal and just kind of has the characters meander back and forth between different topics and significantly smaller subplots that may or may not have anything to do with the two girls that we’re following. It also has an indeterminate timeskip which really doesn’t tell us the passage of time all that well considering it seems like nothing about anyone has actually changed in a significant way. Does it finish with a meaningful end? I’d argue so, but the payoff doesn’t feel as genuine as it could’ve been on account of the sheer number of ham-fisted endings that are supposed to be resolutions to character arcs but come off as shallow time-skip futures that just kind of gives only good endings.
Notice how in spite of the show having enough content to fill up two cours of material, I never once touch up on the girls’ significance in the stories beyond just occasionally appearing every now and then or being the starting gun for a lot of things. That’s because Aquatope really isn’t what the showrunners intended for the series to be. A lot of the show’s runtime is devoted to filling up the miscellaneous character stories for the coworkers that these two girls are surrounded by, a trait that continues all the way to the end of the show where they’re still throwing out some character backstories because these girls and the audience just NEED to know what drives everyone to work. The issue with that is, none of that really matters. Despite being the title characters, both Kukuru and Fuuka have such staggeringly little character time to themselves that their arcs feel incomplete and unsatisfactory. Especially in the second half, there never seems to be a clear goal that the girls are working towards, and even less time towards the girls taking a step back and doubting what they’re doing as a way to ask themselves “What am I doing with my life?” Which is something that they as young adults really should be doing if they were trying to portray a story about two girls meeting in a shattered dream, only to rebuild themselves in ways that would make them happy and give them something to work towards. I’m aware this character arc actually does happen for a bit, but it’s so minor that it acts as more of a footnote in the series than a serious thematic plot point that encompasses the whole show.
And it’s because of this aimless storytelling that the pacing and story execution ultimately suffers as well. The workplace politics/environment that the show is adamant at revealing is riddled with sudden and inconvenient plot threads that cause drama and tension for the sake of drama and tension, thus making a lot of episodes feel really poor to watch given how terrible characters’ attitudes can be, only for it to be ‘forgiven’ later because they have some kind of tragedy that makes them more sympathetic. Which to me just makes the writing look lazy because it’s retroactively creating a bandaged solution just to gain sympathy points.
Overall, Aquatope is a show that intends to send a message about the hardships of young adult life and trying to find a suitable path that one can work towards, but is ultimately bogged down by all of the rubbish that the showrunners tried to also put in in an attempt to ‘help’ that point along. Truth be told, the show just needed to cut down the fat and really focus on telling the stories of these girls instead of arbitrarily make more side character stories so the drama and revelations actually made sense. As it stands, there’s more side story than main story, and too many cooks in the kitchen ended up ruining the soup.
Characters:
I’ll start with Kukuru since she’s the character that the show really likes to focus on. Kukuru is a hot-headed girl with a passion for fish and ocean conservation with little to no tolerance for those that disrespect oceans or her generally stubborn nature that focuses solely on the health and safety of the animals above all else. Kukuru as a character pretty shallowly and stubbornly clings onto the past and holds onto the things that she’s passionate about even if they’re no longer around or get in the way of what she’s doing. She’s definitely a frustrating character, but I think what makes her bad is almost certainly how the show just simply has no idea what to do with her. What they should’ve done is make her go through an arc longer than 2 episodes to resolve the aimless feeling of loss that she had instead of making her butt heads with the supporting cast because she has a different opinion of how things should go. At no point in the show does it feel rewarding to watch her go through trials and tribulations because she never goes out the other side being a changed character. I can forgive a bratty character for being close-minded and awful in the beginning if it means that they come out better on the other side. Which is usually what happens when teenagers become young adults and become functional members of society. But because Kukuru didn’t get any of that, I can’t in good conscience sympathize with her plight or character traits because it just started to become annoying with how much her code of ethics becomes the antagonist in an aquarium where making money is also a major priority.
