Line #1 Anime/FantasticChildren


1	[[quoteright:294:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/fantastic_children_1.jpg]]
2	[-[[caption-width-right:294: [[WhatDoYouMeanItsNotForKids Don't believe anything the art style tells you.]]]]-]
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4	''Fantastic Children'' is an {{anime}} that, despite its more 80s/90s art style, ran from 2004 to 2005. It's an original 26 episode story with plot twists galore, and has received high praise from critics.
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6	The story begins with the mystery of a group of five strange white haired children, who have been sighted at various points throughout history, stretching from the 1600's to the present day. A detective who has heard of this enigma discovers a strange connection between it and a missing persons case he's been working on. Meanwhile, an island boy embarks on a journey with a mysterious orphaned girl who rarely speaks but is constantly painting pictures of bizarre, incomprehensible landscapes. These plots manage to link firmly together into a complex, deeply moving saga. To explain further would ruin things, but let's just say it's a story that links equal parts adventure, coming of age, mystery, tragedy, history, the fantastic, and romance. Yep, there's [[GenreMashup quite a bit going on in this one.]]
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9	!! This anime contains examples of:
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11	* TwoDVisualsThreeDEffects: Done for the robots and some machinery.
12	* ABoyAndHisX: Tarlant and his robot Wonder, who will initially only respond to him and the other Children. [[spoiler: In the second ending, fully human Tarlant is shown with a dog he calls Wonder.]]
13	* AlienAmongUs: [[spoiler: Subverted: The aliens don't care about humans. They're only on Earth because they had no other choice.]]
14	* AliensNeverInventedDemocracy: The people of Greecia have the power to travel to the land of the dead. They can reincarnate themselves and live several lifetimes. They can even put a soul into a mechanical body. Yet they're still a monarchy. They're ruled by a senile and slightly insane king to add extra insult to the injury.
15	* ArcWords: There is a poem that appears several times in the series. It's always spoken aloud, and usually the one reciting it is Aghi. It turns out to be [[spoiler: well known in Greecia.]]
16	** There is also an [[http://i.imgur.com/V22ksuY.jpg arc picture,]] which Helga is fixated on and draws constantly. This is [[spoiler: the water tower in Greecia, and all of Tina's reincarnations have been artists who drew this picture, although in different styles and with differing degrees of accuracy.]]
17	* ArtisticLicenseGeography: The setting looks more like UsefulNotes/{{Cambodia}}, but the map shows names picked from Northwest Europe (UsefulNotes/TheNetherlands, UsefulNotes/{{Belgium}}, and [[UsefulNotes/{{Britain}} The UK.]])
18	%%* BetaCouple: Palza and Mel.
19	%%* BigBad: [[spoiler: Georca.]]
20	* BilingualBonus: The ending theme song, "Mizu no Madoromi," appears in three languages in the dubs: The dub language (when Aghi sings it to his sister), Japanese (as the first ending theme song), and Russian (as the second ending, because the singer Origa speaks Russian as a first language). In the Japanese version, there are only two, Japanese and Russian.
21	%%* CharlesAtlasSuperpower: Thoma.
22	* CrushBlush: Thoma's face reddens a lot whenever he's around Helga.
23	* CrystalSpiresAndTogas: Literally. The whole of Greecia looks like this, and many things in the story are based on Greek mythology.
24	%%* DisneyVillainDeath: [[spoiler: Hesma.]]
25	* DeathEqualsRedemption: [[spoiler:Seth as Thoma believes that the only way he can atone for killing Soran in his past life is to basically commit suicide in the spirit world. However, it gets subverted as Tina as Helga convinces him that living on making the people he loves happy would be his ''true'' atonement]].
26	%%* EvilUncle: Georca.
27	* {{Foreshadowing}}: During the episode where Helga stays temporarily at Thoma's home, his mom gives Helga a dress and compliments that Helga "looks like a princess"—[[spoiler:which she ''was'' in her past life as Princess Tina of Greecia]].
28	** From the same episode, Thoma's mom tries to read Helga's future through her fortune telling cards, she reads that someone—most likely a sibling—will reveal themselves in Helga's life later. [[spoiler:Which turns out to be true, she does have a sibling: a brother named ''Dumas'']].
