Shuna, the Prince by Hayao Miyazaki (of Studio Ghibli fame) English version

Description: Shuna, the Prince $19.95 Hayao Miyazaki (of Studio Ghibli fame) 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? BORN IN 1941 IN TOKYO, JAPAN Hayao Miyazaki co-founded Studio Ghibli in 1985 with Isao Takahata. Among his eleven animated features, Spirited Away (2001) broke every box-office record in Japan, and won the Golden Bear at the 2002 Berlin International Film Festival and the 75th Academy Award for Animated Feature Film. Howl's Moving Castle (2004) received the Golden sella award at the 2004 Venice International Film Festival. Miyazaki was awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the 2005 Venice International Film Festival. The Wind Rises (2013) was nominated for the 86th Academy Award for Animated Feature Film. In 2014, the Board of Governors for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences presented him with a Governors Award for lifetime achievement. He is currently working on a new production. The story line and general ambience of Shuna's Journey are also reflected in Miyazaki's Princess Mononoke, another project whose roots lie in his period of extraordinary creative ferment in the early 1980s. Ashitaka, the prince of an isolated village, is cursed by a demon god. He sets out west to find a cure and enters a world shaken by ecological calamity. Along the way, he sits by a campfire with an old man, who orients him toward a land of spirits inhospitable to humans; Shuna has the same experience. A version of Yakul, Ashitaka's elk-like steed, features in Shuna's Journey-although here "yakul" is the name of the species not an individual. Sharp-eyed readers will also spot early incarnations of the creatures sometimes referred to as minonohashi, which appear in both Princess Mononoke and Castle in the Sky (1986). Revisiting Shuna's Journey almost four decades after its publication, we see the seeds of characters, motifs, and themes that will flourish in Miyazaki's later works. Historical significance aside, we read the book because it tells its story beautifully. I have compared it to Nausicaa, but in important ways, the two works are opposites. Where Nausicaä is epic, densely drawn and plotted, and laden with dialogue, Shuna's Journey is terse, spare, and lucent. It tackles some of the most adult subjects in the artist's oeuvre, but its language is as simple as a fable. At the same time, far more than the straightforward tale that inspired it, the book pulses with the kind of rich ambiguity that Miyazaki's fans know well. I hope it is as enjoyable to read as it was to translate. Note from the TranslatorMuch has been said of Hayao Miyazaki's fondness for using European settings in his films: the Adriatic of Porco Rosso (1992), say, or the pseudo-Sweden of Kiki's Delivery Service (1989). Less often mentioned is that Miyazaki has sometimes turned his gaze nearer west, to the cultures and landscapes of Asia. The continent's influence is particularly clear in a trio of printed works Miyazaki created in the first half of his career. We see it in his early manga Sabaku no tami (People of the Desert, 1969-70), a tale of warring Silk Road tribes. We sense it in Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1982-94), his magnum opus of manga, whose teeming world bears the stamp of Indian, Chinese, and Central Asian scenery and civilizations. But his debt to Asia is perhaps most explicit in Shuna's Journey, whose story, as Miyazaki writes in his afterword, grew out of a folktale from Tibet. Shuna's Journey was published in Japan in June 1983, two years before the launch of Studio Ghibli, the animation studio that would make Miyazaki globally famous. The book is not exactly a manga, reliant as it is on captions over speech bubbles, on detailed watercolor spreads over small panels: It is closer to what the Japanese would call an emonogatari, or an illustrated story. Although it continues to sell well in Japan, elsewhere Shuna's Journey has been generally overlooked by fans and scholars. No doubt this is partly because, until now, the book had never been published in translation. But it is a shame, as this slender volume brims with ideas that echo across Miyazaki's films and manga. At the same time, it is unique in his career: He has never produced another standalone emonogatari book. Nor, I think, has he ever told a story as beguilingly strange as this one. Please see and examine all pictures for details, they are considered part of the description Items are sold “AS IS” and NO RETURNS unless otherwise listed with conditions We used recycled boxes to help keep shipping rates as low as possible, we will always try to use suitable boxes for your item, but may have company logos, writings, or markings. CHECK OUT OUR STORE, Burman's Basement, FOR MANY UNIQUE TREASURES, WE ARE HAPPY TO COMBINE SHIPPING WHEN POSSIBLE

Price: 19.95 USD

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End Time: 2024-12-16T20:39:49.000Z

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