Review for A Lull in the Sea Part 2

The latter 13 episodes of this series seriously lift-off after a gentle start with the first half. (I refer you to my review of part one of this series here if you haven’t read it). As a result, my view of the series as a whole has somewhat changed too. What I saw as not much more than a creative take on teen melodrama became much more than just that. The narrative really moves on in the latter half to reveal a series that probably ranks alongside other ‘seriously good’ anime series.

Look away now if you want to watch Series 1 first as picking up the narrative in the second-half will involve revealing the final part of the previous arc which I’d so studiously avoided in my review.

The break point of part one saw the people of Shioshishio, the undersea human world, going into forced hibernation whilst the land-dwellers of Ofunehiki were doing all they could to please the so-called ‘Lord Sea God’. Five years pass and extreme weather patterns, like the sea being frozen over, have become the norm, as well as freakish weather conditions in the inland cities and the entire coast whitened with snow and ice.


Chisaki is now living with Tsumugu on land and, using her nursing skills, is caring for his elderly grandfather whilst Tsumugu is studying at college. He’s trying to figure out what went wrong with the Sea God ritual to have caused such massive disruption.



Hikari is the first to wake from hibernation, still naked in the frozen sea, locked in a moment in time where he was trying to save Manaka. He sets about searching for Manaka whilst he waits for his friends to awaken from their five year slumbers.


Miuna and Sayu have now grown up by five years and are therefore the same age as the rest of the gang (don’t ask!) and their passions for the older boys haven’t diminished. They’re now at Mihama Middle School too whichis where the series kicked off in the first place.


Of course this all understandably freaks Hikari out. He feels that just a few minutes have passed since he fell into his long-sleep. Plus Manaka is still buried somewhere deep under the sea and he feels like he has to find her, whatever the outcome.


The search isn’t simple. Swimming is tougher in the cold with far stronger currents than the gang have been used to. When Munia dives in to the sea (after hearing a weird cracking sound) she is able to breathe underwater so is able to join the rest of the undersea gang in their search for Manaka.
After Tsumugu is cursed in the same way that Manaka was it becomes apparent that the ‘slacker’ Lord Uroko must be on land. Miuna and Sayu try their hardest to enlist his help in the search and only succeed with the offer of lots of food and porn. (Yep – you read that right. Despite his god-like status he’s actually a bit of a lazy pervert).


The tension brought by the search gently rises to a very satisfying crescendo (I won’t spoil that here) and left me ruminating on how long it would be before I watched this again. Oddly, as I’d left it a few weeks between watching Part 1 and Part 2, watching Part 2 made me want to go back and watch the first part again as I can’t help feeling that I missed a lot which, having seen the whole series, would somehow make more sense a second time through. If that makes any sense at all.


The image quality is pristine throughout and really as good as you could expect from a DVD. I imagine the Blu-Ray looks even better.
Special features on the second set are very slight with just a couple of caption-less credits (with two different songs being used) and some trailers.


Having now seen the entire series of Lull in the Sea, I can wholeheartedly recommend it as long as you accept that it’s not a constant white-knuckle ride. It’s a gentler paced programme stretched out across 26 episodes - although when it cranks up the tension it does it brilliantly and you’ll have devoured these episodes in no time.