10 Second Anime - Amanchu! Advance - Episode 12 [END]

Futaba chooses night diving for her last requirement to qualify for her Advance Diving license. Season Finale.

Episode 12 - "The Story of Future Possibilities"

Hmm.

Ahhhh. We're back to good old regular nostalgic atmospheric other worldly diving. Nothing magical or dreamy here. There was a lot of musing about feeling the passage of time. Hikari notes that she won't be able to see the fun of learning how to dive through Futaba's eyes any more, because she'll be a qualified diver in her own right. But there will still be many new worlds and experiences to have.

I had to laugh that both Hikari and Futaba explicitly thought and said that diving is like entering an other world fantasy story. They even called divers like themselves elemental water spirits, undines, like ARIA! They were totally on the same wavelength, which is a testament to how close they've grown during the past year and just how complementary their personalities were to begin with. They were fated friends from the first day Futaba came to the little seaside town.

Heh.

No opening credits. So much story to tell in the last episode.

There's a graduation scene, which confirms for me that the Ninomiya twins are only one year older than Hikari and Futaba. I wasn't sure all this time.

Kodama and Kotori also sit for the entrance exam.

Meanwhile, Futaba completes all her courses to get her advanced diving license, the reference for the title of the second season.

Woof. Making Futaba do that kind of multiplication under deep water? Can kids these days even do that at sea level without a calculator app?

Aw. All the pictures Futaba took were blurry. Her deal was always taking pictures with her phone, so Katori figures she'll want to take the underwater photography class for her last elective.

Oh ho. Futaba with the curve ball. She wants to go night diving! We're going to go deep (heh) underwater for the other world experience in the last episode.

All the muppets are asleep in the back seat.

Hee! Katori is blushing hard for getting one of those teacher inspired moments from a student. She does say a lot of cool things. Like, you can't change the past, but you can change the future.

Of course. Kodama uses Kotori as an excuse to watch the night diving.

Nice. Hikari is making a fun secret, something Futaba learned to appreciate in the last season.

Katori says that the girls noticing the passage of time and feeling a bit sad about it is Youth! It's awesome!

Night diving lets-a-go!

Kokoro seems kind of pissed to be there. He's acknowledging Futaba's place in the Hikari hierarchy.

Futaba explains to Katori that she chose night diving, even though it was so scary, because her curiosity outgrew her fear. Growth! Awesome!

Kotori is a big fan of Futaba. This will cause problems for her little brother Kokoro, I'm sure.

Futaba caught Kokoro being supportive. She's superior to Kokoro in all the ways!

Just like they said earlier in the season, the ocean floor looks totally different under flashlights instead of the blue-filtered sunlight.

Futaba thinks that the divers look like they're flying through air because you can't see the water with the different colored light.

Ha! Hikari actually said "undine." Nice ARIA reference.

Here's your night time magic. Bioluminescent plankton flashing when disturbed. Futaba picked a good time of year for the night diving excursion.

Hee. I hadn't heard Hikari's embarrassed "no, no, no!" in quite a while. She and Futaba share a brain!

And now Kotori wants to join the diving club at their high school (they got in, naturally), so Kodama will reluctantly join too. She's a good character to explore that independent streak that doesn't look so independent from her big sister.

Bittersweet. The show ends on the first day of the new school year.

So, Mato-chan isn't interested in Towano any more? Can't even call him "Peter" just for the "hmm" factor?

This is a nice touch. Futaba and Hikari's thank you letters to each other are a good recap of all the important things from the last two seasons.

Fun will always be infinite!

End card, just like the first season.

Final Thoughts.

I wasn't expecting as much magic as they showed this season. Of course, it wasn't really "magic" since it all took place in dreams, but Amanchu really took on the mantle as the spiritual successor of ARIA to focus on the surreal and how a mood, a feeling, or a memory connects everyone together.

I think that was what was really the focus on Futaba's advancement during the course of the year. It's not enough to experience new things. She needed to experience these things with other people together. The first season concentrated on breaking Futaba out of her reluctance to try new things. This season focused on the proper attitude of trying these new things - sharing and being connected through the same experiences.

This was demonstrated most acutely with the shared dreams. Futaba was a pro lucid dreamer, but the show focused on how she experienced the dream world together with others. Peter's dream, which happened during an infant's short troubled sleep, transcended time and space. That's how important connections are to this world of Amanchu. The end card says it best for how connections should be treated:

FUN for ALL!
ALL for FUN!
     and go on...

This was actually the end card for the finale of the first season, except they added the "and go on..." part here. If there's a third season, maybe they'll add "and on and on! Fun is unlimited!"

Still, because of all the land-based magical stuff, I was a little disappointed with this season. Diving was baked into this show from the beginning, so to have relatively little of it was a downer. But this story is slice-of-life first and foremost, so it followed the changing seasons and the passage of time. This is good, although it messed with my expectations. Noticing the passage of time is what youth is all about. It's awesome!