It was scripted by Kankurō Kudō and starred Rena Nōnen as Aki Amano, a high-school girl from Tokyo who moves to the Sanriku Coast in the Tohoku region to become a female diver.

Haruko Amano left the small northern seaside town of Sodegahama 24 years ago and has not returned since.

When her childhood friend Daikichi emails her with news that her mother has collapsed, she rushes back with her 16-year-old daughter Aki in tow.

Haruko refuses, but Aki, who was a shy and gloomy girl in Tokyo, suddenly brightens and declares she wants to be an ama.

Despite her father's pleas, she decides not to return to Tokyo and instead enroll at the local high school, where she makes friends with Yui, who wants to become an idol.

Hiroshi has a secret liking for Aki, and his videos of her, especially after she catches her first sea urchin, make her as big a sensation as Yui.

At school, Aki falls in love with Kōichi Taneichi, a third-year student in the underwater engineering course, and decides to enroll as well.

Yui then finds out that Mizuguchi, a man from Tokyo seemingly residing in town to mine amber, is really a talent scout.

Things are tough for Aki as well when Aramaki announces a general election involving all his idols: those who finish below 40th place will be fired.

Their efforts largely succeed, but election day was bad for Aki: she only reached number 40 because another girl quit, and she flubbed her first acting role.

But things look up when she finally lands a starring role in a children's program, which leads to a contract with a juku to appear in their ads.

To sell his idols, Aramaki decides to produce a remake of Memory of the Rising Tide (Shiosai no Memorī), the film that helped launch Suzuka's career.

In the end, Aramaki, in part feeling guilt over what he did to Haruko, opts for the better actress over his own idol and selects Aki for the starring role.

She finds a town suffering: the Ama Cafe is closed and the tsunami practically destroyed the urchin population.

Yui initially resists Aki's plans to revive their idol duo, but eventually agrees to perform on their special train again.

This spurs the town to finally clean up the Ama Cafe and Haruko to give Suzuka voice training lessons.

The next day, July 1, 2012, the ama begin their diving season to a now bountiful sea and Aki and Yui sing "Memory of the Rising Tide" on their special train.

[4] Its success was called a "social phenomenon", as the series gave birth to such popular new phrases as "jejeje" (to indicate surprise).

[11] Kyōko Koizumi's version of the song Shiosai no Memorī reached number 2 on the Oricon Singles Chart.