Kujira no Kora wa Sajou ni Utau (Children of the Whales)

Alternative Titles

Synonyms: Whale Calves Sing on the Debris, Tales of the Wales Calves, Kirokusha no Ballad, Hikari no Tonari Kabe no Sora, The Sky on the Wall, Next to the Light

Japanese: クジラの子らは砂上に歌う

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Information

Type: Manga

Volumes: 23

Chapters: 99

Status: Finished

Published: Jun 6, 2013 to Jan 6, 2023

Genres: Drama, Fantasy, Mystery, Sci-Fi

Demographic: Shoujo

Serialization: Mystery Bonita

Authors: Umeda, Abi (Story & Art)

Statistics

Score: 7.69¹ (scored by 2,713 users)

¹ indicates a weighted score.

Ranked: #1745²

² based on the top manga page. Please note that 'R18+' titles are excluded.

Popularity: #1147

Members: 17,134

Favorites: 352

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Apr 19, 2020

bad_shipping

Recommended

Preliminary (68/99 chp)

I really liked this manga. The Sea of Sand is a mystical world that radiates an odyssey-like sense of wonder. It's a world painted by a unique blend of dystopia, utopia, and political intrigue, with a cast of characters that are genuinely all likable, the kind of people whom you'd be friends with.

Story: 9/10
I really like the idea of a lone ship sailing on a vast ocean of sand, unaware of the outside world and without a destination in mind. The story quickly swaps out this whimsical facade with a rather mature tale about the value of emotions, eldritch abominations that eat peoples' feelings, and ... an ongoing war between bloodthirsty empires. It's all genuinely interesting stuff that I've never seen in any work of fiction before. Each chapter follows the Mud Whale's inhabitants as they sail across the Sea of Sand, seeing new places and having deadly encounters with nearly everybody they meet. The only criticism I would make is that certain parts of the story are rather predictable. If you want a story with innovative fantasy elements and emotionally impactful plot beats, definitely give this one a try.

Art: 10/10
Abi-san's art style is gorgeous. Her art style is probably the most beautiful I've ever seen. All the scenery is luscious and detailed. The characters' faces and their actions are very powerful and expressive. The scenes involving "Nous" (the aforementioned eldritch abominations) are deliciously mind-bending and abstract and, honestly, remind me of Madoka Magica's amazing witch labyrinths more than anything else has.

Characters: 10/10
The characters of this story are, in a word, friends. It's a strange word to use, but to me, everyone in this story is a friend. The main character, Chakuro, is extremely nice to everyone he meets. He's adorable, the kind of person I'd give everything to protect. The heroine, Lykos, goes through powerful emotional development as she spends time on the Mud Whale and learns about the value of emotions. Ouni, the story's anti-hero style character, also has a very interesting backstory and eventually turns into someone you truly care about. Suou, one of Chakuro's best friends, is an amazing idealist who profoundly influences other characters as the story progresses. Even the villains have astonishingly complex motivations. All in all, the characters give you the feeling of a tight-knit village where everyone cares for each other. This kind of village gives me such a gentle feeling.

Enjoyment: 10/10
I don't think I need to add much here because everything I've described makes this manga a joy to read. Every panel is amazing, beautiful, and emotionally resonant. Yeah, I can't give enough praise for this author because she's crafted such a beautiful world and honestly I wish more people knew about it!

Overall: 10/10
The story, the characters, and the art combine to create one of the most gorgeous and heartwarming fictional worlds I have ever seen. This is not to say everything is butterfly and rainbows. Children of the Whales is actually a dark story that explores shockingly mature themes alongside some very twisted characters. But it's this darkness, this dystopian world, that provides such a good canvas for the warmth and comfort of the utopian Mud Whale to be painted upon. The resulting picture is filled with characters and feelings I'll never forget.

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Apr 18, 2021

enricocaliolo

Recommended

Preliminary (68/99 chp)

Um conto sobre memórias e o sentido da vida

I made it in english too! It is below!

IN ENGLISH

A tale about memories and the meaning of life

I wrote the review in portuguese and I was lazy to translate it to english, so I used Google Translate. Sorry in advance for any gramatical errors!

Children of the Whales is a manga that surprised me in a positive way. I started reading it because of the art and the synopsis. I was in the vibe of looking for some manga that dealt with a “lost civilization”, and the anilist recommended it to me. And, to my surprise, it was ...

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Sep 25, 2017

rollercoasting

Mixed Feelings

Preliminary (2/99 chp)

A shoujo manga getting an anime adaptation? Beyond the fact that shoujo anime are incredibly rare these days, {and not very popular in the general community}, I was inspired me to read the manga, and I wasn't impressed.

Art: The art is gorgeous. A pastel water-color like vibe, it is gorgeous on the eyes. Super abstract and beautiful.

Story: Unique, but really slow. It just sorta meanders at the early points, introducing us to the world. Once it kicks up, it slows down again, taking its time to do things. Really, a lot of stuff is just dumped on us, and it doesn't really explain anything. The ...

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Sep 4, 2024

FloweryIso

Mixed Feelings

Preliminary (54/99 chp)

They spelt shounen funny when labelling this manga…those boys were also not just strong friends…

Children of the Whales was a manga I picked up due to the 2017 anime adaptation that was shown on Netflix. I really liked the premise of the show and it was my first real dive into a ‘proper’ fantasy anime as most of the anime I’d been watching up until that point was slice of life, urban fantasy and generic shounen shows that try and make fantasy uber masculine. The premise of the series really intrigued me, the gorgeous and pastel visuals of the show only highlighting the dark and ... twisted nature of the world vs the residents of the Mud whale.