Then we have Fuuka, a character who really got the short end of the stick in the show for a multitude of reasons that include the ones that has made Kukuru less than stellar. Fuuka for the most part is almost entirely defined by her relationship with Kukuru, as she was the one that brought Fuuka into the space of taking care of marine life and ‘reignited’ her passion by giving her a purpose as an aquarium attendant instead of an idol like she previously was. Which is something the show really hates to touch up on cause it almost never brings up the fact that she was an idol in the scenes she’s in. Taking that away, Fuuka has almost zero screentime to herself, save for one episode which apparently solved the apparent back and forth she had to returning to idol life. It’s for these reasons that I find Fuuka to be more of an empty void that Kukuru vents her problems to instead of an important part of the main cast. I really wish that the show put more effort into giving Fuuka a voice to project out on account of how insignificant her issues seem to be in spite of the fact that she spent the first few episodes aimlessly not knowing what to do with herself and I feel like that should’ve had a way bigger impact on her personality and goals than it really did. Especially since she’s a lot more soft-spoken than her counterpart, and there was a lot of potential to make a compelling character that found a moment of solace and appreciated the stability around her. Which they did, but her lack of screentime prior kind of made it appear out of nowhere.
Then we get to the sidecast. A group of quirky characters that all have some kind of backstory that drives them to keep working or continue with their goals. Otherwise known as story filler. The show really likes to push these stories on the audience, to the point that only their relatively shallow stories kind of stick because they’re simply just too many characters to keep track of, and the show just likes to do one-off episodes to give everybody a chance in the spotlight. The underlying problem with all of this however is quite frankly how little it all matters in the end because these one-off stories barely add anything, or impact the main two girls in that many meaningful ways. Sure, Haebaru has a kid and works hard to support him as a single mother. Yes, Akari doesn’t exactly have a passion in fish and sees this job as mostly a thing to get an income from. And yes, Kai is the dedicated unrequited love character that chased the girl he likes only to get nothing out of it in the end. Does any of this really matter though? Absolutely not. The second half is absolutely infested with these smaller plots, even more so than the first half, to the point that the show is more this kind of plot instead of anything else. Truthfully, I wish we could just not have any of this or at least naturally fold them into the narrative instead of awkwardly devoting an entire episode to this because the audience doesn’t know about X person, so we should talk about them next. As if the showrunners were spinning some demented wheel that a needle could land on in order to determine which side character should be talked about next.
Also there’s like a God character that kind of runs around in the background and adds no value to the show whatsoever. Which I question why they exist considering they have almost no voice lines, impact only select parts of the first half, and do absolutely nothing beyond that. Which I feel like the show would be worse off IF they had an important part, but if they were just gonna be an easter egg to begin with, why try and make them seem somewhat important by featuring them in the both openings?
Aesthetics:
P.A. Works really does do good art. True, it’s kind of the classic P.A. Works style, but given how well they were able to make water look in NagiAsu, the quality that comes with this show looks very nice. All of the characters shimmer softly, which gives the show a gentle look that’s never harsh or hard on the eyes. Something that’s even better when put next to the water graphics that give off some rather stunning shots. The background shots and certain cuts in the show are just great examples of visual storytelling and somehow just have an air to them that I don’t think I’ve seen any other company consistently pull off in everything that they do.
The only downside I could really give Aquatope in the art department is their CGI fish in the aquariums. Which undoubtedly is the one thing I will give them a pass on because hand drawing that many creatures on the screen is far too much effort, and the models don’t look too glaringly obvious that it’s worth pulling teeth over.
The OST is in a similar boat to the show’s art quality being that it encompasses the ocean and seaside themes that the show evokes with its setting.
