Kujira no Kora wa Sajou ni Utau

In a world covered by an endless sea of sand, there sails an island known as the Mud Whale. In its interior lies an ancient town, where the majority of its inhabitants are said to be "Marked," a double-edged trait that grants them supernatural abilities at the cost of an untimely death. Chakuro is the village archivist; young and curious, he spends his time documenting the discovery of newfound islands. But each one is like the rest—abandoned save for the remnants of those who lived there long ago.

For the first time in six months, another island crosses the horizon, so Chakuro and his friends join the scouting group. During the expedition, they find vestiges of an archaic civilization. And inside one of its crumbling remains, Chakuro discovers a girl who will change his destiny and the world inside the Mud Whale as he knows it.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Ouni Main

Umehara, Yuuichirou Japanese

Chakuro Main

Hanae, Natsuki Japanese

Lykos Main

Iwami, Manaka Japanese

Liontari Supporting

Yamashita, Daiki Japanese

Suou Supporting

Shimazaki, Nobunaga Japanese

Shuan Supporting

Kamiya, Hiroshi Japanese

Ginshu Supporting

Komatsu, Mikako Japanese

Sami Supporting

Kanemoto, Hisako Japanese

Nibi Supporting

Tamaru, Atsushi Japanese

Oruka Supporting

Ishida, Akira Japanese

Matsukura, Yuuji Producer

Suzuki, Kaoru Producer

Kyoutani, Tomomi Producer

Nakayoshi, Haruhito Producer

Reviews

Sep 19, 2023

RESOLVING_POWER

Recommended

I watched Kujira no Kora wa Sajou ni Utau, also known as Children of the Whales. Here are my thoughts:

I'll begin with discussing visuals, as this is one of the show's best features. This anime consistently looks excellent. Nearly every single frame is screencap-worthy. The art style is unique and has an organic look to it that is quite immersive. There is a lot of variety among the character designs, and most of them look good. The MC is adorable, both in design and personality. Facial expressions are well illustrated and the character animation is consistently good. The creative art style and high visual production ... quality really enhance the fantastical setting of this show as well.

The setting is another very remarkable aspect of this anime. It is quite unique and otherworldly. It was a major component of my enjoyment. More and more information about the world is gradually revealed throughout the show; it is pretty intriguing and the show does a decent job at world building for a 12-episode runtime. What I can reveal to you without spoilers is that the show takes place in the middle of a 'sand ocean' aboard some sort of magical ship composed of earthy materials. It is quite cool and fantastical, and the nice visuals really complement it.

Even beyond the world building, there are a lot of mystery elements in the show and hints dropped about things not yet revealed. However, as you might cynically expect from a 12-episode manga adaptation, many of the mysteries alluded to the viewer are never explained. Regardless of some of my questions not being answered, I still often felt a sense of intrigue while watching. The writer clearly had some fascinating ideas. Also worth mentioning is that the ending is not particularly satisfying and leaves a ton of loose plot strings. The last episode indicates an upcoming sequel (and I did watch the Blurays), but at the time of writing this I'm not aware of any sequels.

One of this show's most significant issues is the size of its cast. The enormous cast with this limited runtime is not a good combination, especially in an already plot-heavy show with a lot of exposition. This anime tries to balance way too many character arcs, and none of them are done particularly well as a result. Compounding this issue further is the fact that it's difficult to feel emotions for characters who are not given adequate development, or barely any screentime at all for that matter. A common criticism that I've heard from others about this show is that it is too "melodramatic." I would argue that this feeling of so-called melodrama described by others is the result of phenomena I've just outlined: emotionally impactful events happening to inadequately developed characters. In any case it is true that the show is dramatic. Most episodes involve somebody crying at some point. If frequent tears is something that puts you off then you likely won't enjoy this anime. It definitely lays on the drama heavy (that's certainly not an issue for me personally). Apparently the source material is shoujo demographic, although it felt much more cosmopolitan than that to me. One subtle but praiseworthy aspect of this anime is that it maintains a fairly consistent emotional tone. I was grateful for the absence of comedic relief and minimal 'emotional whiplash' effects.

Beyond the characters, the show tries to tackle a bewildering amount of story arcs, in addition to the already elaborate world building. Simply put, the show tries to pack way too much story into its runtime, and as a result none of the story arcs are executed particularly well. The divided attention of the viewer and lack of sufficient screentime meant that any resulting emotional payoff from a given story arc was significantly impeded. To me, this is a core reason for this anime's squandered potential. I think you won't be surprised to read that I found the show's overall pacing way too quick, particularly during the later episodes.

Although they weren't present in every episode, I found the fight scenes to be a weak point of this anime. They were fairly lackluster and, even worse, drawn out and soaked up a lot of precious screentime. I'm really not sure why so much screentime was allocated to these fight scenes. Regardless of the execution, it was disappointing to see such a unique creative show devolve into mundane violent conflict. I realize that the kinetic conflict was a mechanism to explore the themes of the writing, but I wish it was approached a different way. However, my opinion on this is definitely biased due to my general distaste for fight scenes. It's possible I'm overstating their significance.

The OST seemed decent but I'll need to listen to it in isolation to evaluate it with greater confidence. I know there were some good tracks, but it was mostly overshadowed by dialogue and sound effects (like sandstorm background noise), at least from my perspective. In terms of voice acting, nobody in this large cast impressed me or stood out (besides Ouni's sexy deep voice).


