Early Miyazaki Graphic Novel Shows The Studio Ghibli Founder’s Storytelling Genius

Hayao Miyazaki, cofounder of Studio Ghibli and creator of cinema classics including Princess Mononoke, My Neighbor Totoro, Castle in the Sky, and Howl’s Moving Castle among others, is one of the greatest animators of the past half century. But before the world got to see the full measure of his vision on the big screen, he was a working mangaka (cartoonist) in the world of Japanese comics in the 1970s and 80s, where he laid the groundwork for his later stories and distinctive style.

Western readers have rarely gotten a look at this phase of Miyazaki’s career, as his early work has never been officially published in English or outside of Japan. That ends on November 1, when First Second, an imprint of Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group, releases a beautiful hardcover edition of Shuna’s Journey, a fantasy-adventure story originally published in 1983, in a new translation by Alex Dudok de Wit.

Shuna’s Journey tells the story of young prince Shuna, heir to an impoverished landlocked kingdom, as he quests in search of a mythic grain capable of feeding his people. His travels bring him into contact with a neighboring kingdom that trades in slaves - a practice that disgusts and angers Shuna enough that he risks his life to free two young sisters taken captive.

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Shuna’s Journey is inspired by Tibetan folklore, filtered through Miyazaki’s own fantasy-oriented sensibility. The story contains many of the core tropes that would inform his later work, including the intrepid adolescent hero motivated by passion and idealism, set against an adult world tainted by brutality, greed and darkness. There are mythical kingdoms, glorious landscapes, mysterious forces and a bestiary of fanciful creatures, united in a sweeping creative vision and delivered in an understated narrative voice.

It is easy to see the through line from Shuna’s Journey to Miyazaki’s 1984 breakthrough film, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind and later explorations of comparable themes like Princess Mononoke from 2001. In Miyazaki’s delicate lines and pastel palette, we can also see the basis of the visual vocabulary that defines the Studio Ghibli look, and, by extension, the look of much high-end Asian anime since the 1980s.

Translator Alex Dudok de Wit renders Miyazaki’s text into evocative English and also provides a substantial afterword that places Shuna’s Journey in a broader context of Central Asian folklore and Miyazaki’s career. The design of the book, which is read right-to-left and back-to-front (e.g., spine on the right) to preserve the layout of the Japanese original, is gorgeous. The whole edition is a beautiful package. Though aimed at and certainly appropriate for younger readers, Shuna’s Journey is a delight for any graphic novel or manga fan.

Beyond that, the arrival of this book is a publishing event that should be broadly celebrated. Miyazaki is a national treasure in Japan and one of the country’s greatest gifts to global culture, with audiences everywhere embracing the vision he and his studio have brought to the screen. As much of his work as possible deserves to be available in volumes this nice.