These things might have happened long ago; they may still be to come. No one really knows anymore.
Shuna is the prince of a miniscule kingdom in a shadowed valley, where the citizens have can produce only just enough food and crops to scrape by. One day, Shuna meets an old weary traveler that claims to be a prince of another land. Before he dies of exhaustion, the traveler shows Shuna a pouch of dead seeds from a land far to the west, claiming that if living seeds are found, they will produce a flourishing golden grain that will allow his people to live free from the backbreaking toil and meager yield their farmland and crops entail. Shuna, along with his faithful steed Yakul, sets off to retrieve some viable seeds to return to his homeland, encountering many obstacles as well as entwining his journey with that off a mysterious girl named Thea and her sister.
It was written and illustrated by the legendary Hayao Miyazaki and first published in 1983, predating many of the works he is now most known for. Though it shares many similarities in themes and artstyle to Miyazaki's more famous works like Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind and Princess Mononoke, the structure of its story is closer to a fable than the epic style narratives in those works, as it is based on a traditional Tibetan tale called The Prince That Turned Into a Dog. It is not strictly a manga, relying as it does far more on narration captions than direct speech balloons, being more an emonogatari or illustrated story.
It was adapted into a 60-minute radio drama which was broadcast on NHK FM on 2 May 1987, with Yōji Matsuda (who already voiced Asbel in Nausicaä and would go on to voice Ashitaka in Princess Mononoke) in titular role. It also partially inspired the Studio Ghibli film Tales from Earthsea, directed by Hayao's son Goro.
It was finally officially published in English by First Second Books in 2022, translated by Alex Dudok De Wit.
This book provides examples of:
- Adaptational Early Appearance: Thea meets Shuna far earlier in the tale than her equivalent in the original legend does.
- After the End: Like many of Miyazaki's later works, Shuna's world is implied to be set very long after some sort of civilizational collapse, as Shuna passes many relics and ruins left behind by vanished civilizations, which nonetheless depict representations of technology like firearms.
- Ambiguously Evil: The god-folk, mostly on account of it being unclear what they even are. All that's seen of them is a moon-like flying saucer. The god-folk could be a sentient race of living beings, or a great elaborate machine just going through its programming.
- An Arm and a Leg: When Shuna is attacked by cannibalistic bandits in this desert, he shoots off the left hand of one of the attackers, causing them to retreat.
- And the Adventure Continues: After Shuna has regained his lucidity and speech and the village they were now enjoys the golden grain, Shuna sets off with Thea, her sister, and Yakul to complete his original mission of bringing the golden seeds to his homeland. The closing narration says the journey will be tough and that Shuna's troubles are far from over, but that the return journey is a story for another time.
- Author Appeal: Beautiful pastoral landscapes, strange wildlife, themes of living humbly in harmony with nature vs warfare and exploitation. It is absolutely a prototype of the aesthetics and themes Miyazaki's work would become known for worldwide.
- Breaking the Fellowship: When Shuna's party reaches the precipice separating the land of the gold-folk from the rest of the world while being pursued by slavers, Shuna sends Thea and her sister north on Yakul, because he needs to continue his journey and it's too dangerous for the others to follow.
- Crapsaccharine World:
- The fortress city is the largest and most prosperous civilization Shuna ever sees, and the fact that he finds it after crossing a wasteland dotted only by ruins makes it stand out all the more. It also has abundant supplies of the golden grains he is seeking. Its economy is based entirely around capturing and trading slaves in exchange for the grain, who themselves acquire the grain from a far more insidious force.
- The Land of the God-Folk. It's a beautiful and fertile land teeming with animals long thought to have been extinct, and sure enough, it is where the mythical golden grain grows. It's also where humans are sacrificed for the purpose of producing the golden grain in the first place.
- Deuteragonist: Thea. When Shuna's memory is wiped after his ordeal in the land of the god-folk, the perspective of the story switches to her. Her actions from that point on mark her as the secondary hero.
- Eldritch Location: From Shuna's perspective, the farm the grain comes from is this. It's surrounded by species thought long extinct, and after witnessing the process of the golden seeds' creation, Shuna looks around and realizes his rifle has gone rusty and his clothes raggedy, indicating that time flows differently in the God-Folks' land.
