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A promising start with an incredibly disturbing (in a bad way) middle part, and a disappointing ending.

I am sure my fellow German people will understand me when I say "Deutsch Unterricht Lektüre vibes, hat mir Faust flashbacks gegeben".

The rape scene was unnecessary, the "deep" psychological stuff was in many instances just laughable. I was literally just reading it on a Discord call with a friend and we were making fun of the protag so we could get through it.

The only good things about it (besides the interesting concept at the start, which went downhill fast) were the art and Manabu's transition (good for her!)

What is love? In what ways can love be expressed? And who can you love?
This are the few questions I have been asking myself after finishing Nagi no Asukura, one of the best romance Anime I have every seen.

It is a story about five teenagers experiencing the fight between the undersea village and the village on land. It is a story about growing up and making difficult decisions, about failing although having done everything possible, and about undergoing changes. And it is of course about love.
This is Nagi no Asukara.

In my opinion, in the beginning the story was a bit too slow developing and at ... some point even boring. But although it was straight forward, there were some important issues to be thought about and it was conveyed in a way the viewers would feel with the main characters. Up to the middle of the Anime it was more or less slowly pacing until the story twist came. This was a really interesting and unexpected aspect of the story. After that the whole Anime became even more emotional and was concentrating more on the characters feelings than on the actual plot which was a bit of disappointing to me however expected since this is romance.
What also disappointed me a bit was how the producers decided to tie up all the loose ends. It was too complicated and not reasonable so that you just had to agree with it.

What makes this show so enjoyable are the art and the sound.
Of course, for those who only watch Anime with more or less realistic art will be horrified by the huge eyes of the characters. But I must say that it has one of the most beautiful artworks I have seen in the Anime that have been aired in the last year.
Through this whole ocean themed artwork the show became very atmospheric and emotional. The underwater scenes were well animated and gave you the feeling like you were actually in it.
Furthermore the soundtrack was great, the opening and ending themes also had that whole emotional and bright feeling you could expect from a romance Anime.

The characters were the less good aspect of this Anime. There is your regular set of people: The courageous and loud male lead, the all moe-moe, clumsy female lead, the very friendly and sometimes spirited girl, the friendly boy and the calm boy.
And that is also what they stayed till the very end. There was almost no character development at all.
However, you get to know about the character's feelings a lot (except about the feelings of the more or less important side characters which seem to be only important in the last ten episodes).

All in all I did enjoy this show as it made me cry several times and made me ask why we actually need love, if it just hurts us.
If somebody asked me to recommend them a romance Anime, I would tell them to watch Nagi no Asukara for sure.