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Anime Reviews First Impressions Reviews

Summer 2021 First Impressions – The Aquatope on White Sand

Streaming: Crunchyroll

Episodes: 24

Source: Original

Episode Summary: As Fuuka packs her things and prepares to head back to her childhood home, she realizes that this has become the depressing end point to a dream she’s had since childhood. She worked and sweated to become an idol, only to realize that she wasn’t meant for that lifestyle. After giving her blessing to a younger group member and putting in her resignation at her agency, she packs her things and calls her mother to coordinate her homecoming. By chance, however, Fuuka is distracted by an advertisement for a tropical Okinawan vacation, and feeling unsettled by the amount of fanfare the neighborhood group is putting into her return, she makes the last minute decision to head for warmer waters.

Upon arrival she doesn’t really have anything planned or anywhere to go, and dragging her luggage around in a tropical climate is sweaty work. After spending a night sleeping on a beach, she’s approached by a local tour guide and given some water and a few info packets. Fuuka chooses the local aquarium as her destination, and a 500 yen ticket grants her access to what she experiences as a magical world that lays bare some of her deepest insecurities. While there, she meets Kukuru, a young employee of the aquarium and learns that the power of this place is nothing new. But despite its beauty and magic, the aquarium is in danger of closing.