Posted by Euro-anime.id – Throughout the anime, there are a variety of episode archetypes that have become near and dear to our hearts. The desperate positivity of the school festival episode, the revelatory hope and cheer of the Christmas episode and the, ummm, blushing red cheeks of the hot springs episode. But few are more famous than the most hallowed of special anime episodes: the beach episode. Taking the cast of your preferred show and plopping them in some hot sand and cool waves has proven to be a successful narrative experiment over and over. But why?
Everything from Black Clover to MY Love STORY!!, Tomo-Chan Is A Girl!to Another, has one. Heck, even One Piece has a few episodes that could be reasonably classified as “beach episodes” and, technically, the entire location of that show is a beach. And the simplest explanation for it is that even in real life, the beach tends to represent escapism at its purest. You leave your job, your problems and your stress behind and you head on vacation to a place that, hopefully, contains none of those things. For many, it’s a cleansing experience. Life has a habit of crashing down around you to some extent and pretty soon, even a typical Monday can make you feel like you’re drowning in your own to-do list. If the beach doesn’t wipe that feeling away, it at least makes you temporarily forget about it.
Which leads us to the beach episode, where the trials of a life you don’t live are brushed aside for a chance at happiness that you can understand. From watching them play volleyball to splashing around in the waves, if you find yourself feeling joy for the characters during a beach episode, it’s a testament to that anime’s ability on a wider scale to draw you in and make you care. It proves that an anime has done its job and gotten you to engage in not just how the characters experience the world during its most difficult (and plot-heavy) moments, but also in times where they let their guard down and enjoy its freewheeling delights.
Of course, not all of the aspects of the beach episode reflect a uniquely strong bond between anime and audience. It’s also often a fan-service delivery vehicle and fortunes have been made off characters ogling their crushes in bikinis and other assorted skimpy bathing suits. That seems… less significant. But then again, there have been a few series that have used a potential romance on a beach as a way to urge a character’s emotional growth or their relationships. Who among us hasn’t flirted awkwardly with someone? Who among us hasn’t formed a crush while on vacation, having been intoxicated by the sheer abandon of the trip? Who among us hasn’t found ourselves in that beach episode moment — that sunset or that shady umbrella or that hazy, end-of-day sensation — where you think “I should tell this person how I really feel about them?” Those parts can be both wonderfully (and painfully) relatable, too.
Anime is much more than a weekly content trough, despite the fact that it’s available on an international scale like never before. And with so much of it, one can fall into a cold pattern of categorization and consumption without ever realizing it, turning the beach episode into a cynical, mandatory affair. But episode archetypes like “the beach episode,” if done well, can mean a lot more than just “swimwear variants for the eventual figurine line.” Our attachment to it can give us insight into how we feel about that anime as a whole and whether or not it has struck us on a personal level. Summer might be phasing into its final days in real life, but with anime, there’s always a worthwhile reason to go back to the beach.