Of the two OPs, I think I prefer ARCANA PROJECT’s “Tayutae, Nanairo” more simply because of its drop and its more melodic ballad tones which I think fit the show more with how bouncy and upbeat the song is. True, “Tomedonai Shiosai ni Bokutachi wa Nani wo Utaudarou ka” is in the same boat, but I find the more energetic beats of its part A sister to be more superior. Despite that though, the differences between the two are quite minor due to the same group performing both songs and the energy between the two being equally similar in spite of the setting and tonal differences.
Both EDs have a very somber tone by comparison to their OP counterparts, with Mia REGINA’s “Tsukiumi no Yurikago” being more of a slow ballad with yearning tones whereas Risa Aizawa’s “Shigektsu no da Carpo” having something of a more resolution sounding tone to it. I prefer the latter personally, but both songs do bring something to the table in spite of any similarities that they have with each other. Altogether, I think the songs that Aquatope came equipped with were great and deserving of a listen to. Which is something I’m glad with because P.A. Works’s consistency in the art and aesthetics department remains top tier and in spite of any reservations, I’m glad they always have this to fall back on and are things I can gush about with no remorse since this company undoubtedly knows how to make a pretty show.
Final Thoughts:
This…should not have been as poorly written as it was.
While my usual reservations with P.A. Works were assuredly present given the fact that this was yet again another P.A. Works show that was set in a setting that was near the water, I was confident in saying that considering that this show didn’t have anything to do with romance, it would at least be a decent show without any really glaring issues. Of course, P.A. Works always has to prove that my hope is misguided and really should be put somewhere else, but let it be known that in spite of anything that I have said up until this point, I truly did believe that this show had the potential to be one of their best works yet.
The lack of focus is what really saddens me with Aquatope. It really feels like the showrunners decided that their best course of action was to cram as much as they could in this show, polluting it with random character stories and sideplots without focusing on the real stars of the show: Fuuka and Kukuru. Fuuka was an idol who left her position due to her insecurities and competitive fear in the idol marketplace, and Kukuru is a girl who in spite of everything she did, was hit with the reality that some dreams just weren’t meant to be. These girls had their dreams crushed, broken, and they were aimless in what to do. So what could they do next? Find something else? Find something new? Try again? Or just give up? The potential to do a beautiful coming of age story between two characters was there. The groundwork was present and the potential that the show had at the beginning was something that I was really excited to see when the show first came to light.
I desperately wanted this to be something that I could rave about. I wanted to clap my hands and shout “This is why I adore P.A. Works” and see the girls form a genuine connection with each other, support each other in their pathways through life, and grow beyond what they were at their starting point. But that moment just never came. Instead, in spite of the show having stunning visuals with visions of the past, and an OST that set the mood for the emotions and personal journeys that these girls would go on, Aquatope just didn’t deliver. In place of that was a slice of life show with enough character stories to weigh the show down and eat up a majority of its runtime, and shoddy character growth for our main duo that came up unsatisfying and unworthy of the time it took to get to that point because the ending makes everything seem all great and amazing, but that payoff is ruined by the arduous journey and slog that got us to that point.
I’m not just gonna throw this one on the pile of ‘bad’ P.A. Works shows because it did a number of things right; romantic subplots, cheap pull rug out moments, and crippling melodrama were all absent here. But the things Aquatope did wrong were big enough and noticeable enough to make the show more of a creative tragedy than I think it really should’ve been. It’s to this end that I lament Aquatope more than I curse Glasslip or Kuromukuro because it could’ve been so, so much better with the right direction. It’s reasons like these that make Aquatope a show that I wouldn’t really recommend to people. It’s so unfocused that episode to episode feels clunky at times, and the A and B parts really don’t mesh together that well. And honestly, Fuuka deserved way more screentime and attention than the show bothered to give her. She doesn’t have a story of her own, much less a compelling one that’s got much meat to it. And if you’re trying to sell the fact that it’s TWO girls that met in the ruins of a damaged dream, you should at least make them equal partners in the relationship instead of just one of them using the other as a place to vent their problems to whilst the other one just listens despite being her own person with issues, concerns, and aspirations of their own.