My overall rating: 7/10
This anime has a truly unique setting along with some intriguing world building, and it's all presented with a wonderful organic-looking art style. It consistently looks fantastic. Unfortunately, it suffers from unfocused storytelling and poor screentime budgeting. It tries to present far too much story content for its runtime, and sadly as a result none of the story arcs realize their impressive potential.

A lot of this anime's issues could have been diminished if it were two cours instead of a mere 12 episodes. Most of its flaws are common manga-adaptation problems.

Despite my criticisms, I think that a lot of people could enjoy this anime. There are a lot of aspects here worth appreciating. I'm surprised it isn't more popular.

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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Sep 11, 2022

Inter_anime

Mixed Feelings

"Children of the Whales" or "Kujira no Kora wa Sajou ni Utau" is a precellular anime, it has an interesting premise, complex world-building, and decent animation, yet despite all that it constantly felt as if it was coming up short. Depending on what you like in a show, this anime might either be really enjoyable for you or not enjoyable at all.

One thing that is really appealing about Children of the Whales is its setting and world-building, it's hard to explain without giving too much away, but there's this whole complex story of this sea of sand with various islands called "whales" with the inhabitants ... on them being divided between those who have special power and those that don't. For each society there is a different drawback to having these powers called "thymia", for the protagonists it means that their lifespans our significantly shortened, for others it cost them their emotions. I'm not going to divulge what the cause of this is of course, but there were plenty of surprises, twists and turns that kept me hooked the whole time.

While the premise and background are the anime's biggest strength, the writing is its biggest weakness. Children of the Whale is surprisingly brutal at times, with a body count among its main cast rivaling many popular war anime, but it seems that the writers of the show were uncertain of how much they should showcase. A lot of the brutality and character deaths were muted and ruined by pointless melodrama, and it seemed as if the show kept trying to cover up how dark it actually was. Pacing was also an issue, some episodes felt overly rushed while others were far too slow. Also, the show relied way too much on exposition, especially in the early episodes.

Another aspect of the show negatively affected by the writing were the characters. For its runtime Children of the Whales has a surprisingly large caste, especially among our protagonist's society, but their development is haphazard at best. Chakuro is built up to be the main protagonist and Lykos is kind of the poster child of the show, but there were some episodes were neither of them were in it for more than a couple minuets. It is clear that the vigilante Ouni is the most dynamic and complex character in the show, and this is reflected by the fact that he is by far the most popular character, but his development too was uneven at best. Another issue was how unbelievably stupid a lot of the characters acted, aside from the aforementioned Ouni it rarely seemed as if any of the other characters had two brain cells to rub as they were constantly making boneheaded decisions to further the plot.

The art for the show was alright, I guess. The whole environment of these islands and people floating on a sea of sand was well conceived of and animated, and the main caste's character designs were surprisingly complex. The side character's designs though at times bordered on overly simplistic and it was hard to tell them apart, as well as sometimes the background art and the characters seemed to contrast too much, making it look like the characters had simply been pasted on.

The music also had its highs and lows, the op and ep didn't strike me as overly special at first but they both grew on me over time, to the point that I consider the former one of my top favorite openings now. On the flip side there is this tune one of the characters sings which is really annoying, and there were a few times the music did not gel well at all, there was this one moment that was supposed to be sentimental, but the directors chose to have this upbeat, almost goofy song playing which ruined the moment for me.

Children of the Whales touches on some important themes, such as the inevitability of mortality, how complicated morality can be, the fact in war the bad guys sometimes win, and the power of emotions. Yet despite that and its interesting premise, I personally never felt as if the anime ever fully delivered. In fact, there were a couple times, especially after the horrendous episode 10, that I wanted to drop this. Personally, for me it's the one anime I feel most conflicted about, and I feel that I like it more for the show it could have been rather than what actually came out. Perhaps it's because the anime is a Shoujo and not the Shonen, but I really didn't connect with how the themes and ideas were being expressed. Despite that and all the issues I have with Children of the Whales, it did get me interested in the manga, and I am hopefully looking forward if this anime (though unlikely) ever gets a sequel. I very tentatively recommend this if you appreciate intriguing fantasy anime and complex stories, but if you're offput by bad writing or missed opportunities then you probably will not enjoy it.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Dec 31, 2022

Allagowf

Not Recommended

Evil exists, this is a fact ...

Children of the Whales is simply a stupide tragedy with superficial characters, seeing their friends and family killed in front of them, and they simply keep calling for peace and they do their best to not revenge, I really hate when the creators try to show that humans should not treat violence with violence, these fake morals made me want to vomit.
Protecting your beloved once is something I will consider one of the Holy morals. Being weak and uncapable of protecting your family and being happy with it should not be promoted at all.

Of course, in our developed world ... there are police and army to protect and apply rules so they will judge evil, but in a savage world like the Children of the Whales, it's just showing how fake the writer is.

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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	Poll: Kujira no Kora wa Sajou ni Utau Episode 12 Discussion ( 1 2 ) Stark700 - Dec 23, 2017	95 replies	by JVskunkape »» Jun 24, 1:33 AM
	Poll: Kujira no Kora wa Sajou ni Utau Episode 9 Discussion ( 1 2 ) Stark700 - Dec 2, 2017	63 replies	by Destroyer31 »» Apr 8, 1:44 AM
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