Espíritus del mar

Children of the Sea is the story of Ruka (Mana Ashida), the daughter of marine biologist, who befriends two boys at the local aquarium during her summer vacation. The only peculiarity being that the boys have been raised in the sea by a group of dugongs and are somehow connected to a mysterious gathering of sea life soon to be on the way. But what's her connection to all this?

It's a very nice looking film. The character models are somewhat simplistic, which seems to be all the rage in modern anime, but the backgrounds and especially all the underwater scenes are simply breathtaking. Definitely one of the nicest depictions of sea life I've seen, in anime or anywhere else for that matter.

That story though. It starts out nice enough. Ruka is nice and spunky, and I like that she's in no way perfect as shown right from the start. The boys are more of a mixed package. Umi is rather unobjectionable but Sora is so very... anime. He stands out from the other character, who are for the most part more realistic, and in a rather jarring manner. Then again... there's that old woman sea captain, who's simply nightmare fuel, so perhaps Sora is not the only one to stand out.

But back to the story. The first two thirds are fine. But near the end the film suddenly and with no warning whatsoever goes all Tree of Life style art film on us. And I still, weeks later, have no idea what exactly happened.

It's not a bad film and perhaps that ending will find a following of its own as the years pass. But I can't really recommend the film to a more casual anime fan.