First Impression: Umi Monogatari

Umi Monogatari
~Anata ga Ite Kureta Koto~

Summary:
The story starts off with two underwater beings, (that aren’t mermaids) who finds a ring falling through the water. Marin, the older sister decides that she will try and find its owner and return it. Her younger sister Urin protests, but follows along with her anyways. So the two sisters go to the surface to find the ring’s owner, and by chance they encountered a girl named Kanon, who was seriously moody at the time – and so happened to be the ring’s owner. Except, the girl only takes the ring back to toss it back into the ocean – only to be stopped by Marin.
It turns out that the ring was given to Kanon by her ex-boyfriend who had recently broken up with her, and was the reason why she was so irradiated about every thing, every thought, every time he has something to do with, or his very appearance.
Kanon soons get the ring after sighting her ex and launches it afar into the distance, where then Urin and Marin goes after it.
During their search, the sisters get separated. Marin and Kanon re-encounter each other once more, only this time Kanon helps Marin search for her sister …and fireworks are set off, scaring both of them. Frightened, Urin dashes into the woods only to stumble and find herself lost, while at the same time, retrieving the ring, without knowing she had torn a seal off the mysterious coffin and then hears an eerie call of “open the coffin”, and so she opens it. As result a dark cloud emerges from it, and surrounds the island, but at the same time it takes over the ring, and hides itself inside of it.
The fair weather changes into a furious storm. Heavily raining as the waves in the ocean waver dangerously, and the lightning strikes a turtle statue that was next to the coffin – which begins to glow.

First Impression:

As cute and adorable as the episode was – there were some flaws that disappointed me.
First, I found the episode a bit slow, but I think it might start moving the pace in the next episode. Secondly, was the voice actress for Kanon; I wasn’t impress, in fact – I’ll be brutally honest. I found her voice very dull, and her evil, mood voice could have certainly done better.
On the other hand, Marin’s voice is super cute, I find it fits her character quite well.
There’s something that I already love about Marin’s character. She’s so bubbly and optimistic, that it is fun to watch her.
The sisterly bond between Urin and Marin is so sweet! The way they glomp each other, communicate, just makes me go, “Aww~ Why couldn’t my sister be a bit more like that!”

Their comedy scenes where they made the character into chibis were also entertaining to watch – as well as their cuteness that you can’t resist and you know it.
(I’m a sucker for chibis)

Another thing I loved was the ED and how it played out the story of the Little Mermaid (original version I believe). It was utterly adorable, I immediately went on my, “Kawaii~spree” and giggle at Urin’s reaction, which was so amusing to watch. Especially how they were drawn – THEY WERE SO CUTE!!!! \ > /// < / I found the art for the underway scenes was absolutely stunning, and the animation quality was fantastic. Definitely something I look for in animes these days. The OP on the other hand, I didn’t enjoy as much, though the animation was nice. I just felt that they could’ve used a more upbeat song, considering how I found the animation had a faster pace than the song that I felt, went by very slowly and couldn’t keep up to the beat. (Or maybe that’s just me…)

I’ll keep a look out for this one, and watch a few more episodes to insure that I’ll be putting my time into tracking it. If not, I’ll just continue watching it – and it’d probably be one of those out of blue episode entry that you would see every now and then.


Oh my god, this is actually my first actual blog entry XD!!!
For those who would like to watch it: Watch it > Umi Monogatari Ep 1