29	* GoMadFromTheRevelation: Dr. Radcliffe became obsessed with unraveling the mystery of the Children of Befort. Needless to say, the more he found out, the madder he went. He could have been saved a lot of suffering if he knew that his theory was actually [[spoiler: as far from the truth as you could get.]]
30	* HeroicBSOD: Just about every character does this, most notably when [[spoiler: they get their memories back,]] typically taking an entire episode to snap out of it. Seth also gets one after [[spoiler: Soran rescues Tina.]]
31	%%* [[HumanAliens (Giant) Human Aliens]]
32	* IChooseToStay: [[spoiler:Even though they spent ''hundreds'' of years trying to get back to their home planet of Greecia, the last living Befort children all chose to remain on Earth and returned to their human families in the end—as the love those human families gave them was too strong to just abandon]].
33	* KickTheDog: Georca has done ''lots'' of them, but the most notable is when he [[spoiler: beats his wife ''in front of his own son Dumas.'']]
34	* LadyAndKnight: [[spoiler:Princess Tina and Seth's dynamic]].
35	%%* LivingShadow: Enma.
36	* LoveHurts: [[spoiler: Sess, especially when Tina was saved by his rival Soran.]]
37	* MissingChild: Your 5 year old child disappears one night and police specialists are completely sure he / she left willingly. You wait the next 6 years for any news only to be informed that his / her body was just found along with other missing children, who died in mysterious circumstances. If you even accidentally meet your child during these 6 years he / she will immediately run away and disappear again.
38	* MurderTheHypotenuse: [[spoiler: Sess, to Soran.]]
39	* MyGodWhatHaveIDone: [[spoiler: Sess, after he killed Soran.]]
40	* NeverBringAKnifeToAGunfight: The palace guards vs. Gueroca's goons.
41	* {{Patricide}}: [[spoiler:Dumas]] kills [[spoiler:his father, Guerco, via a gun he made to stop him from trying to put Helga's soul inside Tina's body]].
42	* PastLifeMemories: [[spoiler:Thoma's constant nightmares turned out to be his memories as Lord Seth seeping through him]].
43	* ReallySevenHundredYearsOld: [[spoiler: The Children of Befort have been reincarnated on Earth many times. They only live for 11 years each time before being reincarnated again, but they were first seen on Earth in 1489.]]
44	* {{Reincarnation}}: [[spoiler: All of the main characters except for Cooks, his assistant, and Chitto are reincarnations of Greecians. The Children are Greecian scientists, Gherta is Mel having lost her memories, Helga is Tina, Thoma is Seth. All of these reincarnations except for Soran's were intentional.]]
45	* ReincarnationIdentifyingTrait: [[spoiler:Having been reincarnated on earth another time, Tina meets a man that looks rather like Soran. She confirms this when she sees her name on his arm in Greecian, the language of their home planet during their previous lives. He responds with a smile]].
46	%%* ReincarnationRomance: Played with.
47	* {{Retraux}}: The series was drawn in an intentionally retro style.
48	* StatusQuoIsGod: At the end of the series, [[spoiler: nothing on the grand scheme of things changes. The Children stay on Earth and lose their memories of Greecia, and Helga / Tina and Seth / Thoma don't leave either. This may seem like a DownerEnding, even though most everyone is happy.]]
49	* TearsOfRemorse: [[spoiler: Sess has these immediately after having killed Soran.]]
50	* TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture: The story takes place in 2012, with the anime being released on 2004.
51	* UnexplainedAccent: Despite everybody else speaking regular English without any noticeable accent, the English dub has Thoma (and to a lesser extent, his mother and father) speak in some strange unidentifiable accent.
52	* WalkingTheEarth: The Befort children have been walking the Earth for hundreds of years in search for their home planet's lost princess.
53	* WhatHappenedToTheMouse: Cooks and Alice get that. None of them are shown after Cooks is [[spoiler: knocked out by Demian during FinalBattle.]]

Context Anime / FantasticChildren