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Hana and Taru: The Forest Giants
Deep in an ancient forest, young Taru feels like a misfit among her tribe of hunter-warriors. As she tries to make her mark in the adult world, she finds herself marginalized—as much for her naïveté as for her radical ideas, which are dismissed as nonsensical. Meeting Hana, a young human with a mysterious past who has been taken prisoner by Taru's own tribe, provides her with both solace and an opportunity to find her own way. When Taru's village is once again attacked by giant beasts, the unlikely pair will work together to try to understand the uncontrollable and deadly force that threatens them.
Kindle Edition
First published January 19, 2024
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 43 reviews
December 5, 2023
Une superbe bd ambiance Miyazaki et Chapardeurs. C'est beau, les couleurs donnent une ambiance tellement lumineuse. Certains plans graphiquement sont vraiment très beaux. On sent les influences jeux videos et animation dans les corps. C'est une belle histoire d'amitié, je ne sais s'il y aura une suite mais ce serait avec plaisir que je retrouverais ces héroïnes et j'adorerais un développement dans leur relation. Bref une belle surprise /découverte. C'était cool.
February 29, 2024
une fable écologique, sur l'acceptation des autres et sur la migration de certaines créatures.
Nous allons suivre l'amitié naissante entre Hana et Taru.
Taru vit dans un village de chasseurs installé en bas d'une montagne, au pied de laquelle se trouve une forêt dense. Elle y est traité comme l'anomalie du village car elle refuse de chasser et de tuer.
Elle aura donc une mission surveiller Hana, une jeune femme qui vient d'une île située bien loin des montagnes, et qui était à la recherche d'un nouveau lieu d'accueil pour son peuple.
Elle y est retenue prisonnière par le peuple de Taru, qui pense qu'elle est venu des espionner pour attaquer le village plus tard avec des renforts.
Cependant, Taru et Hana vont vite fuir du village ensemble, inquiète par des évènements étranges amenant des créatures géantes à ravager tout sur leur passage. Elles vont donc partir en quête d'une solution pour éloigner ces êtres et protéger au mieux le village.
Les échanges entre nos deux personnages principaux sont assez fluides, elles s'attachent rapidement l'une à l'autre, car se sente similaire.
L'univers est très dense, assez étouffant, dû aux attaques des créatures et à la forêt qui s'assombrit de plus en plus au pied de la montagne.
j'ai cependant eue plus de mal à accrocher aux personnages de la chef du village et à sa mère, j'ai trouvé que leur passé ensemble n'était pas forcément obligatoire pour l'histoire et le but recherché.
J'ai également trouvé que la résolution des problèmes dû aux créatures se faisait trop rapidement, par rapport à la présentation qui nous avait été faite au début de l'ouvrage.
J'ai quand même passé une bonne lecture, je vous recommande cet ouvrage !
Nous allons suivre l'amitié naissante entre Hana et Taru.
Taru vit dans un village de chasseurs installé en bas d'une montagne, au pied de laquelle se trouve une forêt dense. Elle y est traité comme l'anomalie du village car elle refuse de chasser et de tuer.
Elle aura donc une mission surveiller Hana, une jeune femme qui vient d'une île située bien loin des montagnes, et qui était à la recherche d'un nouveau lieu d'accueil pour son peuple.
Elle y est retenue prisonnière par le peuple de Taru, qui pense qu'elle est venu des espionner pour attaquer le village plus tard avec des renforts.
Cependant, Taru et Hana vont vite fuir du village ensemble, inquiète par des évènements étranges amenant des créatures géantes à ravager tout sur leur passage. Elles vont donc partir en quête d'une solution pour éloigner ces êtres et protéger au mieux le village.
Les échanges entre nos deux personnages principaux sont assez fluides, elles s'attachent rapidement l'une à l'autre, car se sente similaire.
L'univers est très dense, assez étouffant, dû aux attaques des créatures et à la forêt qui s'assombrit de plus en plus au pied de la montagne.
j'ai cependant eue plus de mal à accrocher aux personnages de la chef du village et à sa mère, j'ai trouvé que leur passé ensemble n'était pas forcément obligatoire pour l'histoire et le but recherché.
J'ai également trouvé que la résolution des problèmes dû aux créatures se faisait trop rapidement, par rapport à la présentation qui nous avait été faite au début de l'ouvrage.
J'ai quand même passé une bonne lecture, je vous recommande cet ouvrage !
March 25, 2026
3.5 the story is very cute and I loved the universe. It is a story about friendship and love that makes you understand how thinking differently can be really helpful sometimes. I enjoyed reading this graphic novel. The illustrations were pretty, however, some of the story is taking place in dark settings and I found that some illustrations were harder to see on my kindle. Maybe it will be better in the physical version.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
A Surprisingly Persuasive Argument for Reading the Tracks Before Reaching for the Spear
Léo Schilling and Motteux give “Hana and Taru: The Forest Giants” the shape of an adventure, then use it to ask why communities so often prefer confidence, noise, and bad timing to evidence.
