I don't think I could agree with this review more. I'm glad I got to see this anime in a theater, the visuals are so fantastic. Only thing about the animation I didn't like was the accentuated detail on everyone's eyelashes, no one in that town uses Maybelline because they're all born with it.
Also agree the dub leads don't do the film any favors.
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I must also chime in with a different take.
There are some films I like that are more high concept and meditative than about their characters. Such as Oshii's Ghost in the Shell films.
Children of the Sea is just like it. I have no knowledge of the source material manga, but the key to understanding the film in a scientific theory of panspermia. Essentially belief in Darwinian Evolution encountered numerous insurmountable problems that put its proposed mechanisms in doubt due to statistical improbabilities and, frankly, impossible ad hoc presuppositions that were absurd considering everything we know about our terrestrial world.
One idea was to take the 'origin of life' problem away from Earth and imagine it taking place off-world in hypothetically different conditions somewhere in the universe that made the origin of life from non-living matter possible, that was then carried on asteroids and comets and eventually deposited here.
The film uses that idea to tie into themes of Creation, life, birth, puberty and maturity.
It is about something much bigger and deeper a mystery than we are capable of understanding. And it's the same for a young girl caught up in the complexities of life happening around her, from her parent's relationship, to whatever the scientists and military people are up to, to difficulties socially at school, to her own frustrated and complex feelings.
But that is life. You live it, suffer it, and love, marvel and wonder about it and all its beauty and miracles, despite it being something too large to ever fully grasp.
Its the kind of film you sit back and experience. Certainly not everyone is into that, but I personally dig it! I It's also a splendidly animated film that lovers of the medium as a purely artistic endeavour won't want to miss!
I'll be picking it up on blu ray for sure!
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