Shuna's Journey

By Hayao Miyazaki. Published by First Second. 

Hardcover, 160 pages, Colour, 2022 (originally published in Japanese in 1983)

From legendary animator Hayao Miyazaki comes Shuna's Journey, a new manga classic about a prince on a quest for a golden grain that would save his land, never before published in English!

Shuna, the prince of a poor land, watches in despair as his people work themselves to death harvesting the little grain that grows there. And so, when a traveler presents him with a sample of seeds from a mysterious western land, he sets out to find the source of the golden grain, dreaming of a better life for his subjects.

It is not long before he meets a proud girl named Thea. After freeing her from captivity, he is pursued by her enemies, and while Thea escapes north, Shuna continues toward the west, finally reaching the Land of the God-Folk.

Will Shuna ever see Thea again? And will he make it back home from his quest for the golden grain?

"Every scene in this cinematic work stands apart with breathtaking watercolors aided by expert staging and blocking... A reimagined folktale as grand as its painted visuals are sublime."—Kirkus, starred review

"This book was published decades ago in ­Japanese, but is now finally published in English, and it will inspire some long-overdue ­appreciation...For Miyazaki fans, as well as any readers who would enjoy fantastic stories that unfold in surprising ways."—School Library Journal, starred review.

"Gorgeous... Shuna's Journey foreshadows much of Miyazaki's later work while still managing to be a complete standalone story in its own right." —Entertainment Weekly

“Eerie, enchanting and surpassingly strange.”—The New York Times

"Beautiful...we rely on the children in his stories to explain his beautiful, broken worlds to us and to assure us that they will fix them.”—The New Yorker online