Children of the Sea

• Directed by Ayumu Watanabe
• May 19, 2019 (Tokyo) / June 7, 2019 (Japan)
• Based on the manga title Children of the Sea by Daisuke Igarashi

Voice Cast

• Ruka Azumi-Anjali Gauld
• Umi-Lynden Prosser
• Sora-Benjamin Niewood
• Anglade-Beau Bridgland
• Masaaki Azumi-Marc Thompson
• Kanako Azumi-Karen Strassman
• Sensei-Wally Wingert
• Jim-Michael Sorich
• Dede-Denise Lee

A young girl is pulled into a mystery surrounding global sea life that two boys are somehow connected with.

Essentially Children of the Sea is the story of one girl’s summer vacation. That may sound like mockery, but this begins on the first day and ends on the final day of that period. I do not mind that but what was unintentionally funny was how they highlighted this narrative reality.

This aims to be something substantive and philosophical but only gets to a surface level of discussion no deeper than two guys drinking beer on a couch. There are themes of everything being connected and how all are one but those are not too well done. At nearly two hours that is a good chunk of time to get some depth but much of that time is wasted.

There is some weird dialogue in here that may come off better in Japanese than in English. A character named Dede when discussing a meteorite and the universe says, “Meteorites are its sperm and provide the festival of conception.” That is just a weird quote which comes out of nowhere in a scene which is heavy on sexual references.

There is little set up to the characters. Their motivations or where they fit in are vague. Dede for example is a bit out of leftfield in just about everything. What exactly is she? Local figure or something more? Maybe it is helped if you have read the source material but not everybody has.

The characters of Children of the Sea are pretty much what you would expect from Japanese animation. There is the emotionally lost girl Ruka. There is a boy named Ruka she finds herself drawn to for reasons never explained. And there is Umi who is a mysterious yet jerky male character that clearly knows more at certain moments than he is letting on.

As a story this is probably 45 minutes worth of actual narrative. But there are a lot of establishing shots and just general excess footage that could be trimmed out. And it probably could’ve gone to an hour and a half if they were less heavy on exposition and shown rather than told. But that’s another common element of Japanese animation. When you boil it all down not too much happens here.

This is a visually stunning movie. Absolutely beautiful. It is a work of art. Using standard animation as well as computer assists it has shots that are generally found in a live action film. Sweeping cameras and tracking shots. Absolutely engrossing.

And the level of detail is amazing. It’s almost as if it is filmed on an actual set. There’s trash on the floor and disorganized rooms. I was especially fascinated by a fan that they had. It osculated, but when it was blowing on a character the clothes ruffled and the hair moved. The minutia made this so much more real. And the sea life animation is stunning. But that is the strongest part. They created a nice picture but did not give it enough story.

Children of the Sea is a bit of Japanese animation that attempts to be philosophical, but never gets really below the surface. It’s beautiful to look at though. I would recommend this movie for the visuals, but not necessarily the story.