Cocoon

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Warning: this manga has gore in it

This manga is an emotional rollercoaster, at first, it looks like a slice of life manga however the true horror starts to happen later on. This story takes place during WW2 in Okinawa, these young girls are recruited to become nurses to aid the injured soldiers. They have to nurse grotesque injuries which takes a toll on their psyches. Many devastating things happen during this story but they continue to keep a positive mindset. The art is nice and suits the manga greatly. The characters are really good, they perfectly depict how children would react to working as combat ... nurses.

Overall I enjoyed this manga a lot and rate it an 8.5/10. I do recommend this to anyone because this is a great emotional story.

“This is a story about war, set in a vague place and time, depicted through the medium of a dream”

Who better to describe it than the author. This dreamlike quality she’s talking about is not an offhand remark. There is a pervasive uncanniness through which we see the mutilation and the disease and the hunger, it is not simply that our p.o.v. is that of a teenager; a strange separation is felt between matters of war and matters of girlhood. This, you will first deduce, is how the image of the titular cocoon is invoked, through a deliberate denial and attempt to escape ... reality. While this is true, to reduce it to just that would be disservice to her intentionality. After all, a cocoon is simply one stage of a cycle.

Machiko Kyou is a fantastic artist. The casualness of her signature style of minimal dialogue and drawing is not there to minimize the brutality, the white space doesn’t hide what is unsightly, it takes our possibility to see anything but. The inner monologue of our main character is lucid, aware of the dwindling of life around her, and yet, between the butchery, she’s never let to forget that every face she sees burn is one of a callow school girl, now forever to be frozen on fantasy, memory, or as she would say, dream. A dream of girlhood cocooned inside a war. These are the two main motifs of the story, the stagnant dream and the forceful cycle. To hatch is to change, and to leave. Both are interlinked. The staging of war forces the cycle to move forward, as the dream of girlhood is what may spin the cocoon together and allow larvae to live.

From the 3rd chapter to the end, my face was scrunched up in horror. The manga is extremely uncomfortable and uncensored. The author does an incredible job depecting adolescence in something as brutal as war.

The art is beautiful. The sketchy innocence of the style paired with the miserable things going on is incredibly uncomfortable. Quite a few times, I shed tears from just the surprise of the very sudden gore panels.

There's a lot to think about in Cocoon beyond just what happens in its short runtime. Mayu and San actually feel isolated. As their surroundings and companions come and go, Their struggle to stay ... unchanging can be felt. There's so much nuance and symbolism in the struggle of adolescence, girlhood, and love between them, which is pretty cool considering its brevity.

Definitely read if you like being sad and miserable.