SPOILER-FREE!
My earliest memory of life comes from before I was a year old. I didn’t know it at the time, but my family took me and my older brother on a trip to the New England Aquarium in Boston. All I recall from that experience was a dark space with a giant blue light just slightly to the right-of-center. When I returned to that aquarium on my school’s special field trip for eighth graders, something hit my brain like a violent crash. I had to call my family later that night just to clarify that I wasn’t imagining things. But lo and behold, it was the same place and image from my memory. Depending on how you want to look at this story, an aquarium could be thought of as my “beginning.”

The Aquatope on White Sand uses an aquarium for similar purposes, a place for beginnings. Especially given the show’s subtitle, “The Two Girls Met in the Ruins of [a] Damaged Dream,” the show appears to seek out what it means to supposedly make a new start amidst sadness or heartbreak of some sort. Goodness knows that we’ve all had our dreams be destroyed or given up in some way, so using a location which constantly sees new life involving baby fish and other creatures appears to be a perfect marriage between setting and content.
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Miyazawa Fuuka leaves her job as an idol behind, deciding to run away from the cheer up party that he mother wants to give her. Finding her way to Okinawa, sleeping on the beach, and fighting dehydration, she eventually comes across the Gama Gama Aquarium, headed by the young Misakino Kukuru. After spending some time examining a tank, Fuuka has a surreal experience in which the aquarium waters seem to envelop and calm her down. After a brief tour by Kukuru, Fuuka asks to be allowed to work at Gama Gama. Kukuru accepts after consulting her grandparents, as the aquarium is being threatened with closure.

The major theme in The Aquatope on White Sand involves characters preoccupied with following their own dreams or path in life, some of which are more mundane than others. At the start of the series, Kukuru’s dream to keep Gama Gama open is more concrete and solidified. As such, she serves as the show’s main stabilizing anchor at first. Her determination is evident not only in her care and attention to the animals and fish, but also in her trying to come up with various ways to drum up attention or traffic for the aquarium. Contrary to that, Fuuka doesn’t even necessarily know what her dream is at the start. Her character is conceived as one who’s running away, unwilling to face the reality of what awaits her now that she has thrown her old ambition to the wayside. Fuuka’s initial dream was broken, and her getting a job at Gama Gama is less about a fresh start than it is about finding stability. The show juxtaposes Kukuru and Fuuka with concrete vs. abstract dreams, someone in a more-defined position vs. someone who is adrift, and so forth.

It’s because Kukuru and Fuuka differ in this fundamental way that their chemistry together works well. Despite being the one with more “worldly experience” beyond her own little town, Fuuka, in essence, lives under Kukuru’s care. This is not only in regard to being given a roof over her head, but also in terms of the stability Fuuka sought. Working as an aquarium attendant, while perhaps not a job that she ever thought she would take up in her life, gives Fuuka at least some sort of steadiness to hold onto. But it is not solely through her work that she gets this sense of grounding; through her interactions with Kukuru, Fuuka gradually begins to see that new dreams, or ways of seeing and experiencing the world, can be forged from simply being among new people and new situations.

Kukuru also learns to rely upon Fuuka in her own moments of struggle. Despite her position as the acting director of Gama Gama in her grandfather’s place, Kukuru is still just a high schooler. She’d much rather spend her time thinking about fish and the aquarium as opposed to putting in that effort for her schoolwork. It is because she is young that her obstinance makes her a powerful force, although it does occasionally lead into some rather short-sighted decisions. Fuuka and Kukuru are immature in their own ways, but through their time together, they provide the other with a shoulder to lean on, someone to laugh with, and someone to talk to when they don’t know what to do or where to go. The Aquatope on White Sand knows that Kukuru and Fuuka’s relationship is at the heart of the series, so its twenty-four-episode run spends much of its time showing both characters at their own highs and lows.

The two girls are supported by the show’s large ensemble cast. Although some characters such as Kuuya long outlive their comedic or plot usefulness down the road, the sense of camaraderie and community among the characters always existed. They do come across as a fun group of friends, bound together by the same dreams, even if they do slightly differ in the finer details. An entire episode in the second half involves all the characters coming together for a day of fun at an apartment, showing that while they may all work at or be near an aquarium, they do have friendships beyond simply being co-workers. Especially as the show marches onward and their overall friendship circle increases, it was nice to see this group involve a good mix of both the old characters and the new characters and angles.

Speaking of new angles, The Aquatope on White Sand opts for newer kinds of stories later on. The show divides cleanly between two halves, with one of the major stories ending and the last half involving a “what happened afterwards” take on the story. The change in direction was welcome, as the new episodes focus more on smaller iyashikei slice-of-life ventures involving low stakes, and it works decently well. In a sense, the show seems to be making a case for letting the small moments carry the show’s center. What does lapping your feet at a pool with penguins do? Nothing on the surface, aside from cuteness at first glance. Yet these moments feel right at home given the show’s overall tone. Though small moments that may not mean much in terms of a grand narrative, they can help convey simple acts of warmth and love. With Kukuru, Fuuka, and the Gama Gama family, saving the aquarium might be their main goal, but if the show’s main goal is for warmth, these smaller moments succeeded.

Unfortunately, this change in approach to focus on iyashikei comes at the price of leaving the second half without much of a rudder. There did eventually reach a point where I had to ask myself what the show was building towards in the end. This was, in part, because though the episodes themselves are cute or delightful, one negative aspect is that certain plot threads were introduced either through actual events or heavy insinuation in the show’s first half. In focusing so much on the characters living their lives, the chance to see some of these threads develop never take off. At worst, the threads get completely dropped, leaving me unsatisfied at planted ideas that don’t bloom. The first half, generally speaking, has better luck incorporating its direction while still sprinkling in its own iyashikei stories. Thankfully, the directionless problem gets rectified down the line as the show’s final arc moves into focus, giving both the drama and the character dynamics new territories and obstacles to explore.

And one element that helps that exploration is the show’s overall look. Even if the animation is not at the usual standard of flexing that one expects from PA Works, the overall use of shading, tinting, and lighting is pleasant on the eyes. It would have been easy for a series like this to make the color blue a bear to look at in the aquarium, but it always found small ways to balance it out with other colors and environments. I couldn’t help but love the moonlight glistening on the waterfront, and the soundtrack is appropriately soothing. We may not be able to experience the entirety of Okinawa, but the few locations it utilizes come across as fully realized as though one could actually walk through them.
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The Aquatope on White Sand is a calm series with good visuals that struggles finding direction in the second half. The lovable group of characters and iyashikei stories manage to make most episodes fun, even if they don’t progress anything plot-wise. Plus, its inability to close out certain lingering threads was more aggravating than I’d like to admit, However, with its two strong female lead characters, it has a solid emotional center that always manages to be delightful to witness, even on the occasions where it cannot stick the landing. The show was simply warm, and in this particular case, warm was good enough for me.