Hayao Miyazaki's Manga Series Offers More Information About His New Film

Just a week ago, ScreenAnarchy brought you the news (based on the tweets by two Japanese animators) that Hayao Miyazaki's new film will be telling the story of Jiro Horikoshi, the engineer who designed the Zero fighter plane used in the attack on Pearl Harbor during World War II. 

In fact, from April 2009 to January 2010, Mr Miyazaki published a 9-part manga series based on the story of a young Jiro Horikoshi in the magazine Model Graphix (where he also previously published the manga series that was later made into Porco Rosso). The setting of the manga was the 1920s, when Japan (like the rest of the world) was in recession, resources were lacking and infections were endemic. In that era, the life expectancy for a male was 43 years and a female was 45 years, and the top three causes of death were tuberculosis, gastroenteritis and pneumonia. To make life even harder for the Japanese people, Tokyo was hit by the Great Kanto Earthquake in 1923... If you think the subject matter sounds too depressing, do remember the previous announcement by Studio Ghibli producer Toshio Suzuki that  Miyazaki's next film is "not the sort of work that everyone in the audience can relax and watch." 

I have included here some pictures from Miyazaki's original manga series for your viewing pleasure: