Editor’s Sidebar: Where we hear directly from VIZ editors about series they’ve worked on.

Stranger Things recently rocketed the “weird kids have a bizarre adventure” genre to the forefront of our collective consciousness. But the Upsidedown isn’t the first time kids have explored unknown worlds in fiction, and Children of the Sea is one of my favorite examples of the category.

To set the stage: fish are disappearing from aquariums all around the world. Scientists are struggling to figure out what’s going on, but so far they have no answers.

Enter Ruka, a prickly young girl who has always had trouble relating to others. She gets herself kicked out of soccer camp on the first day of summer. At loose ends, she’s drawn to the aquarium in Tokyo Bay where her dad works. It’s where, when she was younger, she saw a ghost in one of the tanks—a fish that slowly turned to light before her eyes.

And now it’s where she finds Umi, a young boy with a strange affinity for water. He seems to know Ruka, even though she’s sure she has never met him.

Umi and his brother Sora were raised by dugongs. It means they have a few quirks, like drying out quickly on land.

But as Ruka finds out, that’s the least of their oddities. The boys glow like the ghost in the aquarium, and sea animals are drawn to them.

And then creatures from the very depth of the ocean begin to wash up on the beaches…

Daisuke Igarashi’s eerily beautiful art is a perfect complement to this strange tale, which weaves through the lives of various main players and into the backstory of the sea itself to unlock deep, oceanic mysteries. Listen to its song, and you will never forget.

Discover the story of the sea with a free preview of Children of the Sea, Vol. 1 !