“Go ahead, they told me. Open your eyes. And in front of me was an ocean.” Director Ayumu Watanabe’s much-anticipated feature follow-up to the 2014 film Space Brothers comes on the back of his directorial gigs on the Ace Attorney and After the Rain anime series. CHILDREN OF THE SEA (海獣の子供) is a visual delight that doesn’t just explore the ocean, but the inner self.
Based on the Daisuke Igarashi manga of the same name, which originally appeared in Monthly Ikki between 2006 and 2011, the film opens with the young Ruka Azumi (voiced by Mana Ashida of Pacific Rim fame) hanging out at the aquarium where her father works. One day she spots a boy swimming in the giant tank, and soon meets Umi and Sora, brothers who say they were raised by dugongs. As with all good children’s literature, Ruka finds herself drawn into a world she had never imagined.
Driven by the look and feel of the source material, some of the psychedelic animation was amazing, and totally does one’s head in. Caring as much for linear time as the ocean itself, Watanabe’s film compresses a whole lot of story into a runtime that is just shy of two hours, and the transition between the scenes is somewhat disjointed. Which might explain why I had no idea what was going on half the time.
Those visuals are quite stunning though. While some of the character designs, especially Sora, look as though they have (appropriately) stepped straight out of a high school girl’s notebook, as was the case with the source material, there’s no denying the scope of the backdrops and effects. There’s a whole trippy whale sequence that boggles the mind, and as the film reaches its crescendo, it’s like one of Steve Ditko’s multiversal Doctor Strange moments.
Yet there are other elements to the production, such as the musical score, that completely ground us in something familiar. If the motifs sound familiar, it’s probably no surprise that it is the legendary Joe Hisaishi behind the music. Having composed the scores for almost all Hayao Miyazaki’s films, along with the modern classics Hana-Bi (1997) and Departures (2008), Hisaishi’s classical approach has phrases that rise and fall like the tide, immersing us in this nautical adventure.
Taken purely as an exercise in colour, shape and sound, CHILDREN OF THE SEA is a veritable feast for the eyes and ears. Yet there’s more of an emphasis on style in the latter half of the film, makes some of the narrative inaccessible, especially for younger viewers. Nevertheless, while this may not be the most straightforward animated film of the year, it’s still one of the most interesting, and animation buffs will surely find it worth a look.
2019 | Japan | DIR: Ayumu Watanabe | WRITER: Daisuke Igarashi | CAST: Mana Ashida, Hiiro Ishibashi, Seishū Uragami, Win Morisaki, Goro Inagaki, Yu Aoi | DISTRIBUTOR: Madman Films, Melbourne International Film Festival (AUS) | RUNNING TIME: 110 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 1 – 18 August 2019 (AUS)
