H2O: Footprints in the Sand

I was drawn to this story because I had a lot of sympathy for the female leads, The male protagonist was ok at first, he was brave and strong and kind, but when they try to reveal his deeper personality I ended up hating him instead of feeling sympathy for him. I think they could have made him dark and interesting but instead, he just came off whiny and obnoxious. The end felt more cheap than tragic. the show also uses a lot of plot devices that were totally unnecessary. It would have been better with a much more subtle hand on the supernatural elements, ... and a stronger male lead that didn't make you cringe every time he got sad, or spoke.

(This review is based on my personal enjoyment of the anime, not my opinion on how well it is made.)

H2O Footprints in the Sand is certainly a unique anime to say the least. I have never watched an anime that has left me angry, overjoyed, stressed, discontent, and confused all at the same time until now. The reason for this amalgamation of conflicting emotions is the absolute enigma of a story and the conflicting love hate relationship I have with the characters.

An Absolute Enigma:

The story of this show is so "off the walls", I probably wouldn't be able to spoil the story even if i ... wanted too. I swear there were several points in the anime where I felt like I had either missed something important, or I was straight up hallucinating. There are multiple times in the story where supernatural, crazy, world changing events will occur, and the anime will never explain them. Characters will make baffling decisions that may make you question whether they are morally sound. Every important character has a crazy backstory that would probably need a whole anime each to explain, develop, and explore. The village has a different set of beliefs than most others which causes more conflict and confusion. All of these moments congeal into a huge confusing mess. While this confusion did decrease my overall enjoyment of the show at times, it also kept me interested and forcefully dragged me along for the duration of the anime while being extremely amusing. But, after finishing the anime I am left discontent because this crazy story has an even crazier ending that fails to explain itself and fails to tie up loose ends. This is also the main reason why I disliked the anime as much as I did.

Beautifully Terrible Characters:

The characters in H2O are quite unique because they are all partially developed with interesting backstories. But, I have two main issues with the characters that make me dislike them. The first issue is that they are all given an episode or two too develop. This leaves them very little time for their backstories to be explored and it makes it hard for me to understand why the characters act the way they do which factors in to the second issue I have. The characters do really awful things throughout the anime that sometimes make me downright hate them. Both of these issues turn these interesting and likable characters that you want to see be happy into characters that you loathe to see. It made it hard for me to enjoy some happy moments because part of me didn't want good things to happen to some of these characters. However, some characters are redeemed throughout the story because you find out why they act the way they do. This still isn't enough to remove the bitter distaste I have for some of the characters in this anime.

Overall, I would strongly recommend this to anyone who likes romantic dramas because it will either be an extremely interesting ride filled with twists and turns, or a fun little hate watch that you can laugh and discuss with friends. I know I have done my fair share of both already.

I enjoyed watching the anime and it was a real pleasure to watch, however, the last episode and the ending made me really sad and angry. i really wanted them to have a good life, it had so much build-up, then for it to be completely ruined by the end. Never have i been so disappointed by an ending, i completely didn't expect and it im mad about this more than i was with school days. Some much build-up, yet it was all for nothing, a very cruel and sick story. Hayami deserved better, this frustration is going to take a while to go. i ... won't say anything on the matter but completely avoid this anime. Never have i been so disappointed and shocked due to bad writing of this level

It was fun at first but the last few upisodes were cringe and disapointing, completely made all the earlier episodes a waste of time, so disapointing.