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EP. REVIEW: The aquatope on white sand

Episode 13:

I really felt for Kukuru here, and right now I don't like her boss very much (though considering what kind of series this is, we may well see some insight into his character).

I am so loving this anime. The story, visuals are all awesome. I am still hoping that Kukuru and Fuka would be more then just friends....

TanyaTheEvil wrote:

I am so loving this anime. The story, visuals are all awesome. I am still hoping that Kukuru and Fuka would be more then just friends....

Impossible to confirm without asking the source material author, but one good reason to avoid Fūka and Kukuru from being more than friends is to avoid turning the show into a rom-com (note that we have not seen romantic relationships of any type in the show other than the implied ones between older married persons and widows/widowers). Rom-com elements of any type would distract from the main theme of the show (just my opinion, and we all know what opinions are similar to).

On another note, Aquatope is an original series not adapted from an existing work, so there's no source material author.

I think rom-com is being used there to really just mean 'romance'?

I thoroughly hate Chiyu's character even after this episode. No matter how they move her character forward after this ep it's been tainted with how she has acted up to this point. Her sob story to me just hit me and washed past I couldn't care less. The way she acted was beyond reproach in every instance she was shown and it was amplified this ep. She never tried to understand anyone up til this point and just lashed out at them and mocked them despite not even thinking they might have a situation in the same ball park as her. They needed to sprinkle hints throughout the ep's she's been in giving small hints. All we've seen really is a rude person with no context to this point. I have no faith they'll make the Assistant director remotely likeable either as he follows the same line as Chiyu, dick for the sake of being a dick with no hints to why. I see no reason why these 2 characters are even in other than to just generate drama.

...
I think the worst part of the episode for me is that they made it seem like that Kukuru was mostly in wrong despite not really doing anything....

Kukuru had only good intentions, but she had no business jumping in the work of a different department without clearing it with both her supervisor (Tetsuji Suwa) and the director that supervises the attendants (Bondo Garando) - and in turn Bondo should have informed Chiyu that a person outside her penguin department would temporarily be helping out.

if Tingaara (or Tingarla? They seem to be playing with the transliteration..).

I thought Chiyu's backstory was touching and effective, as was Kukuru's comically brief effort to experience what raising a child is like (although I can't help but feel like 2 hours was a bit too brief. Even a typical babysitting gig is 5-6...). Guess I'm in the minority, there?

That said, I do have at least one significant criticism (well, 2; I'm counting the 2 hours thing. C'mon!): I thought Chiyu's husband literally leaving her was (A) unnecessarily melodramatic and (B) bizarrely underexplained, given how major an emotional note it was to drop. Like, I can sort of fill in the blanks I guess, but I'd rather not have to jump from "she lost her job because her job didn't/couldn't accommodate her schedule needs as a mom in a culture where moms are still heavily the primary kid caretakers" to "oh and btw her husband left her because that was stressful or something". That's a pretty big leap for an important character and story point.

Also, just to be clear: I don't think any of this justifies Chiyu's behavior. There's a huge difference between "oh this is an understandable response to common but extreme stress and I am not surprised she reacted in this way" and "it's OK for her to act this way and I now absolve her of all sins". She was obviously still quite condescending and rude to many of the folks she interacted with from Gama Gama. But I don't really need to like her as a person to like her as a character; I just wanted to understand her, and find her portrayal reasonable, and now I feel that need has been pretty well satisfied.

... but the episode made it clear she did both of these things? She even had to expressly promise her boss that she'd get her work done first before volunteering to help with the attendants' workload. The only person not in-the-know was Chiyu. Which is not to say I think Kukuru was a saint about this -- she was obviously feeling a bit petty and competitive (before learning about Chiyu's reasons and circumstances), or she might have explicitly talked to Chiyu herself (not counting her accusatory yelling at Chiyu, which was obviously never going to help), and not assumed Bondo would do so. But I don't think Kukuru engaged in any particularly crazy violation of workplace hierarchy, here.

Just like I would have told Kukuru when she was unhappy about the department she got put in (after being recruited due to nepotism): "that sucks for you, but that's the effin' job".