The Fall 2017 Manga Guide

Children of the Whales

What's It About? 

Amidst a barren desert, an oasis known as the Mud Whale protrudes from the sands. Its inhabitants consist largely of the Marked, young people who have the ability to manipulate their emotions into a magic called thymia, which allows them to do things such as levitate objects. However, the “Marked,” which make up about 90 percent of their society, live no longer than the age of thirty. The “Unmarked,” who live to old age, lead the village and watch over the children who comprise the majority of the population. Chakuro is a young Marked with an anomalous interest in the written word, a need to be an archivist, a job usually reserved for the Unmarked out of necessity. One day, on what should be a routine expedition to explore a moving island that crosses the Mud Whale's path, Chakuro comes across an emotionless girl they call Lykos, the first other human the citizens of the Mud Whale have ever encountered. When they take Lykos back to the Mud Whale against her wishes, she reveals a danger the children of the Mud Whale didn't realize existed.

Children of the Whales volume 1 (11/21/2017) is an original manga by Abi Umeda that will be available in paperback from Viz Media for $12.99. An anime adaptation started airing in October in Japan and will stream in its entirety on Netflix in 2018.

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Is It Worth Reading?

Amy McNulty

Rating: 3.5

Children of the Whales volume 1 has all the hallmarks of an ambitious series: an expansive world, a fairly unique hook, and compelling characters. It does, however, display a lack of depth this early on that makes it difficult to connect with the story and most of the characters. Part of that may be the manga's emphasis on emotions and controlling them. From Lykos, who initially feels nothing, to the Marked children, who have a ritual of clasping their hands together and focusing to calm themselves whenever they feel an emotion taking over, emotion and control comprise a large part of the theme of this volume. It's too early to tell if the series will go the predictable route of encouraging people to experience their emotions unfettered, but so far that seems to be the direction it's headed in. Chakuro, though distinct because of his innate need to record everything, is otherwise a flat character who experiences tragedy multiple times throughout the volume but fails to elicit much sympathy, perhaps because he's discouraged from focusing on his sadness. Lykos displays some promise as she evolves by volume's end, and Ouni, the young man who wishes to break free of the Mud Whale regardless of the potential danger, also sticks out among the cast of characters, but it's early to tell if they'll evolve beyond the tropes they are thus far. The dynamic between the Marked and the Unmarked is perhaps the most intriguing aspect of the volume, as are the few pages where some of the Unmarked wrestle with the idea of outliving their neighbors by decades.

The art is expressive in this volume and helps the audience actually feel the harshness of this sand-covered land. The character designs are soft and innocent for the most part, which effectively conveys the youth-influenced Mud Whale's culture. However, the designs of the Mud Whale itself leave a tad to be desired. In the black and white medium, the sand and stones just make for a lot of white space. There isn't a lot of depth or architecture that will make a reader's jaw drop, despite the mystical setting. The design of the characters' outfits in the last few pages is quite memorable, though—easily the aesthetic highlight of the volume. Children of the Whales volume 1 will appeal to fans of apocalyptic fiction and stories of epic promise, but it's off to a slow to start.

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Austin Price

Rating:

Reading Abi Umeda's Children of the Whales put me in mind of a certain Miyazaki manga. A post-apocalyptic world with intimations of a war fought between world superpowers somewhere far beyond the idyllic confines of the hero's home town; the atmosphere of high adventure bolstered by carefully observed flying machines and peculiar beasts; the lightly inked art that favors fine-grained shading married to ornate designs that lends Umeda's style a look simultaneously ethereal and sandy: near every element of the story and art suggests that when Umeda went to look for inspiration, she turned to Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind.

But where Miyazaki's classic paired his meticulous attention to detail with a swashbuckling spirit to create a world begging to be explored, the setting of Children of the Whales is far less catching. Everything seems designed to draw the reader in immediately, yes: Umeda's decision to turn the narration boxes into protagonist Chakuro's journal entries is an almost-clever attempt to rejigger a tired narrative device so that it simultaneously works to provide exposition and build character. And it is a conceit that would work if the world at hand provoked curiosity and if Umeda knew how to present the elements of this planet she's put together. A mystery story that finds answers not in major plot twists but in careful observation of the wondrous minutiae that compose a world would be more than welcome, especially because Umeda's distinct art instills even this world's buildings with a life their own.

