Children of the Whales is a 12 episode anime based upon the manga series. It instantly captures your attention with its world and characters. It follows Chakuro, who lives on an island of sorts called the Mud Whale, that is wandering amongst a sea of sand. It’s a small island with a structured hierarchy in its village. There are two types of people, ones who can use a power called thymia, and ones who cannot. Those who can use thymia die inevitably die young, so it’s the ones who don’t use it that ages and are able to become part of the council of elders.
The premise is intriguing as it keeps on introducing more about the world. The characters themselves are interested in the outside world given all they’ve ever known is the tiny island. The best part is that the anime does not keep everything a mystery but rather reveals them at a fast pace. Soon after the start, a drifting island shows up and this kickstarts the tragic events that follows. A mysterious girl, Lykos, is found and the secret of the world begins to to be revealed. To top it off, there is a heart-wrenching moment when you realise that the anime was building up your connections with the characters just so it can hit you the hardest when it severs them.
It’s surprising at how well and how quickly the anime makes you care about the characters, including all the minor supporting ones. It constantly hits you with death and carnage and doesn’t shy away from it. Since the population of the Mud Whale is shown as leaning more towards peace, with violence only used as a last resort as a type of self-defence, it hits all the harder. It also has the theme of living in obliviousness and the cruel truth being hard to accept.
The Mud Whale is a unique structure and there’s just something about a hermit village keeping to themselves that make you interested. The way that society functions, how they are self-sustaining, and how the structure doesn’t just sink into the sand, are all bits and pieces that may not be required but adds so much to the setting. Of course, that peace is shattered and Chakuro is forced to grown up and mature thanks to the bad hand that he has been dealt with.
The worldbuilding is fast. Pretty much as soon as one episode introduces a new mystery, the next episode will set about revealing or resolving it, and the cycle continues. There’s always something new to learn but it doesn’t feel superficial. It constantly hints that there are a lot of things that are still kept in the dark. As more and more of the world is revealed, you start to paint a picture of what it all means. It’s not going to be the feelgood idealistic fantasy that the art-style might have suggested. The art-style is unique, blending aesthetics of a typical anime for its character designs with a painting-like style for its backdrops, and it looks great.
There are several antagonists, although one of the main ones was melodramatic and one-dimensional. It was deliberately so such that it makes them easier to hate. Despite this, they don’t last long and the way that they were dealt with kind of anti-climactic. The big conflict also doesn’t end but reaches a stopping point instead towards the end of the season. This conflict doesn’t quite encompass the whole season as you would have expected, so the resulting peace and quiet feels awkward at first. The worldbuilding then continues, as the scope expands.
Chakuro and Lykos ends up becoming more like side characters onlooking at what’s happening rather than the front and centre of everything. It suits Chakuro’s role given he’s the recordkeeper in-universe, writing down the events that is happening for future generations to review. It’s still surprising when you realise how much more Chakuro is regulated to the sidelines after all the focus he had early on in the season.
The ending piles tragedy upon tragedy onto the characters. The world has a cruel fate for all the people living on the Mud Whale and it’s quite depressing if you stop and think about it. Yet it still manages to close off the season with a glimmer of hope and plenty of potential for the future. It leaves you wanting more, to see the path that they walk and where it will take them.
Overall, Children of the Whales is quite unique. It has a hefty amount of worldbuilding and isn’t afraid to keep the pace high, constantly revealing something new but still manages to never run out of things to tell. These aren’t contrived either, each piece of information feels important, whether it’s crucial to the plot or just sets the tone of the setting. The art-style and music are just icing on the cake. The only negative is that there are certain awkward points where it felt like the arc either got truncated as they needed to fit something else within the season, or they genuinely ran out of content to adapt and had to push forward.
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