Review of A Lull in the Sea

Oh, I'm not gonna make myself any new friends with this review. PA Works is one of those studios that you either praise the shit out of or you just don't give a rat's ass about. Even for the number of "successes" that they've had in the past, I don't really find myself feeling anything but indifference toward the bulk of stuff that they've produced. Hell, I'm surprised I found myself giving this show a negative review. Granted, I've never truly liked a single show that they've ever released. PA Works' programmes aren't as visually enticing as A-1 Pictures', they're nowhere near as emotionally involvingas Kyoto Animation's, and they're not as comfortable to watch as JC Staff's. But yeah, PA Works doesn't really rank all that high on my visceral outrage meter. So what is it about Nagi no Asukara that doesn't work for me? Well, it's hard to sum up in just a few words so let's just dive straight into the review.

I should point out that I actually quite enjoyed watching Nagi no Asukara when I first started. The fantasy setting was certainly intriguing and I also found myself quite fascinated by the relations between the land and sea people. Of course, another reason why I picked this show up in the first place was that it was supposed to be one of the better anime romantic dramas out there on the market and I was in the middle of a romance binge at that point in time. But over time, the stuff that I found myself liking about the show combined with other things the show was doing as it progressed ended up causing me to actually really hate the show. Allow me to explain.

1) The "romance" is fucking terrible and it eclipses the actual plot of the show

Now, I'm not one to despise will they/won't they romances from the get-go (especially given how I happen to adore the shit out of Rumiko Takahashi's works) and I usually don't take umbrage with love polygons because if done well enough, it makes for a more suspenseful read and leads to interesting developments going down (like in the manga for Ichigo 100%). But in Nagi no Asukara's case, nothing of the sort actually happens. This is the kind of love polygon that's just meant to shoehorn some shitty melodrama into the show for no other reason than to give off the illusion of actual romantic development.

Kaname likes Chisaki, but Chisaki has the hots for Hikari. Hikari wants to bone Manaka, but Manaka's fingering herself to the thought of Tsumugu. Meanwhile, Tsumugu's just standing there like Kurasama from School Rumble with a blank expression on his face. Hell, this isn't even a love polygon. It's a love line segment, if anything. I mean, I wouldn't mind this so much if the characters were actually capable of carrying a scene without it devolving into melodramatic territory. I wouldn't mind this so much if the farcical melodrama didn't eclipse the actual plot of the story, but it unfortunately does.

I have nothing against works that try to tell a romantic subplot whilst telling a larger story at hand, and if done correctly, it can actually be quite lovely (i.e. Futurama, Justice League, Daria, The Spectacular Spider-Man, etc). Unfortunately, it would seem that PA Works forgot that the real story at hand is (supposedly) about two tribes of people with vastly different ways of life that must work together to avoid cataclysmic disaster. I wouldn't mind this so much if the "romance" actually went somewhere but unfortunately it doesn't and it never does at any point in the series. Hell, the resolution is open-ended with only one official couple actually forming by the end of it all (and even then, that pairing didn't have much build-up going for it).

2) The characters are one-note archetypes with no depth whatsoever

You know, it seems like just yesterday when I was 15/16 years old so the hormone mixture was still running wild and I was having a shitload of brand new experiences. As such, I can definitely sympathise with what our leading quartet would (presumably) be going through... to a certain degree, anyway. Unfortunately, being able to sympathise with someone does not a good character make. I suppose it's not entirely fair to say that the characters are one-note archetypes but I'd be lying through my teeth if I said they weren't defined by a gimmick or two.

Hikari is your typical male tsundere, whilst Kaname is the mature, mild-mannered one. Manaka is the primary love interest who's a crybaby, relies on her friends, and has the hots for some other guy whilst Chisaki is the tertiary love interest who withholds her feelings for Hikari because he knows he wants to fuck the shit out of Manaka. Meanwhile, Tsumugu doesn't even have any sort of characterisation about him. He's just this quiet guy who follows our leading quartet around.

Manaka and Chisaki could've easily been fused into a single character, because they both feel like they were meant to originally be one character but were then written into to separate separate characters for some undecipherable reason. On that note, Kaname has to be the most useless character in the entire show. I appreciate how he's a foil to Hikari, but he never contributes anything of relevance to the story at hand. All he really does is just stand there chatting with the other characters. At least Manaka, Hikari, Chisaki, and even Tsumugu (at one point) contributed *something* of relevance to the story at hand. Hell, I can't even call Kaname a Kaworu Nagisa clone because Kaworu actually did more stuff in Evangelion in one episode than Kaname ever does across the span of 26 episodes.

Then again, I really shouldn't be bitching about Kaname and Tsumugu not contributing anything of substance to the plot because they (along with some irrelevant side characters) are the only ones I could actually find myself liking. I couldn't help but feel contempt any time I saw Hikari, Manaka, Chisaki, or Miuna in the frame because they're so fucking unbearable. Hikari's tendency to shout at everything he doesn't understand is what ultimately causes me to viscerally despise him because I just want him to shut the fuck up AND HE NEVER DOES. Whilst I hate Manaka and Chisaki, I can safely say that they're nowhere near as infuriating as Hikari is.