Sadly, though, she seems to mistake fantastical details and endlessly piling mysteries atop one another for effective world building while disregarding any sense of timing or pacing. Nothing is foreshadowed in this world except the biggest questions about the far-off war and whatever mysterious cataclysm reduced this world to such a state; more mundane details, like, say, the social order of the ship or its many characters, don't bear remarking until the minute they're needed to advance the plot. One particularly confusing sequence has Chakuro discussing “the moles” and “the belly” as if these were concepts we were familiar with, only to reveal pages later what these terms actually mean. Later, a festival is held in witness to a horde of phosphorescent crickets; while the sequence does evoke some sense of magic, it's too hastily introduced to draw out real awe: how much more a showstopper might it be if we had been made to anticipate it from the beginning? If this volume had ended on this sight than on a violent invasion?

It seems a waste, throwing away what could have been an intriguing slice-of-life fantasy adventure to force what looks to be another plot-heavy shounen story forward, almost as much a waste as following Children of the Whales much farther than this first volume. I've read too many stories that rely on the allure of mystery but end up offering only the same predictable, genre-specific answers to invest time in yet another.

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Rebecca Silverman

Rating:

Fall is apparently the season for deceptively dark manga releases. Children of the Whales takes place in a world where emotions power magic, but also drain you of life – most of the magic-users die by age thirty, drained of their life force. That's an interesting concept in and of itself, but author Abi Umeda takes it even farther by implying that emotions are considered bad outside of the enclosed world the story begins on: that emotions allow for wars and other distasteful things, so to give up those feelings not only will allow you to use your powers without being drained, but it will also make the world a better place.

That's obviously not how narrator and protagonist Chakuro sees things. In fact, he doesn't even know there are other living people or an outside world before the island-ship Mud Whale drifts near another vessel and they find Lykos, a teenage girl, on it. To say that things escalate quickly after Lykos' discovery might be to understate the matter – the story transitions from “mysterious fantasy” to “dangerous science fiction” in basically the space of a page. Oddly enough, that doesn't really detract from the flow of the narrative, because the story does get progressively darker as each chapter goes on; that transition, however, is very subtle, making it feel more sudden than it is when the outside world comes for the Mud Whale. This really feels like a book you have to read twice to fully grasp, because while small hints are dropped from time to time, you really can't quite put them all together until the actual truth is revealed.

Part of those hints are in the artwork, which is beautiful. There's a crumbling majesty to the architecture of the story, and the sea of sand looks fluid even though it technically isn't. The fact that the only weapons we see are on Lykos' island helps to drive home the differences in store for the people of the Mud Whale, and the way that magic is drawn is almost unsettling as designs move across people's skin and into the air, like tattoos born from their flesh. There's a really good chance that this story is going to get even darker very quickly, and if you're not into dystopian tales where the “dys” part really means it, this may not be the series for you. For my part, I think this is a “proceed with caution” situation: it could be a very intense story with something important and interesting to say or it could devolve into torture porn. It definitely gets another volume before I decide.

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Lynzee Loveridge

Rating:

As a person who has grown up in the Pacific Northwest, I have a natural aversion to heat, sand, dryness, and anywhere that isn't heavily populated by trees. Some residents of my state become “snowbirds” and buy up residences in places like Arizona to escape the torrential rain and a temperature that hovers around 62 degrees for nine months out of the year. I don't completely understand these people and their quest to escape perfectly mild sweater weather, but I feel like I've grown closer to their mind set after finishing the first volume of Children of the Whales. In a world where seas are sand, people traverse on a giant ship-island of mud to seek out resources using their magic abilities to maintain a peaceful, communal life. That might not be an exact replica of the living conditions in Mesa, but I'd like to imagine it is.

Children of the Whales is a manga about transporting you to a different place and time. The some odd 500 inhabitants of the Mud Whale live a fully fleshed out existence where emotions are stymied in favor of the common good and those with magic abilities live short lifespans while the ordinary folk manage the community and its secrets. Creator Abi Umeda spends considerable time getting readers comfortable on the Mud Ship, first by introducing the social pressures to withhold emotional displays and the day-to-day of compulsive scribe Chakuro. Things don't really get moving until the discovery of Lykos, but Umeda never makes the story feel like an info dump where characters are merely saying things for the benefit of the reader. The result is a world that feels genuinely lived in. The characters come into their own personalities and Umeda shows enough restraint to keep them from falling into cliches. It would be very easy for childhood friend Sami to crossover into tsundere territory and just when Lykos seems another stoic, Rei Ayanami clone, that gets flipped too. It doesn't hurt that Umeda's art has a remarkable attention to detail. Interiors are exquisitely rendered and the outside of environments also come alive when it would be all to easy to lean back on a wasteland of sand.

At its heart, Children of the Whales is a mystery story in the same vein as Promised Neverland. The young adults with limited years to live are confronted with a hint of truth behind their existence and now must survive long enough to unravel the whole plot. Promises of political intrigue and perhaps a big Planet of the Apes level plot twist are enough to entice me to keep flipping the pages. I can't wait to see were this one is heading.