H20 ~Footprints in the Sand~

Information of Anime

Takuma Hirose recently moved into the countryside from the city & is attending a new school.  He is blinded & the cause of it is unknown.  On his first day, he meets many female students from his school.  One mysterious girl he meets named Otoha tells him that he is the Promised One & how she can help him cure his blindness.

Storyline (CONTAINS SPOILERS)

Below is a summary of the storyline I've seen.  If you haven't seen the series yet & don't want to be spoiled, skip this section.  If you want to know the story & want to see how I viewed it, read on.

Takuma manages to makes a lot of new friends at school; mainly female ones.  He meets one student named Hayami Kohinata who is viewed as a roach by the students in the school; particularly Yui Tabata.  She gets blamed & bullied for many things wrong & the teachers do nothing to start it.  Takuma learns that she's not a bad person as everyone thinks.  Otoha would later give some mysterious powers to Takuma that allows him to see.  However, she tells him to use it wisely as it won't last long.  He uses it to help & befriend Hayami as he's about to be called a roach as well.  However, Hinata Kagura, one of the big household names in the village tells Yui not to call Takuma as she will break Hayami & Takuma apart.  We also learn that Hinata is trying to break them under her grandfather's wish & Takuma seems to have some sort of power in his family name. 

Hinata's attempt to break Hayami & Takuma apart fails as it the opposite happens instead.  Takuma finds out that Takuma & Hinata before Hinata's attempt.  He uses this & helps Hinata & Hayami go back as friends.  He succeeds & the three of them would become friends.  But, the three of them would become outcasts.  However, the Kagura household name would give them some protection.

As the show progresses, people are slowly accepting Hayami bit by bit.  Along the way, we get to see why Hayami is hatred due to her family being the previous village leader ruler & how they abused their powers on the villagers.  After the Hayami arc is somewhat done, a new arc appears about the Kagura family.

In the Kagura arc, viewers learn the truth about Hinata.  Her real name is Hotaru.  Hinata was her older sister that died many years ago from an accident when she was a child.  To save the Kagura name, Hotaru becomes Hinata under her grandfather's orders & tricks.  The original Hinata was seen as a strong well mannered girl while Hotaru was weak & useless.  Hotaru was raised to be exactly like Hinata.  From here, we learn about Hotaru's childhood story she was making about a fairly named Otoha waiting for the Promised One.  The story follows same way that Takuma is currently facing.  Thinking it over, Hinata goes back to Hotaru & everyone in her school accepts her "new" name.  Plus the Kohinata name is accept by most people in the village now.

After the town settles down, the show moves to the love story part.  Hotaru & Hayami don't fight over Takuma, but insist on the other to go for him after doing some bad things to him.  In the end, Hotaru tells Hayami that she is the one since he has told her a lot about himself openly to her.  Plus, Takuma does choose Hayami to stay at his side.

Although Hayami & Takuma are doing well together, their relationship would later break apart.  This is thanks to Hotaru's grandfather.  He tells Takuma about the truth about his mother's death which was caused by the Kohinata family. The two lovers confirm that it's true from Takuma's uncle.  Apparently Takuma's mother was suppose to marry someone from the Kohinata family.  But she found another man & gave birth to Takuma.  It was too late when the Kohinata family found out.  From there, they start to hound her which lead her to commit suicide.

Learning the truth, Takuma starts breaking down & somewhat distance himself from Hayami a bit.  Hayami feels sorry about the incident which makes him angry to the point where she runs away from him.  From there, she goes back to her old life where people think that she's secretly destroying the village.  This time, she does say it.  During this time, Takuma begins to go blind again after he attacks Hayami out of anger.

Takuma goes into fear about how he use to see.  When he tries to show evidence that he did, it doesn't show any proof that he did.  They just show works of a blind person such as scribbles on a notebook.  A village doctor believes that Takuma's mind was playing tricks on him about being able to see.  Hotaru's grandfather uses this opportunity to ban Hayumi out of the village as he informed Takuma's parent's about the situation.  As Hayumi agrees about leaving the village & does so, Takuma starts to lose his mind.  As this happens, Hotaru's grandfather sets up a trap to kill Hayumi.  However, Takuma manages to save her & starts calling Hayumi his mother.

With Hotaru's grandfather arrested for attempted murder as reported by Hotaru, Takuma is suffering mentally as his only memories are from his childhood years.  He continues to call Hayumi his mother & she continues to play this role.  The best solution for him is to have him go back to Tokyo  & Hayumi follows as well.

