This animated film was made by the same production team behind The Secret of Kells, headed by director Tomm Moore. This shows both in its art style and the way that it showcases Irish folklore. As with the previous film, it’s traditionally animated, not CGI, which is always a novelty and once again it’s a story with children as protagonists.

I normally try to avoid serious spoilers in these write-ups, but the twist here is so blatant only a child might miss it so here goes nothing. Ben is a young boy whose father is a lighthouse keeper and his mother sings him beautiful songs in Gaelic. When his mother suddenly goes away, leaving behind a newborn sister and an overtly magical seashell horn, anyone who knows anything about folklore immediately realizes that she is a Selkie and when Ben finds a tiny white fur coat, you know that her sister Saoirse is one too. Soon enough, they become embroiled in the doings of the fairies of Ireland and must foil the evil Macha who sends owls that drain emotions and turn fairies into stone.

As with The Secret of Kells, this is a children’s cartoon and doesn’t pretend to be otherwise. As such, it’s always going to be of limited appeal to adults. It’s at least competently executed, and with an appealing art style, can still be a lot of fun to watch. Still, I must shake my head over how its story is just running through the usual set of tropes, including the one in which adults are incompetent and children are the ones who really know what is going on. When you think about it, it’s kind of scary how irresponsible the adult guardians here are. I also feel that the story is missing an opportunity to relate some deeper truths. There are obvious parallels between some of the fairy characters and the adults: they even share voice actors! This could have been an interesting way to tell both a children’s side of the story and an adult’s side of the story, but they never go anywhere with this angle.

Once again, the team adopts the trappings and superficial themes of the folklore but not really their essence. Anyone who knows anything about Selkie stories would recognize the silliness of one singing to rescue all the fairies. Even if you take this movie at face value, what’s stopping the mother from singing to save them all? And if you don’t know any Selkie stories, you should probably read this short story by Sofia Samatar, one of the best fantasy stories of 2013. This is one of those films that assume that folklore and mythology are just stories that are told to children. But they weren’t. They were stories and legends that adults told each other and as such frequently contain plenty of horror and tragedy. Again and again, the moral of these stories is that the fae are not human and no good ever comes out of pretending that they are.

Of course simply by bringing attention of the world to the stories, one might argue that this production team is doing them a service and I won’t deny that Song of the Sea is a fairly enjoyable watch. This one is noticeably superior than the previous film with a storyline that gels together better. But if this keeps making animated features that are only kids-centric, then I’m not sure that I’m going to be interested any longer.