Forum - View topicThis Week in Anime - Slogging Through Children of the Whales
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zrnzle500
 Posts: 3767 |
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@meiam It is clear that you haven’t seen the show. The residents of the Mud Whale (the ship the main characters live on) that have powers have their life drained in exchange for their powers just by living there by the god creature that powers the ship. One of the other god creatures powering the enemy ship offered to take the MCs emotions and bad memories instead, which he refused so as to not forsake the memory of those that died. I don’t know that that offer applied to the rest and it likely would not have stopped the enemy from completing there mission to massacre all the residents of the Mud Whale for the crimes of their ancestors from 100 years or so prior. The choice was to fight or die, children very much included in the latter.
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meiam
Posts: 3442 |
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Ahhh gotcha, I was under the impression that the protagonist themselves were given the option (a la Madoka magica) which wouldn't have affected the rest of the population but decided to turn it down.
But then, spoiler[did they forfeit there lives in exchange for the power or was there two different version of powers (the one they used and the hyper version were they would have to give up there emotion or life)?] EDIT: wow just read zrnzle500 response and now I'm getting conflicted answer, so the protagonist could have given up his memory and in exchange spared his entire ship but chose not to and instead resorted to using child soldier? |
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zrnzle500
Posts: 3767 |
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^Everyone with powers on their ship had their life slowly drained until they died in their mid to late twenties. For all the other such ships, the deal was similar except with emotions instead of life force and they exchange was more deliberate on their part. Though not everyone is able to gain powers in both societies.
You missed the part where the enemy was going to massacre everyone on the ship regardless. |
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lossthief
ANN Reviewer
 Posts: 1392 |
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Since it wasn't clear, Steve's issue with the child soldiers subplot isn't that it exists, but that the show just kinda glosses over it after the one scene where Suou is confronted about it. We see scenes of young kids killing other people, literally shooting them out of the sky, but we never get any sort of follow up on that. We never see how any of these 7-8 year olds feel about the concept of death or if they understand the gravity of it, it's just passed over to move onto the next plotpoint after the failed invasion.
The issue isn't that the series has this content, but that it seems so greatly disinterested in the consequences of it that it accidentally comes across as blasé about kids being trained in (and successfully) killing people. |
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AholePony
 Posts: 330 Location: Arizona |
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This was a terribly written series and what I found most annoying was how inconsistent it was with the "rules" set out by all those info dumps. It feels like the plot points were written by a complete novice. The Apatheia people were demonstrably anti-emotions but, heck that's boring so let's make everyone on our war ships that isn't a cardboard NPC have ridiculous amounts of emotion way beyond even Lykos. That makes no sense in the context of this story. They even made it sound like a "failed" child would be disposed of in their society but, nope, we get cartoon clown-villain Lion, Atsali, and Lykos' brother who are all brooding moody kids.
Then the invasion gets some serious deus-ex "oh I guess we need to retreat even though we're completely slaughtering you" writing to boot. At that point it was like 100 NPCs vs 15 kids that didn't understand violence. I don't care if there's a storm, finish the job and your comrades will circle back around to pick you up. Anyway, I did not enjoy this series, or the cheap shot mass murder in episode 3 for shock or emotional value. The term "pig with lipstick" comes to mind. This was all style with a total mess of substance. |
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TarsTarkas
 Posts: 5824 Location: Virginia, United States |
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That is us projecting our bias's on the show. This is their life and world, which is different than ours. Perhaps if this was introduced to that world's people as a new thing, there would be more exposition about it, but since it is already part of their society and culture, and maybe forgotten in time; it is no longer important. |
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Yttrbio
 Posts: 3652 |
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Well, no, it doesn't work that way even in context. You really need to watch the show to have a strong opinion on this. It's clearly supposed to be a significant loss of innocence, but the execution is just muted all-around that the presentation came across as quite mushy.
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DmonHiro
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Hands down the dullest pretty show ever made. Or the prettiest dull show ever made.
Nobody seemed to give a crap about anything, except murder-boy. And quite frankly, when everyone is as docile, stupid or both, I'm rooting for murder-boy. At least he DOES stuff. Horrible stuff, yeah, but it's still stuff. Who wrote this garbage? |
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DigitalScratch
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I'm surprised to see the extremely mixed reception to Children of the Whales. I personally enjoyed it way more than either AICO or B: The Beginning, and I'm hoping it's getting a second season.
