Aquariums present their visitors with a glimpse into the deep sea, including all the marvelous and colorful aquatic lifeforms found in our world and they also provide many avenues for educating the public on the richness of marine life and the importance of our biosphere. Aquatope, an original PA works anime focused on aquariums was the first significant aquarium related series in the anime medium and it brought the aquarium experience to life with its excellent visuals and interesting educational facts. While the story, like many anime originals, eventually loses track of its original goal, the anime still delivered quite an enjoyable experience and did a lot of things right. This review will cover the various aspects that make up the Aquatope anime and will generally cover both the good and bad points that the audience can expect.

THIS REVIEW WILL CONTAIN SPOILERS

Story: 6

The review is going to start with Aquatope’s arguably weakest point, the story. It’s a sad thing to see when a series that essentially has everything going for it, suddenly forgets its roots. Aquatope started fundamentally as a story about a failed idol, Fuuka, who was trying to find a distraction from her despair on being graduated from the show business and ending up at an aquarium by chance when she decided to fly to Okinawa instead of going home. The aquarium, Gama Gama, was in dire straits as it was crumbling apart and had declining revenue, there was also a threat of a new aquarium being built that would take away its remaining customers. Fuuka has a fated encounter with a girl named Kukuru and she gets a job at the failing aquarium, much of the early plot is about Fuuka halfheartedly performing her new aquarium attendant job and not really caring much beyond trying to escape from reality. Over time however, Fuuka totally falls in love with her job and the viewer gets to really understand how captivating aquariums are and how rewarding it can be to work at one. The tension comes into play when Fuuka realizes that Kukuru is going all out trying to save the aquarium, but no matter what they do it appears that there are no ways to actually salvage the business. There are also a number of supernatural elements as well including a sea god they offer food to, an ED that delivers a supernatural atmosphere and multiple scenes of people having visions at the aquarium that help them come to terms with their lives.

The main problem with the story is that the show solves the plot about halfway through the episode count and then the anime doesn’t seem to know what to do anymore. The supernatural aspects of the plot are largely ignored and Kukuru becomes the main focus, and the show turns into a SOL about Kukuru complaining about her new job at Tingara, a new aquarium, as Gama Gama became a failed business. Now while the slice of life story was decent, the amount of build up through the first half of the series and the tension that was present felt like it was all thrown away for a very slow paced after story. It is like the directors got more episodes than they first anticipated and unlike most anime originals where the episode count limit results in rushing the story, Aquatope instead is forced to slow down the pace of the story with a lot of pointless material that is not in line with the tone set at the start. Overall, even though the SOL aspects were enjoyable enough, the complete change in pace and removal of the drama present first season compared to the second season greatly weakened the story, the series should have chosen a single main focus but instead we essentially got 2 different shows in one anime.

Art: 9

The single best thing in Aquatope is the art, the absolutely incredibly detailed backgrounds and lifelike animations for the marine animals serve as a top quality advertisement for Okinawa and aquariums in general. Everything in the backgrounds are lifelike and look detailed to ridiculous levels, from the beaches littered with shells to the orange sunsets and the star filled night skies, you could easily make dozens if not over a 100 high definition quality backgrounds out of them. The main attraction of the series, the aquatic life, is also depicted in a beautiful way, so many different species covered and all of them animated in fluid ways, swimming in groups and their physical movements captured in a completely natural way. The effort put into the art in this series is something to marvel at and even better is that this is one of the few anime original series where the production values did not fall apart near the final episodes. The show looks consistently amazing from start to finish, characters look attractive and distinct, they are well animated and move properly whenever they speak or show emotions, the food looks great like someone traced freshly made cooking at a nice seafood restaurant and even the cars don’t use noticeable CGI to cut corners. Overall, the art is definitely the strongest part of the show, and its more than enough to make a weaker story worth watching.

