Review: Children of Ether “ONA”

Children of Ether is rare territory for Crunchyroll. The service best known for showcasing Japanese language anime now features a franchise created by American-born LeSean Thomas that was produced in Japan for the purposes of international distribution. If you think about it, this is a bit of a landmark event and achievement and if it works Crunchyroll could be going down a whole ‘nother path of animation vertical not seen most anywhere else.

In any event, if this is gonna work, we’re gonna need not just animated franchises that look great but have depth in plot and strong dialogue to really get peoples’ attention and make it worthwhile for the streaming service to really make a go of it. Unfortunately, I’m not sure Children of Ether’s first episode is strong enough to stand on its own as a testament that Crunchyroll can go here quite yet.

The series features Rhonda (voiced by Camille Winbush), a woman who seems to have some sort of a past that isn’t exactly making her popular with the locals, and in fact, has an assassin right on her tail. Early on, she befriends two orphan siblings in Pint (Lola Wayne Villa) and Copper (Jaiden Michael) who nurse her back to health and send her back out there to confront an adversary pretty much on her own. Fortunately, the two don’t come to blows, and Rhonda leaves and runs into a dude that becomes almost the introduction into what we’re dealing with here in terms of setting…a post-apocalyptic New York City.

It’s not that we’re introduced to this setting with any sort of flashbacks, instead we are treated to Saina Cisse (Psycho Pass) directed backgrounds that are, as I sit here looking out into these very same streets of Manhattan, showcased in a terrifying light, I can’t help but think it’s right on the button of what we can expect in about a 100 years. Fans of Thomas’ prior work and artistic direction will be delighted to see this translation is adept for Ether, featuring stellar designs indicative of LeSean’s more Japanese-influenced tendencies.

The problem is, the series looks excellent…but has no meat and potatoes to keep it afloat thus far. The plot of Children of Ether is muddled, with no concise or inherent direction of where it wants to go with morose dialogue that is nonsensical that could scare off fans of anime that are looking for more “fat” in their offerings when it comes to storytelling. Children of Ether is also without its plot holes, like, how the hell do Japanese weapons like katanas and axes wind up in downtown Manhattan? What, were we invaded by Tokyo at one point and they just decided to leave all of their weapons behind?

Yea, it didn’t make sense to me either. And therein lies the principal issue of Children of Ether, one that we probably all just learned again with Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets. You can have a fantastic looking world with promising actors, a legendary director, and a load of promise, but if you don’t have a plot or even a basic premise, you’re gonna have a bad time. If there are more episodes coming, they need to be better than this.