You should be reading: Children of the Sea

I’ve decided to post a short series of articles of non-Yen Press-related comics that I’ve enjoyed in recent years. I guess you can say that I’ve only recently started taking comics “seriously,” so I’m probably missing quite a few good ones, but I hope that I can at least offer some suggestions of things to read while you’re waiting for the next issue to arrive. Like many of the comics in Yen Plus (more so earlier in its run than now, I suppose), I’ll try to focus on comics which may fly under the radar of many typical manga fans, though I suppose most such fans would have at least heard whispers about this first title… Tonight, I start with Daisuke Igarashi’s Children of the Sea.

Children of the Sea is a contemporary fairy tale about Umi and Sora, two boys who were raised in the sea by dugongs (manatee-like sea mammals), and Ruka, the troubled girl from a broken home who befriends them after meeting them at the aquarium where her father works. The mysteries of the boys’ lives makes them subjects of interest to researchers, especially after news and rumors of odd happenings involving undersea life start making the rounds in oceanographical circles - but the boys are content with keeping a few if their secrets, and are really just trying to get along by getting along. Children of the Sea is being released by Viz on this side of the Pacific by Viz. It’s still being serialized in Japan, and so far has seen four collected volumes released over there, of which two have been released by Viz thus far.

CotS’s plot is slow-paced and wandering, and I can see how some readers would get frustrated at it. I must admit also at times being confounded by the plot, wondering why certain events have happened and where things could be leading - the standard plot arc doesn’t seem to be in play here, and instead we’re just exposed to a series of mysterious occurrences interspersed by back story which doesn’t do much to explain the present.

But put the story aside for a bit and let’s talk art, because this is where I feel that Igarashi really delivers. His sketchy style is in stark contrast to the heavily polished and toned look of modern comics both domestic and imported. At a glance, you might feel tempted to write it off as amateur-looking, but that would be your loss. I think this especially comes into play when Igarashi draws what is arguably another character itself, the ocean. Perhaps those in the flyover states who have never been on a seashore won’t be able to relate, but it’s often hard for me to see Igarashi’s oceans without hearing the familiar hiss-roar of the ocean ringing in my ears; tasting the salty air; feeling the sand give way beneath my feet with every step. The various rainstorm and underwater scenes offer a similar tingle, and give evidence to the fact that art doesn’t need to be “accurate” to be powerfully evocative.

If you’d like to give Children of the Sea a try, you can check out several chapters for free, on Viz’s SigIkki site, which they seem to be using as sort of a web-based anthology magazine to test the reaction for titles for which commercial success of print versions is far from a given; the reaction for CotS was good, so now we have it in print. It’s a good thing, too, because, as I’ve ranted about on this site before, reading comics which were originally designed for print on a computer screen - and especially in a Flash app inside of a browser window - really, really, really, really sucks. But at least the try-before-you-buy factor is there. Give it a look, then give it a buy.