It's based on a visual novel by ELF, but it's not hentai. The only sex happens offscreen. It's a big deal in ep.2 when a girl kisses a boy. There's minor nudity in a public bath, but you could show this on TV and watch it with your family. Also, importantly, it's enigmatic, understated and excellent.

The tone was crucial. It's a delicate story and an insensitive director could have ruined it. The characterisation is understated, it's sometimes hard to see plot progression and there's a potentially silly magical element that needed careful handling. Most of its scenes are just young people at the beach. It's summer, they're playing volleyball, etc. Everyone's having fun, right? Well, no. Two of them used to be romantically attached to someone who died. A third says she hates the beach and must also have darkness in her past, but we never learn the details.

In ep.3, there's an injured seagull in a cage. It can't fly, even though it should have been able to. Its wings have recovered, but it's scared. Its barriers are mental, not physical. That's our human cast too.

Even before learning the truth, though, you'll sense the tone. There are lively, entertaining characters like Chinatsu, but we're never far away from something quieter and more reflective. Strangest is the Umiwarame. She looks like a child, but she has enigmatic, philosophical conversations that make her sound like an adult. She appears and disappears without warning, except perhaps for the sound of bells. She swims in the sea at night like a dolphin. She's magical. She allows a miracle in ep.3 that allows the rescue of an attempted suicide.

The characters believe in a Tanabata miracle. By the end, you won't know whether that might really happen.

I like the cast, although it takes time to prise up the shells of the most important people. Fun girls like Chinatsu and Tsugumi you'll feel you know immediately, but Yoshihiro, Nao and Shizuku avoid discussing themselves. If they did, they wouldn't be where they are emotionally. They're polite, reserved and calm in a way that might suggest a history of depression. A boy called Itou fancies Nao and won't take "no" for an answer, but this nearly ends in tragedy. (He gets angry when Nao rejects his advances and he has no alternative strategies for pursuing her, beyond being a dick.)

I liked this series a lot. It's beautiful and strange. It's about bereavement, mourning and inability to move on, long past the point where the departed would have wanted that kind of reaction from their loved ones. There will be healing. (As is often the case with anime based on ELF visual novels, the last episode has an important post-credits sequence. Don't miss it.) People say "no" when they shouldn't, but that doesn't mean the other party won't try again.

"Living means feeling pain sometimes. But night is always followed by morning."