It is a '17 - '18 joint depending on what you watched it on and I think it is really good.
I was sick so I banged it over the past few days and It seems way better than it has a right to be. Like a cheeper nausica. Geat painterly art. Posive depictions of feminine men before it was cool. dramatic acton. Cool japanese hipster muisic that is diagetic to the story. Lovecraftian horror Cool crunchy nature vibe world building. Anti-imperialist themes.
This one just didn't seem to get it's moment. Unless I missed it. There doesn't even seem to be much fanfic. Did people bounce off? Did the release window fuck up it's momentum? I am gonna go back and check out the manga so I am only up to the part where the show covers so I dunno the rest of it. I think there is a season two that got stuck in development hell but I am not sure there.
I never watched the anime but I've read the manga (up to volume 8) and I agree it's pretty good and I need to get back into it. The art is beautiful and it has an interesting story and premise.
I also agree that it's an underrated series that hasn't really gotten the attention it deserves. I've looked at anime review sites like myanimelist for it and some people were pretty critical of it and say the author didn't handle the story very well so I guess that's why it never took off. I'm not very good at media critique so I don't really understand what they thought was wrong with it, I like it a lot and I think it's worth reading.
Maybe Children of the Whales was just a little too unique/niche to gain mass popularity.
I found some scans of the manga but I never liked manga much honestly. This is true, there are very few wifus to by minis of in this one.