Flipped!: David Welsh On Daisuke Igarashi's Children Of The Sea In Print



By David P. Welsh

I really like the idea of comics finding new means of distribution and new forms of marketing. I admire people who make the webcomics model work, and I appreciate it when publishers use online samples as a loss leader to build an audience. I think that's a reasonable risk, and I hope it has a lot of positive results for the risk-takers.

But I really don't like reading comics on a computer. I think of reading comics as a leisure activity. I think of using a computer as a multi-tasking activity. Even if those multiple tasks are largely recreational, I find it difficult to focus my attention on an on-screen comic in the same way I do a physical object.



There are also the comforting sensations of the book as physical object -- the weight in my hands, the sound of the pages, even the way ink and paper interact to create subtle variations that don't register the same way when an image is digitized. This may mean that I'll be out of luck when the digital revolution achieves its glorious victory and a paperless society is achieved, but I stand by my preference.

So while I'm glad that Viz has been serializing Daisuke Igarashi's Children of the Sea online, I found it much more satisfying in a soon-to-be-archaic, dead-tree format. The book is so successful at rendering enduring sensory experiences that it seems like it almost needs to be held.



According to an interview at Viz's SIGIKKI site, one of Igarashi's first priorities is communicating the sensations of setting:

"My style originated from a certain experience I had. I was standing in a small, old forest near my house. As I stood in this forest, with the sun filtering through the trees and the breeze blowing, I suddenly noticed how beautiful this world is. Since then, my most important concern has been to show the beauty of this world. When I draw Children of the Sea, I try to be conscious of the rhythm of the waves. For example, as I draw quiet, gentle scenes, I want the readers to feel as though they're walking along the beach as the sun sets in a clear sky."

It's nice to be able to tell a creator that their intention has been achieved. I can't think of many experiences that create as many lasting sense memories as being at the ocean, at least not for me. The sounds, the scents, the feel of wind and water all have imprinted themselves powerfully, and Igarashi's renderings honor those remembered sensations. He achieves this through a combination of sweep and minute detail, from the breaking foam at the water's edge to stray strands of hair caught in a breeze.

In terms of evocation of place, Children of the Sea is at the same level of achievement as Jiro Taniguchi's marvelous The Walking Man (Fanfare/Ponent Mon), which is devoted entirely to evocation of place. The books have very different intents; Taniguchi is recapturing suburban rambles and elevating them to the point of visual poetry, but he isn't really telling a story. Igarashi is, though he's doing so gently; there is a plot, and there are vivid and interesting characters, but they inhabit Igarashi's splendid landscapes rather than control them.



It's a strange experience for me to be less interested in the mechanics of narrative or the ways character is revealed than the visceral effects of a comic's visuals. I don't mean to minimize the effectiveness of either of those elements, since Igarashi executes them well. The book is concerned primarily with a young girl named Ruka who, when her summer plans are derailed by her temper, begins spending time at the aquarium where her father works. She becomes increasingly fascinated with two strange boys, Umi and Sora, who apparently spent the first several years of their lives in the sea being raised by dugong. Now, they're traveling the world with a grizzled caretaker, trying to resolve one of the ocean's mysteries and the way it seems to resonate within them.

Igarashi's characters, the children and their adult caretakers, are all obsessed with the sea, its power and its mysteries, so I suppose it's only appropriate that I share their obsession, even if it marginalizes their value to the overall reading experience. The characters and the events they drive provide a solid skeleton, but the flesh and blood of the book are its vivid, almost living pictures.

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* Children of the Sea, Daisuke Igarashi, Viz Media, 320 pages, ISBN: 1-4215-2914-9, $14.99, 7/21/2009.

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* all images from the volume in question

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David P. Welsh has loved comics since his parents first used Archie and Casper to sedate him during long trips in the family station wagon.

He's worked as a reporter and editor for daily and weekly newspapers, and later sold out for the glamorous world of public relations. Prior to relocating to The Comics Reporter, he wrote his Flipped column for Comic World News for just over three years. He's written articles on comics for print outlets and a variety of other web sites.

He lives in West Virginia, which he says has gotten a lot easier since the Starbucks and Barnes & Noble opened up.

You may e-mail David with questions or commentary You can write to this site about David's columns

Please bookmark his site, Precocious Curmudgeon.

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