天下制覇

Clearly a cross cultural gap.

Impressions:

For a show about people who live in the ocean, they didn’t put a lot of thought into learning how water works. Like… to the point where it was really bothering me. I was wondering why their clothes and hair weren’t wet and just shrugged it off as ocean magic, but then they got out of the water and their clothes got wet. That’s right. Dry air made them wet. And there were fish everywhere. Yeah, I get that that fish live in the ocean, but squirrels live in our yards and we don’t have them running through all our houses, pooping in our homes. You can also apparently catch fish. Like… as a condition. As in you start spontaneously growing fish heads on your body, it makes noises, and you treat it with cream while it hisses at you in kind of a farting noise which is the height of embarrassment. You can also apparently feed them. It could really make that zit before prom situation even more awkward. Sea peoples’ wounds can also be healed, not by water, but salt, leading to this strange scene where Boy C is pouring salt onto Girl A in a tub. And this is after showing up at home carrying an unconscious girl covered in dirt and bruises, which apparently barely even elicits notice. Is this something that happens so often in his house that it is no longer an event of note, or are sea people collapsing, covered in wounds just a common event in the entire city? I guess my saliant point is that very little thought or care seems to have gone into the writing and it knocked me right out of my suspension of disbelief constantly by having problems simply making sense.

I guess it doesn’t look too bad, but as one of those pastoral "kids go to school… have your heart warmed by their friiiiiendship!" affairs, there’s not a whole lot to actually animate and they certainly weren’t ambitious with it. There are some truly bizarre moments of direction too, mostly related to the sudden internal narration which is used incredibly haphazardly. Yeah, I don’t like it in general period, but if you’re going to use it, at least be consistent. There’s this moment right at the end where Boy A charges up to Boy C, charged with anger about imagined wrongs to Girl A, and after she yells him down, while he’s staring Boy C down, he suddenly begins an introspective internal monologue. It is sparse with the background music, which I guess I’ll call a good thing for the setting.

The characters are… well, let’s say it was a relief in the second half when the focus shifted off of Boy A, who is loud and obnoxious. Of course, it shifted to Girl A instead, who has the brains of a manatee with a fish on her knee, but she’s rescued by Boy C, who has the personality of a sea cucumber. Oh wait, he’s a land dweller. A land sea cucumber then. I don’t like any of them, is I guess what I’m saying, and that’s kind of a damning point for this kind of show. It’s no mystery how things are going to progress from here, aside from what other marine life is going to grow on what parts of the body, and if I want to slap the characters already for annoyance/stupidity/not being a character respectively, then there’s little chance I want to see them do the little annoying juvenile dance of Japanese friendship.  

Next Episode:

Feeeeeeeeeeelings.