H2O ~ Footprints in the Sand (Review)
About 5 hours of my life I’ll never get back
So, I’m a weak ass who couldn’t manage to finish blogging a couple shows before they ended, but I watched them, and if I didn’t finish blogging it’s probably because I lost all interest in even hating on something. Spice and Wolf disappointed in the end for sure, but having had no expectations for H2O from minute one, I suppose I wasn’t let down.
That said, I did watch it, which reminds me of something a teacher in art school said once: if you go to a restaurant and they serve you a shit sandwich, you don’t have to eat it.
Screengrabs are all from the final episode, just to make things look more exciting.
Plot
Is there a plot? Like a plague of rats, the Visual Novel has descended upon everything, devouring real storytelling in favor of individual mini-arcs devoted to different girls. In H2O, Hirose Takuma is a middle school kid who moves out to the country with his Uncle Dragonball to recover from a bizarre disease that made him blind. If your bets were on “tragic incident in past, repressed” then either you wrote this show or you possess (at least) average intelligence.
Takuma meets a cavalcade of girls, like I’m-Not-Me, Platform Shoes, and Cross-Dress, but enters into a pseudo-relationship with village outcast Hayami, who lives in an abandoned train car in the woods and is inexplicably treated like Gojira with bad breath by the redneck townies.
Gradually the past of the village is discovered, and is of course inextricably linked to Takuma’s own recent but hazy past. And if you’re like me, you don’t care.
Animation
I suppose I’d call it “capable,” but the character designs were not at all appealing to me. The show was produced by ZEXCS, who have only a little work out there, none of which I’m familiar with.
Music
Forgettable incidentals, straight-up unenjoyable OP. I fast forwarded through it every time.
Dangers of Watching
- Fantasy elements I can handle, but those aren’t what kills the believability of the show. That’s handled by horrible characters.
- This show takes to clichés like a fish to water (see what I did there? sigh…)
- I’ll quote myself: there are some sweet moments, but it’s kind of like visiting your dying Uncle Bobo in the clown hospital — a bittersweet ending to a ludicrous experience.
- Animation is pretty crappy.
Benefits of Watching
- The aforementioned sweet moments, of which there are two or three in the series, really can be nice.
- I kind of liked Uncle Dragonball
Bottom Line
Let’s keep it simple, stupid: I pretty much hated this show.
This review reminds me of why it is sometimes worth it to watch bad series. I love going to reviews of crappy anime and laughing at the nicknames and shoddy plot twists.
I assume he recovered his True Sight, but I still can’t believe that was the premise of the show.
yeah, more fun to read and of course it’s a lot easier to write too.
and yes, he did recover his True Sight or whatever, but the kicker is I almost want to tell people to watch the show just to see how mind-bogglingly ridiculous the final episode is. Dropped my jaw.
As much as I enjoyed your sarcasm, I have to say H2O was a bit better than that … although I understand while you don’t think so.
Realism isn’t what H2O is going after – or at least, I hope it’s not. H2O takes Believability out into a dark alley and unloads two full clips of Plot Twists right into its face, which is why a lot of people (like you) dislike it. (I can also trust this is why you loved True Tears so much, which I can sympathize with more)
H2O works for me as more of a dramatic vehicle (similar to Myself; Yourself or maybe sola, if you’ve seen those), something that might not have the best life lessons or the most coherent story, but something that works as a roller coaster. I think, like a poorly scripted girl in a eroge, I enjoy being mindraped.
Those with more sanity or less enjoyment of the visual-novel genre may not like H2O as much, but I think it deserves at least a mention as something different. (see: Hirose’s insanity, episode eight, plot twists in the last three episodes)
Then again, there’s the whole “Hey, it’s a trainwreck, let’s go see it” mentality, so maybe your sarcasm will work in my favor. XD (Although, the first four episodes did suck, truthfully)
(My comments always feel so long… ah well.)
it certainly had the rubberneck appeal. But as a planned spectacle of plot twists, I’d rather see something like Geass, which (aside from having mecha and Fruity Menace Fukuyama) delivered every one of its ridiculous developments with a dun-dun-DUNNNNNN old-school soap feel.
But I have to admire H2O’s ability to deliver its own brand of ridiculousness with an understated confidence that perhaps the viewers would actually swallow it.
[...] was probably the second guy who ever stopped by the blog, mostly to disagree with me about H2O ~Footprints in the Sand, which, bless his heart, he seemed to like. You want to talk about trainwrecks — at least Geass [...]