Review of A Lull in the Sea

Britt: Disappointment. What more can I say, other than "dis-a-ppoint-ment"? It was just....it was so bad! This show had so much potential, and that potential was WASTED here! Seriously, what the hell?? God. I guess I should actually review the freaking anime before I start ranting on and on about how I didn't like it. As usual, we're going to start with the story. The mess of a story here I might add. Story: (Copied from "My Anime List") "Long ago, all humans lived beneath the sea. However, some people preferred the surface and abandoned living underwater permanently. As a consequence, they were stripped of their god-givenprotection called "Ena" which allowed them to breathe underwater. Over time, the rift between the denizens of the sea and of the surface widened, although contact between the two peoples still existed.

Nagi no Asukara follows the story of Hikari Sakishima and Manaka Mukaido, along with their childhood friends Chisaki Hiradaira and Kaname Isaki, who are forced to leave the sea and attend a school on the surface. There, the group also meets Tsumugu Kihara, a fellow student and fisherman who loves the sea.

Hikari and his friends' lives are bound to change as they have to deal with the deep-seated hatred and discrimination between the people of sea and of the surface, the storms in their personal lives, as well as an impending tempest which may spell doom for all who dwell on the surface."

Let me point out all the problems I see here: What exactly does it mean by "some people preferred the surface and abandoned living underwater permanently"? Is it like a "Little Mermaid" scenario where they just said "forget my family and friends! I'm going to abandon them to live up on land with strangers!" or some crap like that? And how were people born in the sea when they could just so easily live on land where there's honestly more to do there anyway? Is this a religious thing? Like how at the beginning of the worlds creation there was nothing but water? Is that the direction they were taking with this? They could've also been a little more specific with it. Like, I wouldn't have minded knowing who actually decided living on land was better than living in the ocean, and if the anime could explain their reasoning. That brings me to another problem I have here. Why are the sea dwellers and land walkers racist towards each other? No seriously, why? They're almost the exact same! Only difference between them is some people have blue eyes/eyelashes and live in the sea. That's literally the only difference. They both have school, they both eat and cook the same, they both read the same, sleep the same, open pickle jars the same, live in the same type of houses, they even have FIRE and STARES underwater, so what the hell is the difference between them? They hate each other for NO. FREAKING. REASON. Is this just a way to create some forced drama and conflict? Because it didn't work. Their ways of living are too similar to even say this is a real issue between them. Shioshishio is the underwater village, while Oshiooshi is the land peoples village. The creators were even lazy enough to make their village names damn near anagrams of each other! It's just a case of people bullying one another for no reason whatsoever. That's all. Also, the world-building wasn't good. Like. Seriously bad here. The little bit of the oceanic world we got to see was beautiful, but are you actually expecting me to believe that there's only ONE village in the ENTIRE ocean? I don't understand why we couldn't explore it a bit more. And why is it that Hikari and his 3 friends were the only children in their entire village who had to be sent to land school? Heck, they're the only children ever SEEN from their village! You absolutely cannot tell me with a straight fact that that little village takes up the entire. ocean. Why aren't there any other villages? And their middle school was the only one they had so they had to go to land middle school and they're the only middle schoolers living in Shioshishio? That's freaking retarded. And for the limited amount of "plot" they actually had, it was glossed over to make room for contrived romance. Which I'll get more onto in a second. Seriously, who wrote the script for this mess of a plot? (Mari Okada) Okay. Yup. That makes sense now.
The story gets a 4/10 for me.