In Tokyo, Takuma continues to be set back in the past & Hayumi is working to support the two of them.  Takuma manages to get back to normal & see again when Hayumi starts questioning him about his real mother.  He manages to recall it due to a trigger where Hayumi lets go of his hand to save a child from a incoming train.  The event helped him recall his mother's death & how she actually died.  Turns out that she didn't commit suicide.  She was actually saving a child in a similar event.  As he finally accepts his mother's death, he opens his eyes & sees Hayumi's death. 

News about Hayumi's death is spread to her friends.  Hotaru & company dig up from Hayumi's old trailer home a diary that Hayumi kept.  In it, it talks about about Takuma changed her life with light & how thankful she is with it.

The story ends years later with Hotaru as the new village chief & being together with Takuma now.  They have a baby boy.  The old Takuma after building a new windmill see Otoha again who brings Hayumi from the Spirit world to visit him.

I'll update this when I know more of the show.

My Personal Review

I heard of H2O ~Footprints in the Sand~ before & decided to watch it even though I didn't have any background of the series at the time.  Basically the theme of the show was what drew me in.

Animation

The character designs look fairly nice.  However, they are quite similar in facial structure.  I'm beginning to think that almost all anime shows now are using the same model face templates for any show.  Here, we have medium sized eyes with faces that have pointy chins.  Takuma also looks like a girl.  What I didn't like in his design was the big thick sideburns that he has.  I personally hate does kind of designs.  The school uniforms are quite nice though.  Plain, but somewhat elegant.  Overall, it looks like an anime from the 90's almost with its dull colours.

The backgrounds are pretty detailed in terms of the use of colours.  The toning & shading is very well done & the details are almost like brush art.

In terms of the animation movement, it's quite flowing & natural.  It's fairly smooth & the speed movement is natural.  It doesn't seem slow nor fast.

Sound       

The sound effects have a mixture of realistic & silly.  They are play clearly & on cue.

The seiyuus here aren't too bad.  I'm not use to Takuma's voice though.  It sounds too feminine even though it is played by a female seiyuu.  Because of the voice, he's a bit girly to me.  His appearance almost seals the deal.

The music is mainly soft ballad & orchestra-style.  It's surprisingly soft & quiet that I don't seem to notice the BGM playing most of the time.  It was hard to get the mood going because of this.

Story

Basically, Takuma adjusting to his new life in the country & his encounters with some of the girls at the start.  His encounters would change him a bit as he starts to regain his vision slowly over time.  With his new views of the world, he changes himself bit by bit as he does things that he was never able to do before.  Although it's great, the show kind of left something out.  The fact the Takuma could see & the people around him aren't shocked about it.  There's really something big that was missed out from the time he could see again & the people knowing it.  Should have been explained in the show to prevent the "huh?" effect from viewers.  People that know the series would probably have no problems with it while people like me that don't know about the series would be dumbfounded.

As for the plot, the show kind of moves at a descent pace with the two main arcs of Hayami & Hinata.  The ending point of the arcs seem a bit rushed though as acceptance seems to come a bit easy.  One example is how Hayami got most people to befriend her easily.  Another is how Hinata get accepted easily for who she is.

The final arc is pretty emotional & it was kind of a shame on what happened to Hayumi in the end.  However, it would have been nice to learn more about the Kohinata & Kagura families.  I felt like I wasn't getting the whole picture.  Although there is a lot on the Kohinata family, I was thinking maybe the two families had something between them that wasn't touched on the story.  Maybe the Kagura family was actually the evil one due to the behaviour that Hotaru's grandfather was displaying.

As the ending, it wrapped up things nicely with years passed & seeing how everyone is doing.   Although we see a tragic event, the show manages to end with a positive feeling.  However, it seems most of the characters haven't really change much with the exception of Takuma moving on.  Overall, the ending was good & the build up to get there is well planned.  However, it seems a bit fast such as the Takuma mental situation.

Overall Conclusion

H2O ~Footsteps in the Sand~ is mainly a slow drama show that uses light comedy to entertainment & is more story & character based.  If you are looking for character development & a light-heart story, put this on your watch list.

H2O ~Footsteps in the Sand~ receives a seven out of ten.  The show is well planned in the final arc & the ending was good.  However, the show takes some time dragging to get there due to the number of female characters that Takumi encounters.

Last updated on April 1, 2008