Studio Ghibli has been dormant for a few years now, but its fans still have plenty to be excited about. This time, the thrill stems from Hayao Miyazaki’s graphic novel, “Shuna’s Journey,” and its expected release in English this November!
See the manga cover below:
Shuna’s Journey is one of Miyazaki’s earliest manga creations. The literary work was first published in 1983. Its story centers on Prince Shuna, a royal from a small village burdened by famine. Desperate to give his people a better life, he goes on a quest for a golden grain that is believed to have the power to bring fertility to barren lands.
Alex Dudok de Wit, the English translator of the graphic novel, describes the story as beautiful, “strange even by Miyazaki’s standards, sombre and luminous by turns.” He also observed that the work “prefigures other Studio Ghibli films,” such as Princess Mononoke, which incorporates visual and ideas from the graphic novel, and Tales from Earthsea, which he described to be “explicitly based in part on the book.
The English translation of Shuna’s Journey will be published by Macmillan imprint First Second. The project marks the first time that the graphic novel will be available in English, nearly 40 years since its initial publication. It is scheduled for release on November 1, 2022.
Mark Siegel, the creative director of First Second, said he feels immensely honored in publishing Hayao Miyazaki’s graphic novel.
“Shuna’s Journey is a transporting, beautifully rendered tale by one of the greatest master storytellers of our time. Fans of Princess Mononoke and Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (there are millions of us) will delight in finding early hints of these masterworks in gorgeous watercolor pages by Miyazaki’s own hand.”Mark Siegel
About Hayao Miyazaki
Hayao Miyazaki is a Japanese animator, director, and author. He is the co-founder of Studio Ghibli and the mind behind critically-acclaimed films My Neighbor Totoro, Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, Howl’s Moving Castle, and The Wind Rises. His other manga, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, was serialized with an English translation back in 1988 by Viz Media.
At 81, Miyazaki is currently hailed to be one of the world’s greatest animators.
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