A wartime story of pain, delusion, peace, and suffering. Machiko Kyo retells a true story of student nurses in WWII with her manga cocoon.

I don't want to make this review very long, because the conclusion is clear: cocoon is excellent. I read it entirely in one sitting, and I was on the edge of my seat the entire time. It's a captivating piece. I was drawn into the scenario almost immediately by the raw, realistic characters and the strong emotional draw of their history with the war.

Kyo's feathered and slightly abstract style is a perfect fit for the subject of cocoon. Maggots, intestines, and amputations are rendered with gravity and weight, but without the kind of hyper-realism that would have made me sick to my stomach.

This beautifully ties into the escapism of the book's main character, San, who slips in and out of dreams and hallucinations in response to her own trauma and the pain of the people around her. The central metaphor — the silkworm cocoon — creates the image of San as a girl who is too young to fully understand the weight of her actions, but too wise to turn her eyes away from reality.

That conversation between San's very real trauma and her inability to connect with it creates the emotional core of the book. It carries a feeling of deep dissociation; the reader is left to interpret San's own emotions because the girl herself has no choice but to abstract them, to turn them into something that she can stomach and understand.

Machiko Kyo's cocoon comes highly recommended. It's an expression of innocence and loss in a pure, readable form, an incredible work of art. Pick it up when it releases on June 16th this year.