Children of the Whales #22

Abi Umeda's dreamy watercolor artistry is on full display in this twenty-second volume of *Children of the Whales*, published by Viz in 2023. The cover arranges five characters — a central brown-haired figure with hands clasped, flanked by a blonde youth, a dark-haired figure, a girl with golden pigtails adorned with orange ribbons, and a masked figure overhead — all with eyes gently closed, their expressions somewhere between serenity and sorrow. The soft, luminous palette and mirrored composition give the whole image a meditative, elegiac quality that perfectly captures the series' bittersweet tone.