When Shuna returns to the land of the living, his experiences have broken him, and he has to rely on the sisters he rescued to help him rejoin humanity.įans of Nausicaä will notice a familiar vibe to Shuna's Journey. After a narrow escape, he descends into the bizarre Land of the God-Folk, a dreamlike realm which may actually be the site of abandoned advanced technology from a forgotten past. He rescues two sisters from a slave caravan, bringing the wrath of the slave traders on them. Shuna crosses desert wastelands pocked by ancient ruins, fights raiders and cannibals, explores cities overrun with crime and corruption, and encounters cruelty and suspicion everywhere he goes. Ignoring the warnings of the elders, he sets out in search of it, only to find that the outside world is even harsher than his rugged farming community. The young ruler, Prince Shuna, learns from a traveler about a fabled “golden grain” that could feed his people. The story opens in a small kingdom struggling through a famine. Shuna's Journey takes its inspiration from a Tibetan folktale called “The Prince Who Became a Dog,” but the characters and plot are Miyazaki’s own. Miyazaki was also interested in filming Shuna but was unable to get enough support for the story, so he drew it as a one-volume graphic novel instead. Shuna's Journey was begun at around the same time as Miyazaki's longest and most ambitious manga, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, which he adapted into an animated film in 1984. A co-founder of Studio Ghibli, he's renowned as the director of such films as My Neighbor Totoro, Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, and the upcoming How Do You Live? But every once in a while, he draws manga as well. Now it's out from publisher First Second in a lovingly produced full-color edition with a translation from Alex Dudok de Wit.Īs more or less anyone who's ever seen an anime knows, Miyazaki is one of the legends of Japanese animation. Miyazaki's breathtaking fantasy Shuna's Journey was first published in Japan in 1983 but has never been available in English. A new Hayao Miyazaki manga is a stop-the-presses event, even when it isn't entirely new, or maybe even entirely a manga.

A little princess illustrated edition