So, after several years, a hiatus on japanese content on the art variety and a reignition of my passion for the mediums later and I decided to finally meet the conclusion of a story I’d truly loved back when it aired by trying out the manga. It was a bad choice.

The mangaka’s work is truly gorgeous, Umeda having a very maximalist and whimsy style that would rather cause crippling arthritis than leave out even the tiniest of details. The art actively goes out of its way to separate people from each other, the mud whale descendants wearing very simple clothing that is more effective for everyday wear and the cast that come from The Empire and Amonlogia having much more eccentric and lavish outfits and hairstyles.
However the art does also feature a few pitfalls, notably that when Thymia is used (( of the manga being in black, white and tones)) pages and spreads become perhaps too detailed, a lot of the forms of characters and places becoming blurred together and it can make it difficult to figure out is happening.

The setting of the manga is a bit hard to keep up with. It’s only an 97 chapter manga so when new concepts are added we don’t get much time to sit and rally digest what is happening, especially because a lot of the time you hear nothing of a connecting piece of information for a long time and it would lead to me going back in the manga to find an older explanation to fully wrap my head around a new one.

The story itself is…well, it’s not a shoujo. Do not be fooled by the tagging for this one, Children of the Whales, after the first arc of finding out about the mud whale and its history, is 100% a shounen. I don’t want to make this a spoiler review but just trust me, future arcs genuinely had me questioning if someone had accidentally written shoujo instead of shounen because the women in this manga are almost always tied to or are outshined by a boy/man.

Speaking of, my other biggest gripe with the manga is the inability to decide who our main character is. It constantly flip flops between out main boy, Chakuro, being the important story teller to the classic shounen emo bad boy Ouni who the mangaka has an obsession with making the one who does everything, in terms of decisions, that our main character should be doing.

I may pick this manga back up at some point to try and get it finished but I have begun to just end every chapter with a giant “why am I reading this?” and I feel thats when you really should just learn to drop the manga.

I will also not elaborate on the second part of my first sentence, if you finish the manga you’ll know exactly what I mean.

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Oct 30, 2021

klesun

Recommended

Preliminary (71/99 chp)

Came for a weird song, but stayed for the unexpected feels.

Boy, does Abi Umeda know how to draw likable characters and keep you invested. Just looking at expressions of certain side-characters made me fall in love with this "Mud Whale" community. You can literally see the soul poured on the drawings. Every now and then a panel where a piece of the world comes into view, you get reminded that you are consuming a very high quality masterpiece of an art.

I liked how progressing the plot effectively always centers around finding a pacifistic solution to a conflict and trying to understand the bad guy instead ... of blowing him off with a rasengan, even if he keeps behaving like a total jerk. I think the author succeeded somehow to sell this idea of "even if you did some really awful mistakes, this community can forgive you and accept you nevertheless".

It's touching how even small characters, even bad guys genuinely care for someone. While their emotions are "eaten by Nous" and they only have a slight piece of conscience left and mostly behave like robots, exactly that gives a value to small gestures hinting that they actually _do care_. "I killed your sister" "*poker face*" *shoot* "why did you shoot that guy that killed your sister? There was no such order." "I don't know"

The title very precisely describes the "atmosphere" of this story. From time to time some insignificant technical details are dropped by indicating that the whole Mud Whale island is a living being that cares about characters as a parent. Be it a character climbing a wall somewhere and thinking how it's cold unlike walls on the island that were warm as a person, or how every single outsider adorably must mention that islanders "smell like milk" (because of the food produced by the island), or how Aima/Neri take human form and try to comfort people when they are feeling down. And the fact that other such living islands in the story are usually just as****es towards their inhabitants makes this bond between Mud Whale people and their mommy-island kind of precious. A very unique experience of slowly comprehending that a giant sentient being is looking after you and your tribe, I don't think I ever felt this cozy while reading a manga.

There were few small failures in the story, the biggest one was having the protag participate in it. Some characters that looked cheesy in the anime, were much better in the manga and got a decent development... except for the protagonist whose involvement in the main events was way to forced: he did not do anything, he was not even the one who gave the tide-turning speech, but he absolutely must do the final gesture and destroy the mood with some cliched bubble. Chakuro's personality _could_ have been naturally used in the story, he does his thing well when the crowd needs to relieve the mood with some ridiculous childish remark, being children is important part of "Children of Whales" theme after all, but there was just too much of this guy.

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Jun 9, 2022

squeegee-c

Recommended

Preliminary (80/99 chp)

You could literally not pay me to shut up about this manga. I love it so much! It's my most favorite one out there for so many reasons. I give it a ten across the board!

Story:
Outstanding. It is such a unique premise, a little WTF at times, but if you're a seasoned manga fan then you can probably handle it. The world building and fantasy elements are spectacularly though out for an immersive experience. The story starts very innocent but grows darker and returns hopeful. The base themes are never forgotten and the pacing is good.

Art:
Omg the ...

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Apr 12, 2023

cyborgtheory

Recommended

Preliminary (84/99 chp)

A beautiful exploration of life, loss and idealism with anti-colonial and abolitionist themes.

It's not for impatient people who expect answers and endings to happen immediately, but it rewards those with the patience to travel with the story as it digs deeper into the lore and builds a sprawling fantasy world.

Although there are many reviews complaining how long and slow the work is, that was the opposite of how I felt. Every chapter offers a new revelation, an escapade or battle, and always ends with a cliffhanger. You are here for the journey.

This is a truly amazing work, and it's rare to see a depiction ...

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Kujira no Kora wa Sajou ni Utau
Children of the Whales
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Kujira no Kora wa Sajou ni Utau
Children of the Whales
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