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.

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Impressions: As I mentioned in my very simple seasonal preview, I’m a pretty big fan of the extremely specific anime subgenre of P.A. Works original slice-of-life anime. They’re never particularly groundbreaking and not the sort of anime that lights the fandom up, but they’re almost always solid productions that achieve a respectable level of emotional truth. I think my favorite is probably Shirobako, because it not only deals broadly with the challenges and insecurities that come along with attempting to form a career in the arts, it’s also about making anime. Though its stressful plot beats are still much sunnier than reality in most cases, I think it does a good job of outlining just how much work goes into making entertainment for others.

Likewise, one aspect of the entertainment industry that I’ve learned about as an outsider is the idol industry in Japan. It’s easy to latch onto the horror stories and to make assumptions based around gender politics and such, some of which unfortunately seem to have some truth to them. But I think an assumption that’s a little cynical is that the young women who participate in idol groups are just there to be cute eye candy, when in reality being an idol is hard work and makes requirements of young idols that are at best completely unreasonable. So it’s not surprising that it’s a job not everyone is cut out for.

I think that’s one reason why I connected with Fuuka’s story almost instantly. She fell in love with the idea of being an idol, and then reached an understanding that she simply could not achieve what she wanted to achieve in that world. I once had dreams of translating Japanese to English, but my anxiety kept me from studying in Japan and that basically put a stop to any realization of that dream. And reaching that understanding is difficult, and it hurts; but being able to put it to rest can sometimes open up completely different avenues that are more fitting and achievable.

This episode contains a lot of extremely beautiful background artwork; I didn’t know that I wanted to travel someplace tropical until suddenly it felt like a deep need. But for how beautiful it looks I think the real beauty is in how Fuuka’s feelings get across in such a brief amount of time. It feels like the series’ emotional core is front and center, and that makes me really happy.

Pros: A while back there was some conversation on the anime club Discord about how there really aren’t anime set in Okinawa. I kind of “well, actually’d” the fact that SK8 took place there, and now this series. It’s kind of as if the universe wanted to prove us all wrong. Jokes aside, Okinawa has always kind of interested me with its cultural, linguistic, and architectural differences from mainland Japan. While anime should never really be used as a cultural or historical source document, I still believe that media can expose us to interesting things that can then prompt real research, and I’d love to find more interesting Okinawan things to follow up on.

I really like the depiction of Fuuka’s magical experience when she first visits the aquarium. I think I just really like magical realism; I think it reflects the ways in which the human mind experiences beauty and emotion in a way that invites creative visualization in storytelling. Speaking as someone who grew up loving fantasy stories, anything that portrays the idea that real-life has magic lurking just below the surface is very satisfying to me.

Cons: It’s a little strange for me to say this, but it took me a while to get used to the pacing in this episode. So much anime that’s produced these days gets 12 episodes and that’s it, so it’s forced to do a lot in a short amount of time. This series is 2-cour and this episode takes its time laying the groundwork for the characters’ stories (mostly Fuuka’s during this episode, so I assume Kukuru will get her due soon). It’s not really a mark against it, more like something to know going in so one has the correct expectations.

Content Warnings: One character eats a raw fish head ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Would I Watch More? – Yes, especially since I love character-driven dramas and beautiful depictions of nature.