Short Review : Children of The Sea

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"But I just want to see them once more."- Ruka Azumi

First of all, I must clarify I value a good story, if the plot is good enough I can most of the time ignore the art style, e.g. Steins Gate & Code Geass. So, I'm the guy who hates seeing amazing artwork paired up with poor writing like Uchiage Hanabi. Here I thought, nothing can be more disappointing than Uchiage Hanabi, but man Children of The Sea had some quite wild, abstract plot. 

The beginning is very easy to be digested, Ruka, our main girl protagonist is introduced and had some conflict with her peers while playing handball during summer vacation in school, leading to Ruka being prohibited on going back to school until she decides to apologize. With nowhere to spend her days during summer vacation, she ended up hanging out at the aquarium where her father works, thereby meeting brothers named Umi & Sora. She was later told that those two boys were raised by dugongs in the sea (hence the title of the movie, I thought). Until here I was like, yup I'm expecting something menacing will happen and its up to those trios to save the world resulting in our main protagonists to learn life lessons upon dealing with her peers.

But NO,
Here's when stuff gets... speculative, philosophical or simply put, weird. At that point onward, I can't really understand the story well. To be fair, different people will have a different opinion on this part and my opinion on this is, garbage. In my eyes, most viewers will not be sure what is happening (felt like an aquatic apocalypse at first then it somehow became world origin (I was like memory, dark matter & cosmos, really?)), and I can't really understand how the climax and the epilogue all tying back to the initial buildup. There's little to none character development, which made me give this film a bad rating.

However, you had to admit that the art is simply mind-blowing, basically its the art department flexing their budget with spectacular scenery and well use of CGI. The character design is subjective, I personally do not favor such degree of realism and prefer it more anime-ish. Animation wise, the mouth movement is way too simple compared to the degree of realism in the character design. The music on the other hand is produced by none other than the legendary composer, Joe Hisaishi whom produced tons of beautiful Ghibli OSTs. Despite his Ghibli background, you can't really hear the Ghibli style he always incorporate in his works, the OSTs are beautiful nonetheless, not memorable but a fine listen. I got to know about this show through Kenshi Yonezu's Umi no Yūrei, was expecting the song to be played during the climax but it ended up played during the credits scenes, Kenshi's song could've made the climax part more epic, but the director didn't put it there, which is quite a shame. 

Conclusion : (8.4/Average)

Fish. Fish lovers, prepare to be astonished by the gorgeous visuals!

This movie is artistic, in a sense. I don't particularly like story with no character development or clear plot. Hence, I don't recommend this film unless you are those people who values art more than anything.