Children of the Whales

Chakuro is the 14-year-old archivist of the Mud Whale, a nigh-utopian island that floats across the surface of an endless sea of sand. Nine in ten of the inhabitants of the Mud Whale have been blessed and cursed with the ability to use saimia, special powers that doom them to an early death. Chakuro and his friends have stumbled across other islands, but they have never met, seen, or even heard of a human who wasn't from their own. One day, Chakuro visits an island as large as the Mud Whale and meets a girl who will change his destiny.

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A secluded society hiding a deadly power among its children mirrors the Mud Whale's fragile utopia, but with a colder, more unsettling edge.

Kaina of the Great Snow Sea 82%

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An isolated community drifting through a hostile landscape gives you the same wonder-tinged dread as watching the Mud Whale sail its sand sea.

WorldEnd: What are you doing at the end of the world? Are you busy? Will you save us? 80%

12 eps · 2017

Short-lived girls with strange gifts and a love that can't outrun mortality echo the doomed tenderness you found in saimia.

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Curious kids venturing beyond everything they've known carries the same mix of awe and creeping dread as leaving the Mud Whale behind.