Characters:
Wanna know what's worse than the story of this anime? The freaking characters, that's what! Most of them were unlikable and most of their decisions were stupid and unbelievable. I can easily sum up the main 4 in one word: Hikari-->tsundere, Manaka-->crybaby, Chisaki-->b*tch, and Kaname-->bland. The other characters aren't good, either. Tsumugu is almost exactly like Kaname, except he shows even LESS emotion than him, and the most reaction we ever see from him is probably in episode 14 or 26. Miuna is a bit difficult to describe in a nice way. She just seemed to be there just cause she can be, until the last episode where they made her more relevant than I thought possible. Same with her best friend, Sayu. Akari is Hikari's older sister, who was best friends with Miuna's mother, but then her mother died, and Akari and Miuna's dad started dating....Which I find...not right, for lack of a better word. I don't want to imagine it this way, but it felt like she was just waiting for Miuna's mom to be out of the picture so she could be with her dad. They even have a kid together and Miuna starts calling her mom, and it feels like NOBODY saw anything wrong with this. I know this most likely was NOT the intention, but it certainly felt that way. And I guess since the same thing basically happened in RWBY, it's just considered "normal" *shudders*. Really, the main issue I have with the characters is that they all seem to be in love with each other for whatever reason, they're indecisive as hell (and you should all know how I feel about that from my Vampire Knight review), and they cry too damn much. Think Lucy from Fairy Tail and Dawn from Pokemon cry a lot? Well you ain't seen nothing yet! They cry way too much for me to even feel sympathy for them. Most of the time, their tears are unnecessary, and are only there for forced drama. I also bet you're wondering why I said they fall in love too easily and they're very indecisive, huh? Well even if you weren't wondering, I'm gonna explain it anyway! You've heard of love triangles right? Heck, you've probably heard of love polygons too, haven't ya? Well, have you ever heard of love "squiggly lines" before?? Well if that's what you've been after, look no further cause this anime has got that squiggly line for you! Let's put this in a way you'll perhaps understand: Hikari likes Manaka, but it seems Manaka might have slight feelings for Tsumugu, but it's later revealed that she actually likes Hikari. Chisaki also likes Hikari, but didn't tell him because she knew he liked Manaka. Kaname likes Chisaki as well which he randomly told her out of the blue because he showed NO signs of actually liking her in that way beforehand, but it seems Chisaki may have started developing feelings for Tsumugu as well despite acting like she hated him earlier on. Tsumugu likes Chisaki back, but it's so hard to tell with this guy since he's like stale bread who spouts words of wisdom every now and then, but has the personality of a rock. Miuna ALSO likes Hikari, and this is probably the strangest one considering logically Hikari is her uncle now, since his older sister married her dad (that's creepy as hell.) Miuna's 3 year old brother has a 3 year old crush on Manaka, random boy A likes Miuna, and random girl B likes Kaname, the lamp post loves the stop sign, the garbage can loves the bucket of water, and lastly, Sayu likes Kaname, and it felt like he was playing with her emotions when she told him. Did you get all of that? Need a diagram for this crap don'cha? I also find them indecisive because they hardly EVER make up their minds about something. This is mostly for Manaka and Chisaki, ESPECIALLY Chisaki. The reason I called her a b*tch at first is because that was pretty much her whole character. She acted sweet and innocent, but for some reason started hating on Manaka because the guy she likes is in love with her...? Excuse me, but how is that Manaka's fault? She never forced or even TOLD Hikari to like her, he decided that on his own! Manaka even tried to hook the two of them up, yet Chisaki was STILL being salty! Are you jealous because he likes someone else? Is that your problem?? And I'm sorry, but she basically hated Tsumugu's guts earlier on in the series, but as time went on, it felt like she developed feelings for him and started living with him, but was still in love with Hikari at the same time. I should also mention that in episode 13 when Tsumugu fell off the boat into the ocean, she screamed his name in terror and worry, despite telling him to "shut his mouth because he doesn't know squat or understand what she's going through" a few hours, maybe even a day before. She also let Kaname fall into the ocean right after saving Tsumugu, and you can just see the jealousy in his eyes as he falls into the water staring and her. I mean, she might've only saved Tsumugu because he's a regular human being who would've drowned had she not saved him (at least, that's how it was in the beginning. He and Miuna get plot armor later on in the series), but the way she screamed his name made it seem as though she loved him. And in episode 17, you can just feel the envy flowing through Kaname's veins as he watches Chisaki getting along with Hikari and Tsumugu (and what even is episode 19...?). Kaname might as well have been added to her list of guys that she's trying to pick but can't decide on which one. Manaka was a bit indecisive too because she couldn't choose between Hikari and Tsumugu, but it became clear who she really wanted and was just in denial like everyone else. While that situation was annoying in itself, at least she wasn't on Chisaki's level of annoyance (and Manaka actually became a better character when the Sea God took her ability to love). Really the only person I gave a crap about was Lord Uroko (or if you wanna be a weeb, Uroko-Sama.) He was the only one who was actually likable in my eyes, plus he's cute as heck (CUTE=SMEXY). I honestly would've preferred watching him the entire time than watch the other characters being stupid and annoying. It's sad we don't go into his backstory till later on in the series.
The characters get a 3.5/10.