Sound: 7

The voice acting, first opening and both endings were all very good, the sound effects for the aquarium were immersive and there was great background music playing during the scenes where characters had visions at gama gama. However, the second opening wasn’t nearly as good as the first one, there wasn’t any particularly good background music outside of the visions and major dramatic events, and for the most part the show overused its few good soundtracks. In short, it’s an example of good enough sound design, there are definitely some very strong points, but enough issues that I couldn’t really say its solidly above average. As long as the viewer doesn’t set their expectations aren’t very high, they should be overall satisfied with the music, especially the first opening and the high quality voice acting.

Characters: 8

For the main cast, Kukuru and Fuuka both had dreams they were chasing and both of them struggle a lot with dealing with the fact that their dream’s may not entirely come true. Both characters were heavily developed with a strong focus on their goals and then focused on help finding new things that they wanted to do afterwards, the girls have very strong chemistry and they had lots of touching moments during the show. The comedy was also done fairly well, lots of entertaining bits of humor thrown in the right places so the show never got that heavy even when things were looking down and the girls always had fun moments together or by themselves that helped remind the audience that not everything goes wrong even if things are hard. If there is one aspect of the characterization between the 2 leading characters that I did not like, it was the soft girls love undertone that persisted throughout the show even though it was indicated that Kukuru already had a good male match, and no romance subplot was actually pursued. This sort of soft girls love can be annoying since its clearly thrown in to bait people into watching something for the cute girls acting sort of like they are in love, even though its clear that storyline wise they won’t ever be more than friends. While yes, people can have very close friendships, but the amount of touching and feeling along with lines that seemed like they were romantic in nature got a bit over the top, especially the number of times the girls stare into each other’s eyes and say they will support each other and such.

The side cast is actually pretty rich and interesting on their own, the rest of the staff at gama gama each have their own unique traits and they are explored and explained thoroughly. The guy who is clearly working only to really get close to Kukuru ends up quite enjoying working at an aquarium, the guy who hates girls has his backstory explained and it is made clear that its more due to trauma over say something like entitlement, the adults are all written in a way that feels quite realistic as well. For example, the director of gama gama reminds me of how many experienced experts act in real life, they are very down to earth and never really show off their knowledge and you wouldn’t expect them to know as much as they do, but the moment when they are needed, they are able to explain things that clearly took many years of experience to understand in a clear and understandable way. I also really appreciate that both the family of Kukuru and Fuuka are both supportive, especially Fuuka’s mother. I had totally expected her to show up to the aquarium and slap her daughter and tell Fuuka off for not coming home, but she was reasonable and actually tried to understand why her daughter was struggling to handle the end of her idol career and why she was in Okinawa trying to move on from her past life. These sort of realistic portrayals of people are much more interesting than typical anime characters done 100s of times before, we have reasonable and understanding parents, we have a friend circle who have lives outside of interacting with the main characters, the side cast is thoroughly explored, and the adults are competent even if sometimes they are not very likable such as the marketing director at Tingara. Overall, the cast is very solid, and this show easily gets and 8 for its characters.

Enjoyment: 8

For Aquatope, your enjoyment depends heavily on whether or not you really got into the cast and enjoy slice of life series, the production is great but if you’re not into the characters then this show is going to be rather boring with its plot. However, if you happen to have gotten into the whole cast and wanted to see them grow up and live their lives like I did, then this show is quite enjoyable even with the weaker story after the first half.

Overall: 8

Despite the story largely forgetting its origins and the plot not really living up to the initial supernatural atmosphere or dramatic tension set during the gama gama aquarium focused first half, I quite enjoyed the slice of life moments and watching the cast grow into their adult lives during the second half. The Visuals throughout the show incredibly good, and the cast still had strong chemistry, the slice of life stories of each of the cast members struggling to make their careers work or making new friends or dealing with problems in their lives were still interesting as well. Music in the show wasn’t super strong outside of the first OP and the ending songs, but it was good enough and the aquariums were amazing to look at due to how much effort was put into them alongside the backgrounds. Overall, this show still provided a great viewing experience, and if you go in not expecting the second half of the show to be focused on actual plot or there to be any significant dramatic story, then you should have a decent time.