ound this one in a coffee shop/game store, the same place I found “Lupin III“. This one was an early work from Hayao Miyazaki (yeah, the Spirited Away, Porco Rosso, Kiki’s Delivery Service guy). This one is set in a world very much like Valley of the Wind, very open, very vast, with ruins and left-over tech littering the landscape. The characters are Tibetan in appearance (just like Valley). They even have the riding elks, always a classic.
Anyway, in this, a young prince wanders to the west, looking for seed stock to replace his villages worn-out seeds. It’s all about his adventures (lifted, I’m told by the afterward, from old Tibetan fables). It’s quite good, very moody, very depressing. And when the hero arrives at the location of his quest, very strange things happen to him. Indeed, I don’t there there is a clear understanding to be made in the events that take place on the “Isle of Gods”. It is just weird and haunting. And just about what I’d expect from a primitive boy looking into a high-tech, upper-end facility.
So, does he escape with the seeds? Does me make it back to his eastern home? Well, that would be spoiling it, wouldn’t it?
I’m still impressed with the art. It was like I was actually there. Worth it to check out.