The biggest appeal of the series to me is how much it felt like a JRPG, which understandably is a framework that won't click for a lot of people. But in my case I enjoy the concept of the Mud Whale and living "ships", I love the use of Thymia, and I enjoy how there's a lot of mystery to the magical world that the main characters have to uncover. I absolutely eat up stuff like this. I don't think the massacre in Episode 3 was meant to be "shock for the sake of shock" and more mean to disrupt the peaceful society we were introduced to in the first place. The big reveal that there's way more to the world than we think. Both the viewers and the main characters don't know what is outside the Mud Whale and for the most part, almost everyone is content with that. The sudden attack on their people shook them all up and forces the cast and the viewer to rethink everything they knew about their existence and their home. As for the child soldiers: yeah I definitely can agree that the plot quickly glossed over the emotional consequences and trauma that comes with having to be trained at a young age to kill. We actually do see some children arm themselves and attempt murder and it's very unsettling. With that said, the story may simply not want to tackle these issues and instead handwaves it off as "they survived and won the battle they trained for, so let them be happy." Not deep writing and a wasted opportunity sure, but it's not something I personally would hold against the series. The one big "plot point" that bugged me happened near the finale of S1 where these random evil twins tried to encourage a divide between the Marked and the Unmarked. It just felt very tacked on and didn't change or add anything, and it feels out of place in association with the show's primary theme (eg. the importance of both positive and negative emotions.) It's definitely not a perfect show and going by most comments it's definitely not going to click with everyone. But if you're like me and enjoy fantasy JRPGs, it may work for you. |
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11352 |
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This really is a ymmv series I guess.  The montage of them training the children for war hit me like a ton of bricks, and it seemed to reverberate well after, without explicitly spelling out exactly what had changed, so I'm baffled by the idea that the series was disinterested or blasé about getting that across.
I also don't see how people came away with the sense that the episode 3 attack was merely slaughter for shock value, as if it had nothing to do with the plot or was unnecessary. I suppose it was for shock value, but the shock was for the characters as much or more than for the audience. I feel like Nick and Steve's version of events was not quite what happened (especially regarding the Nous and the ruling class of the enemy), but I don't have the time to go back and source all my disagreements, so I'll just say watch the series and decide for yourself. And try not to go into it with, "well people say it sucked, so let's see how bad it really is."  If you're looking for it to suck, it probably will.
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relyat08
 Posts: 4125 Location: Northern Virginia |
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I pretty much agree with Steve and Nick on the whole show. This kind of story, setting, characters, aesthetic, etc is pretty much tailor made for me, to be honest. As you can see from my avatar, I'm just slightly into From The New World, and more than any of the other Netflix shows so far, this really was the one I was most looking forward to, and that most easily captured my interest. Unfortunately, it really was just horribly written. Very strange considering the pedigree of both Yokote and Ishiguro, but horribly written nonetheless. A combination of me being burnt out on Netflix marathons, busy with my own life, and just not interested in this show after 3 episodes of failed set up, led me to spending at least a week trying to make it through to the end, and while I don't totally regret the experience, I'm genuinely disappointed in what this ended up being. It was just not good.
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Merida
 Posts: 1945 |
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I wouldn't call the show "horribly written" but it felt more like a classic case of having too much stuff crammed into too few episodes. The plot was interesting, i liked most of the characters, it looked damn beautiful and there were some genuinely emotional moments, but overall, it felt really rushed which is weird as the pacing was pretty slow for most of the time...
But well, i definitely wouldn't say no to a second season! |
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louis6578
 Posts: 1861 |
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I'd like to point out that I went into this completely blind, knowing nothing except that it was an anime on Netflix. It was still vastly disappointing. The longest 12 episodes I've ever sat through.
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kpk
 Posts: 484 |
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While I actually liked "Children" it's not even close to be the masterpiece that is Shin Sekai Yori... |
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relyat08
Posts: 4125 Location: Northern Virginia |
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Well, I would. All of the things you said remain true, but the themes, character writing, and dialogue was absolutely tragic as far as I'm concerned. I'm amazed there are people here who liked it, but I tend to get stuck on that kind of thing more than many, I guess. I can't get absorbed in a world and its characters if I'm unable to think of them as people in any context. I'll excuse sloppy plot writing much more readily than sloppy character writing, if it services strong themes, and while this had some impressive and interesting thematic possibilities, they were equally lacking in nuance and poorly realized. And it may have been rushed, but that was the least of its problems to me. |
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