The show is an attempt by PA Works to attain the levels of pointless emotional manipulation that they perfected with AnoHana.
Ok that's a bit harsh on it, but emotional manipulation, or in this case constipation is a great way to describe this show I found. But anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself. I should actually talk about the show some I guess.
I guess.
See the thing is, I can't say much about the show without spoiling the fuck out of it. And it's a show that is worth not being spoiled for to be honest. The characters and story are so well drawn out at the beginning, and there is a definite payoff, but the show left we with such a meh feeling, I find it hard to talk about.
To set the scene, Nagi No Asukara exists in a world where certain people live in the sea. 4 of those said people have to start going to the surface, and how they face off against racial discrimination on both sides, segregation and other social issues.
At least when the show is at its best.
At its best, the show takes a raw approach to laying out racial segregation issues that exst around the world, and rather than trying to explain them, just show them for all their honest concerns, unbased as they may be.
At its best.
At the shows worst, it attempts to explain racial discrimination by way of supernatural elements, devolving the plot into a dodecahedron of love, and forgetting about our racial issues altogether. Looking over the series, it took a sharp nosedive around the end of the first cour. Hell, it feels tonally like 2 different shows.
It's a real shame, because there is a lot of great stuff here. Our main character, Hikari (Nasuki Hanae) was annoying enough in the beginning that I actually considered dropping the show. His development alone across the series is teriffic, and his voice actor does a great job. In fact, most of the principle cast does a great job ( apart from the stoic one. he does a great job of being boring)
The production values on a whole are typically high, as you would expect from PA works. Smooth animation, pretty characters, and fucking beautiful backgrounds. The shows artwork really captures the feeling of living on the coast and I loved the atmosphere the art gave of. The music is wonderful, and there's a guitar player somewhere out there that I want to buy a drink for all the times their work had me on the edge of tears.
See that's the thing with this show. It does so very much right, it's a real shame it gets the critical factor so very wrong. If this was purely a character based show, I would have been alright with the story getting lost. But in this case, I can't accept the way that the story basically forgot about the main theme about halfway through. Still though, the show is definitely worth your time. Just don't expect the second coming of Christ or anything, even if the author seemed to have a thing about that.
Till next time,
Toodle Pip
(A final note, this show does feature based Kana Hanazawa, so it also has hat going for it I guess)
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