Review of A Lull in the Sea

Even though I gave this anime such a high rating, I know it is not for everybody. The story, if analyze from words to words, doesn't seem that special. But something about these 26 episodes that just make me feel so relaxing, yet I can't really stop watching it. As this is the forth time I've rewatched, I think it is the time to write what I think about it. Also this is my first review so it's gonna be messy. -Story- The plot itself, for me, isn't really that good. The first thing I got introduced in the story is the village of Shioshishio, anunderwater village, and at first I thought this was going to be a world-building focused story, but turns out it was not. The story follows a group of friends that lived with each other in the ocean. For some reason that I don't really understand, they are forced to study on land. Trying to adapt to another environment is not easy, as I myself had experienced, they had to keep themselves wet or else their "Ena" will dry out. There is also so many discriminations between the students on land and under water.

Nagi-Asu also had many love triangles and new twists just kept happening throughout the story to further complicate the love triangle. Eventually, the big twist came, and I will not spoil you that, but I think that's the most interesting part about Nagi-Asu.

As I watch it again and again, I realize that this story isn't simply a love triangles plot like those Asian dramas that I watched. It is about the concept of "moving on", which is something you will understand better as you watch the entire anime. Sometimes things around you change, and it is scary, especially when you can't control it. And you just gotta move on from it even if you had such a connection to it. We watch as these kids gettin used to the new environment and life decided to give them. They had to went on land and said goodbye to their old school, and they had to accept that they can't really be with the same person they wanted anymore.

-Art-
The art is extremely beautiful and very recognizable, especially the scenery. How many times had you have an anime where you can just look at a random part of that world and immediately know which anime it is. The art was the thing that got me into this anime at the first place and it is truly breathtaking. I wish I could've given this 12/10 just for how beautiful it is.

Sometimes you just want to pause the anime to zoom into the beautiful scenery that this anime present you, the underwater village as you look down from the crystal ocean, the hilly town and just almost every scene of this anime.

-Character-
Nagi-Asu's characters are not really special compare to all the anime I've watched. This anime is a very romance focused anime. Still to this day, I still can't really imagine the full scale of the whole love triangles just because of the amount of arrows I have to connect. First when you first came in, you thought you already knew who's gonna be together but then as the story progress and new informations are put in, it had almost become impossible to really know how things will go. First you thought that the love triangle thing is only between the four friends, but then more characters are added. Another thing that's lovable about this anime, is how even though there is such a huge numbers of main characters, they never "over present" each other. Each one had their purpose in the story and you ended up connecting to each of them.

-Sound-
Not really a music person, and so I won't have a lot of words, also because I didn't really pay that much attention to the music. But I will say that the music does help with the tone of the story, a very calm, soothing, and emotional tone to it. It is not the very addictive one like in Assassination classroom, or very popular like Tokyo Ghoul's, but regarding about the mood that the story is going for, it is probably as good as it gets.

-Enjoyment-
As you can already tell, I really enjoy this story. It is one of those anime that after watching I just sit there, look up like I just smoke weed, smile and then go "Cant wait to watch this again." Although I wish the anime would have touched more on the world-building sector.

I am a very picky person when it came to anime, I watch for those like "how do they do character development" or "how smooth the transition is." Nagi-Asu isn't really spectacular in those parts, but whenever I watch, my chest just strangle in happiness, and is something that I very value.

-Overall-
Again, this anime is not for everyone, I know this because I am the only person in my family that like this anime. It doesn't have any intense plot or disastrous consequences for not reaching a certain goal. But it is beautiful, and I feel like I can really connect with these characters, and I want to continue rewatching it.