Children of the Sea is an animated film inspired by the manga created by Daisuke Igarashi over a decade ago. The film was a huge success in Japan despite this fact, selling over two million tickets. Mega popular singer song writer Kenshi Yonezu had a hand in making the theme song also titled after the film. The animated film adaption was directed by Ayumu Wanatabe and written by Eiko Tanaka. Most reviews of the film consists of viewers not understanding the film's second half.
A girl named Ruka lives on the coast of Japan's ocean area where she is an outcast at home as well as in school. She goes to the aquarium that she remembers from her youth one day. There she meets two boys who can breath underwater due to being raised by sea animals. She is drawn to one of the boys during her supposed uneventful summer vacation.... Not knowing that she just stepped into a process that will shake the foundation between humans and nature.
I don't have any thing too different to say about this film from all the comments that were made online. I do tend to look at films from a whole new perspective than most viewers. Especially if you're someone who doesn't know how to use their imagination and expects most films to just give you the storyline very cut in dry. The first half of Children of the Sea is very straightforward in it's plot progression. This is something we can all agree on. Events are kinda like a science mystery that most people can understand, until Children of the Sea starts to get a bit too deeply abstract for most viewers to understand. If you're not a reader or someone who doesn't like to read in order to stretch one's mind, then you're going to be like a deer in a tractor trailer's head lights during Children of the Sea's climax. A lot of comments I saw were people asking "What the hell did I just watch?"after the film just ended. These comments actually made me hold off from checking out this film due to me not wanting to watch something that's so difficult to comprehend that it messes up the viewing experience. I found that I could follow the film pretty well all the way through using the clues given. I did however have questions about Ruka's involvement in everything. A ton of Scientific content is referenced, You don't need to know much but a little understanding of the gravitational pull and how it connects to the Moon with the comets will go along way when watching Children of the Sea. What's bad about this if the film just expects you to know a little oceanography(I mean some of it is common knowledge if you paid attention in school) which sadly a lot of people do not so what was being conveyed went over people's heads. I liked the film as it was overall outside of questions about Ruka's background. The scene after the credits left me with more questions.....
The drawing for the character models are like nothing you will see in any other anime film. Don't start me of the balanced mixture between computer graphics and animation that's done so beautifully that you can enjoy the film for the under sea visuals along. Back to the character models though, I loved how the eyes for the three man character's were like a mirror reflection of the sea. Also, how the artist actually drew full lips on each human character. You don't see that to often in Anime. Children of the Sea's manga artwork was one that stood out too. I'm not going to lie, I wasn't too impressed with the manga version's artwork since I kept putting the manga back on the self every time I picked it up in the bookstore. However, the transition to animation was done very well by Studio 4C.
My theories about the characters are one's I will keep to myself as to not spoil the film. I do believe the main characters are in this story for a sole purpose not common in many other stories. Some viewers say that the two brothers didn't have enough character development. Did anyone ever thing that this was done on purpose? Plus the backgrounds of the two were said to be abandoned in the sea as children but none really knows if that's true of not. As I watched the film unfold, I found myself coming to the conclusion that this two characters were created to serve a purpose. No matter how sad you might feel when you realize this. The two boy's seemed to know their fate before anyone else. Ruka had the most character development even at the cost of the other two characters which I also think was done on purpose.
Children of the Sea is similar to an abstract painting that many people can all look at while each person sees something different. This film defiantly isn't for everyone because it requires you to pull certain ideas from out of your brain. That can be hard when some of us never had those ideas to began with.
No comments:
Post a Comment