Children of the Sea

Children of the Sea (2019) is a Japanese animated fantasy you can watch online on iFILM. Director Ayumu Watanabe adapted Daisuke Igarashi's manga into 110 minutes of near-wordless visual poetry, with animation by STUDIO 4°C that moves like a fever dream of bioluminescent water.

Ruka is a teenager who feels the pull of the ocean in her bones but can't explain why. At the aquarium where her father works, she meets Umi and Sora — two boys raised among dugongs in the open sea, able to breathe below the surface. Around the same time, fish and marine animals vanish from aquariums worldwide, and deep-sea creatures start appearing in places they have no business being. The connection between the boys and this global mystery refuses easy answers.

Plot here is a leash, not a destination. Watanabe and composer Joe Hisaishi — who scored dozens of Studio Ghibli films — push the film toward something closer to a visual symphony than a conventional story. The divisive, psychedelic finale is best experienced rather than explained. Stream Children of the Sea (2019) online on iFILM.