- Engagement Challenge: When the old woman Thea is staying with insists she choose a husband in order to get another laborer to help with, Thea declares she will marry whoever can ride Yakul. Yakul naturally bucks off everyone who tries until Shuna, his master, tries.
- The Ghost: The "god-folk". The most we see of them is the flying saucer-like "moon" they use to drop captured humans into the machine that uses them as raw materials for the process of creating the golden grain seeds.
- Human Resources: The "god-folk" drop captured humans they procure from slavers into a strange organic machine that then irrigates the surrounding farmland with water, which produces "green giants" that exhale and cultivate the living golden seeds. Shuna cannot tell if the people are converted into the green giants or the water that irrigates the farmland.
- I'm a Humanitarian: Shuna nearly falls prey to a group of cannibals in the desert until he realizes the entrance to their lair is strewn with human bones.
- Industrialized Evil: The god-folk exploit the humans of the outside by trading hulled seeds of the golden grain for humans captured by slavers, keeping the outside world dependent on them and trapped in a system of warfare as slavers destroy more and more villages and countries in order to capture more slaves. The slaves are then fed into an organic machine that converts them into raw material to grow more of the grain.
- Insistent Terminology: The slave traders insist on being called "manhunters." Considering the people they capture and sell aren't used for labor, but are slaughtered and processed as Human Resources, it turns out to be an apt term.
- Jerkass Gods: It's ambiguous if the god-folk are gods in the first place (or if they are an organization or a singular being), but the trope applies nonetheless. They take human sacrifices, use them to produce a golden grain that is a more effective crop than any other known plant in the world, then trade it to the neighboring humans for more sacrifices. Worse, the god-folk thresh the seeds, ensuring humanity cannot grow the grain themselves, thus keeping them dependent on the god-folk and fueling an industry built on raiding and enslaving.
- Nothing Is Scarier: When Shuna almost enters the large organic structure in the land of the god-folk, he is suddenly seized by dread and runs to a hiding spot. This turns out to have been a wise move, as it turns out the structure is some kind of processing plant the god-folk use to convert captured slaves into Human Resources that irrigate their land and grow the golden grain, in a thankfully undepicted process.
- Only the Leads Get a Happy Ending: Downplayed. Shuna succeeds in bringing back some of the golden grain and allowing the village to cultivate it themselves and alleviate their poverty, but the nightmarish process of people being captured by slavers and traded to the god-folk to be used as Human Resources is still ongoing. However, the fact the golden grain is now available outside the god-folk's slave trade might mark the beginning of the end of the cycle.
- Organic Technology: The massive fleshy structure Shuna finds in the god-folk's land that he nearly enters before being instinctively repulsed by fear at the entrance turns out to be this.
- Pet the Dog: Despite lamenting that she'll be losing useful labor with their departure and having been rather demanding of the young people in her care, the old woman still gifts Thea and Shuna her late husband's rifle to keep them safe on their journey back to Shuna's homeland.
- Rescue Romance: Shuna first meets Thea and her sister when they are prisoners of slavers, and he soon frees them. When they encounter each other again, Thea returns the favor by helping the traumatized Shuna regain his faculties out of gratitude for saving her and her sister's life.
- Satellite Character: Thea's sister. She's never referred to by name and neither is she seen not in the company of Thea.
- Screw Politeness, I'm a Senior!: The old woman who Thea and her sister take refuge with in the northern village. She's described as stingy and mean, but not a bad person, and Thea understands that unhappy elders have a tendency to nag.
- That's No Moon: The flying saucer-like craft the god-folk use is shown and described as resembling a bright full moon several times.
- When She Smiles: Twice.
- Thea's little sister is said not to have laughed since their homeland was destroyed by slavers. She laughs and dances with joy when the seeds Shuna managed to retrieve from the land of the god-folk finally sprout.
- Thea herself hasn't cried since the same incident. When Shuna finally regains his power of speech and speaks her name, she cries tears of joy and relief while hugging him.
- World Half Full: The lands to the east are harsh and impoverished, and the lands to the west are even worse, with cannibalism and slavery running rampant, and the world as a whole feels like life is hanging by a rapidly fraying thread. However, after many trials and tribulations, Shuna is able to acquire the seeds, plant them, and grow a renewable grain that can now be spread to the rest of civilization, indicating that things can begin to improve.