Art/Sound:
Here comes literally the ONLY good thing about this anime aside from Lord Uroko! I thought the art was beautiful, and while most people will consider the music to be dull and generic, I honestly loved it as well. I enjoyed the soft sounds playing in the background, and I actually reeeeeally like the first opening: "Soshite Bokura Wa" by Ray, and the first ending: "Aqua Terrarium", by Nagi Yanagi. Loved them enough to get the full songs onto my MP3 player. And The first OP sounded like a Vocaloid was singing it, and I love Vocaloid so...ya know. The second OP and ED were good, too, but if I had to choose, it'd be the first ones instead, cause I don't recall ever skipping them, and if I did it was probably only once or twice. I thought the sounds of the ocean were well done and realistic sounding, and I watched the anime dubbed. Think the voice actors did a really great job here. They really made Hikari sound like a tsundere, Manaka sound like a crybaby, Chisaki sound like a b*tch, and Kaname sound bland. So, props to them. The ocean was very pretty, especially when the sun was rising or setting on it (just wish it could've been explored more.) And despite not liking the characters, I thought their designs were very pretty. At least, the people from Shioshishio. The people up on land were boringly colored and designed, along with their village, so the ocean was the best. All in all, this was definitely the best part of the series, and I wish everything else was just as good.
Give the art and the sound both an 8/10.

Overall Enjoyment:
I did not enjoy this series. Come on at me with your pitchforks and whatnot, but I just...did not like it. The best thing about it was the art and music, and art and music isn't enough to save a series from being bad (Looking at you, SAO.) I don't think this series needed 26 episodes either, as it seems most of their conflicts could've been solved in less time than that had the characters just talked to each other. I went into this show expecting to love it, and I was disappointed with it. The thing with the Sea God (that I kinda forgot to mention during the story part) was also pretty stupid. His reasoning's for wanting to freeze over the land killing off the land people and then putting all the ocean people into hibernation because he was lonely and wanted a girlfriend was petty to the extreme. And then suddenly letting land people breath underwater even though normal humans shouldn't be able to (logically) because REASONS was poor. Very poor. Hikari even called it "childish". Why were they suddenly able to breath underwater when the show specifically stated beforehand that they would not be able to do that even if someone in their family was from Shioshishio? And why did Manaka lose her "Ena" and then gained it again when Miuna grabbed her freaking arm? And don't even get me started on the magical, voodoo, "ryu ga waga teki wa kurau" crap that happened in episode 26. There was too much damn plot armor. The series could've been better, and I wish it would've lived up to the hype (still looking at you, SAO.) The characters were all whiny, indecisive, and annoying for the most part. Only ones who flat out spoke their minds were Kaname and Tsumugu, and Tsumugu is (as I mentioned earlier) like a rock.
I give the final score of: 6/10.

Sorry if you enjoyed the show, but it just wasn't for me. It made me laugh a few times, and Lord Uroko will forever be bae, otherwise I didn't really like it.