On that note, let's talk about our two lead "heroines" and why they make me want to shoot up some heroin. Manaka is a moeblob plot device and nothing more. Thankfully, she's not the insufferable hyperactive type of moeblob, but that still doesn't change the fact that she's a useless crybaby who serves no purpose other than to advance the plot. Say what you will about Usagi from Sailor Moon, but at least Usagi grows as an individual over the course of the series. Hell, at least Nagisa from Clannad helped spark Tomoya's growth as an individual. I have absolutely nothing of the sort to say about Manaka whatsoever. Virtually everything I've said about Manaka can also be applied to Chisaki, but it should be noted that Chisaki at least has *some* sense of characterisation about her.

3) The worldbuilding in Nagi-Asu is absolutely appalling.

Considering the fact that this show takes place in a fantasy world where one group of people split off from another and then went on to live their own lives whilst still retaining *some* form of contact with one another, one would assume that the cultures of the people on land and at sea would be highly divergent but that couldn't be further from the truth. Aside from the fact that the people of Shioshishio live underwater and worship a sea deity, there's virtually no conceivable differences between the people of the former village and the people of Oshiooshi. I mean, their names are just anagrams of one another's for Christ's sake!

On another note, I love how the series claims that all of humanity originated from the sea and moved onto land but we only really see two locations throughout the span of the entire series. By sheer implication, Shioshishio would've been the origin of all humanity since that's the only sea village we're ever made aware of and it's never stated whether or not other sea villages exist. So how is it that a faction of people could emigrate from a single village and then go on to populate the rest of the planet? I mean, Nagi no Asukara does exist in /some/ space of reality. We have electrical grids, motor vehicles, grocery stores, and other such things that would imply that the history of the world that Nagi no Asukara also follows real world events to /some/ degree. I wouldn't be bitching about this so much if the show didn't bring up all this shit and decided to do absolutely fuck-all with it. Hell, I wouldn't have minded any of this whatsoever if the actual "romance" went anywhere meaningful, but both plots are fucking awful and half-baked.

4) The second half of the show is a poorly paced time skip and has a resolution that forces a happy ending

The second half of the show starts us off with a time skip after a MAJOR event occurs, which is already an indicator that these episodes are bound to suck because PA Works already proved that they're incapable of writing a cogent plot in the first half of the series. With that in mind though, it's not like the first half of the show was entirely without merit because the actual plot of the story, though extremely atrophied in terms of depth and detail, was still interesting enough to keep my attention and the episode before the timeskip was nothing short of intense to the point where it was almost enough to make me forget about all the shit I was complaining about previously.

On that note, I should point out that I don't have anything against time skips in general. When you get right down to it, a time skip is a literary device and what ultimately matters is how that literary device is used. Oyasumi Punpun, one of my all-time favourite mangas uses time skips to great effect, as it covers life-changing events throughout various points in time that ended up shaping the person that Punpun would eventually become. Unfortunately, the guys at PA Works lack the tact of Inio Asano so they just ended up using the time skip as a crutch to avoid actually writing up the direct aftermath of what just happened after said major event.

If that weren't bad enough, the pacing is just dreadful. There's almost no sense of transition whatsoever, so events are brought up like there's no fucking tomorrow. Random plot details are also introduced at random intervals with almost no sense of foreshadowing whatsoever and effectively diminish the impact of events that previously happened. The events pre-timeskip implied that the world was doomed because the sea god was angry at the fact that people abandoned the sea to live on the surface, and the land dwellers aren't appeasing him with regular offerings. It's not a perfect set-up, but at least that seems like something meaningful, right? Post-timeskip, apparently the sea god is just lonely and he needs someone to cuddle on those cold winter nights. Way to ruin what little good there was to be found in your shitty programme, PA Works!

On top of that, the actual ending to the entire series just feels forced beyond all belief. I understand the desire to see everything work out for the better in regards to your protagonists, but god damn it, you have to fucking EARN that happy ending and I can safely say that nobody in Nagi no Asukara deserved that happy ending. The entire conflict is just resolved without any hint of subtlety, foreshadowing, or anything of the sort. Hell, nobody ends up getting sacrificed to appease the sea god's raging boner by the end of it all! Like, what the actual fuck PA Works? Is it so hard to actually write up an ending that doesn't stick a gigantic middle finger to anyone with a functioning brain? Of all the things that I dislike about Nagi no Asukara, the ending would definitely have to be the thing that I hate the most.

***

So, in conclusion: this show sucks the chrome off of doorknobs. In between the farcical melodrama, the shitty worldbuilding, the hackneyed "romance," AND that shitty ending, I just have one question to ask: Why? As in, "why did PA Works even greenlight this show in the first place if it had such obvious problems?" I guess this is the level of quality we should expect from a studio that's effectively the poor man's Kyoto Animation. Whilst Nagi no Asukara is far from the worst thing I've ever watched, it's still undoubtedly the most disappointing thing I've ever sat through. Here's to hoping that PA Works won't fuck up another show beyond all belief... oh wait, we have Charlotte. *sigh*