Children of the Whales, the manga and the anime, is criminally underrated

Jongriffin · Post by **Jongriffin** » 05 Mar 2020, 02:44

Who's read or watched Children of the Whales? It's an incredibly beautiful manga and anime, with great characters, lots of emotion, and, being a fantasy, phenomenal world building. The artwork is wonderful, full of so much detail.

The story opens with the Mud Whale, a giant vessel that sails over an ocean of sand. The Mud Whale has vegetation on it, towers, and little homes. There are two kinds of people on the Mud Whale has two types of people on it, those who have powers and those who don't. Those who don't have powers live long lives. Those who do live short lives. I don't want to give too much away, but it's such great storytelling.

I have to ask, with the intriguing storytelling, the beautiful artwork and its attention to detail, the detailed world building, the human emotion that seeps through the pages from the characters, why is this anime and manga so underrated?

Momogari · Post by **Momogari** » 05 Mar 2020, 05:17

I've noticed classy anime isn't popular in general. Probably something to do with mean/median preferences in entertainment.

Consider first that on average, people will refuse to touch a book they're not required to.

I wonder what those people would think when they hear a phrase like "world-building" for the first time.

Tanya · Post by **Tanya** » 05 Mar 2020, 11:55

I haven’t watched it, sounds interesting. I noticed it aired on Netflix too. Which I wouldn’t think is a streaming site most anime fans use. For one it’s expensive comparatively to other sites. 2nd it has a bunch of non anime shows, shows I’m not interested in most of the time.

So that’s why I never watched it or even knew about it. Netflix says lack of content is why they aren’t gaining or retaining customers but for me it’s too much of the wrong content that I have to pay for. I’d prefer a part of their library access at a reduced price as their other content is just unnecessary clutter I have to pay for, no one wants to pay for something they don’t want and never use.

As for Manga, I don’t care for any.

It sounds similar to Heroic Age.

Momogari · Post by **Momogari** » 05 Mar 2020, 12:12

Lord Myne wrote: It sounds similar to Heroic Age.

Mm. No.

I can't think of a single title the Children of the Whales is similar to.
Maybe the closest is Shin Sekai Yori, and that's another one that's wholly unique.
Maybe Fantastic Children comes close but same. And almost noone knows that one.

Tanya · Post by **Tanya** » 05 Mar 2020, 12:30

I haven’t watched either of those.

Ekkun · Post by **Ekkun** » 08 Mar 2020, 09:04

didn't read the manga, but I watched the anime, twice, fisrt on fansites subtitled, and later binge it at Netflix in English. It was nice, but not in my preferences.
I recognise that the plot has quite a lot of potential... but the animation does make feel that I wanted more like other anime did.
I think I rated it generously with 6 in my MAL.