Sneha Jaiswal (Twitter | Instagram)
“These things may have happened a long time ago; they maybe still to come. No one really knows anymore.”
Set in an isolated, impoverished little kingdom with failing crops, Shuna’s Journey by Hayao Miyazaki is inspired by a Tibetan folktale. Unable to watch his starving people work themselves to death to harvest barely enough grain, Prince Shuna embarks on a quest to find the fabled “golden grain,” which could solve his kingdom’s food shortage problem forever. The prince rides his loyal Yakkul, a creature that’s a cross between a camel and an elk, and the two of them face witches, bandits, and monsters along the way.
During his travels, Shuna meets a possible romantic partner, whom he soon parts with in order to continue his quest to locate the golden grain. In the second half of the graphic novel, Hayao Miyazaki takes our hero to the end of the world, where Shuna stumbles upon the “God-folk,” their part of the world filled with nature’s bounty – dense plants, flowers, creatures, and crops in full bloom. But of course, stealing the golden grain wouldn’t be easy. Shuna must risk everything, his body, his sanity, his spirit, to fulfill his dream of ruling a prosperous kingdom that never goes hungry again. It is his compassion and determination that ultimately define his strength.
The artwork in the book by Hayao Miyazaki for “Shuna’s Journey” is dreamy, with the water-paintings resembling pencil sketches, that lends them a childlike innocence. For those already familiar with Miyazaki’s works, the character illustrations are slightly similar to the work we see in his films, especially ‘Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind’. In fact, Shuna’s world is also a bit like the fantasy land of Nausicaä, which exists in its own time, a world that’s not densely populated, and is divided into scattered kingdoms, but not as post-apocalyptic in nature.
Shuna’s Journey is only 160 pages long, and despite its fantasy setting, its central theme is powerful – that being a benevolent ruler may not be easy, with a path laden with hardships, but a leader who puts their citizens first will ultimately be rewarded with success.
Rating: 4 on 5.
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