Children of the Sea might be worth watching for the sheer verve of its occasionally
resplendent visuals. The raw, complex lineart gives the depictions a real sense of texture, and the shear density of the aquatic wildlife in the frame is impressive. Much of that wildlife is rendered using CG, but it is generally integrated pretty well enough so that way that the high fidelity of the CG art contrasts with the more impressionistic traditional art reads as an artistic flourish. However, integration of CG is much less successful during the myriad of cuts with extremely dynamic cameras moving through highly detailed 3d environments.
The storytelling is pleasingly sedate, if extremely unfocused. I liked the relationship between the three lead children - the burgeoning friendship between the female lead and the younger brother and the significantly more antagonistic relationship between the female lead and the older brother.
However, this story is frequently sidelined as characters that are barely introduced murmur about a "festival" (the aesthetic vagueness of their exposition does not make it any less clunky). They then wax lyrical about how the expansiveness of the universe relates to the interior of mankind or something, which is preposterous and burns time that could be better spent developing the characters and conflict. The fixation on pretty sounding nonsense also comes at the expense of following through on the existing plot elements (Why were the children rescued off screen? What happened to the pointless science team subplot?) which frustrates the film's own efforts to establish a sense of grounded magical realism.
This culminates in a deeply surreal climax. The presumed life or death stakes for the characters caught in the middle of the "festival" are way too abstract and vague for the storytelling to land with any visceral impact - even in the face of all of the intense and captivating visuals.
Music pieces are great individually, but sometimes seems poorly timed with the pacing of the shot to shot editing.