By Demetris Papadimitropoulos | April 6th, 2026
The most dangerous thing in “Hana and Taru: The Forest Giants” is not a giant, not a stampede, not even the heat. It is a bad diagnosis, and it does not remain private for long. Léo Schilling and Motteux build their graphic novel around an old human reflex that never seems to go out of fashion: people see a crisis, name it too quickly, then fortify that name with watchtowers, bramble barriers, traps, and bruised pride. At first the book arrives in monster-story drag, all siege nerves and beastly silhouettes, before revealing a sterner line of inquiry. This is a story about what happens when fear hardens into explanation, explanation into rule, and rule into fresh damage.
Luckily, the book keeps mud on its boots. It is brisk, lucid, and funny in the manner of someone too busy surviving to announce a joke. People squabble. Mothers snap. Girls limp through undergrowth. A plant with a smell strong enough to clear a room turns out to be handier than a spear. The best thinking here hides in the load-bearing places, where a smell, a root, or a scrap of fur can quietly become fate.
To the tribe, Taru has already been filed under nuisance. She is too restlessly nosy to become the approved huntress her mother Vesa, the chief, would recognize as her own, and too unconvinced by custom to repeat what everyone else has agreed to call wisdom. The giants have been attacking for years. Taru keeps proposing a modest heresy: perhaps the tribe should study them, appease them, or at least try something more imaginative than hurling spears at a problem until it swells. The tribe hears this the way people register splinters and rashes: annoying, persistent, and best ignored until they worsen. Every community produces a Taru sooner or later. Most then get busy teaching her silence.
Her assigned usefulness is to watch Hana, a human prisoner found unconscious in the forest. In their early scenes, the book finally stands up straight. Taru brings food; Hana, caged but sharp, asks the questions the tribe has long since stopped asking. Taru, who has spent much of her life being treated as if curiosity were a defect in breeding, discovers the unnerving pleasure of being taken seriously. That small social miracle gives the opening its pulse. “Hana and Taru” understands that friendship can begin not in instant affinity but in the relief of finding another mind willing to stay with your thought until it reaches its awkward end.
During an attack, Taru notices something small and decisive: one giant stops short when it sees Hana. The others register danger and little else. Taru registers mismatch. That is the book in miniature. Its plot does not turn on prophecy or secret lineage. It turns on the plain fact that one person notices what does not fit the approved story.
Once Taru learns Hana may soon be executed in the name of discipline and utility, she breaks her out. They flee through an abandoned village and into the forest, and once outside the comic stops proclaiming and starts observing. The early pages are crowded with barked exchanges, obligations, enclosure, and command. Beyond them, the land starts keeping records. The forest no longer decorates the action; it records it in fur on bark, blood in mud, and plants flattened by passing weight.
These pages trust tracks, scratches, and mud more than speeches. Taru and Hana do not solve this by finding a better slogan. They solve it by reading the land the way hunters should and do not. They compare tracks in mud, fur caught on bark, blood mixed with water, the timing of attacks, the pressure of seasonal heat, the shape of routes. Taru’s real gift is not innocence, softness, or mystical intuition. It is method. She notices, compares, revises. The notebook is not a charming accessory. It is where the book teaches both girls, and us, how to look. To know the world, these pages argue, you must stare at it long enough to let it make you change your mind.
That formal commitment is the book’s real distinction. Motteux’s panels do not merely lay in atmosphere. They reason in public. The palette – swamp green, ink-blue hush, bruise purple, flare-bright red – is too tightly governed to be merely pretty. It separates panic from inquiry. Red seizes the page in moments of attack; cooler hues settle over hesitation, refuge, and watchfulness. Scale does its own argumentative work. Taru and Hana are repeatedly dwarfed by trunk wall, ravine, canopy, cliff, and herd. These are not sovereign observers surveying nature from above. They are bodies inside weather, topography, smell, and consequence. The comic is interested in smallness, and not sentimentally. Smallness here is epistemological before it is emotional. You do not know the world because you stand above it. You know it, if you know it at all, because you kneel in the mud long enough to notice what everyone else has stepped over.
The book is just as exact about pace. It knows when to cut, and when to wait. Revelation does not pounce. It gathers. We see signs before we can read them properly: a giant halting at Hana’s face, maelisse first arriving as comic stink and only later as tactic, repeated mention of hot weather before heat becomes explanation, the rooted tree before it becomes a solution. A weaker book would hide the answer. This one leaves the answer lying in the landscape until the characters have learned how to read it.
Here the gears finally bite. Taru and Hana discover a ravine filled with dead giants, and the image reverses the book twice over. First it supplies horror: these creatures are no longer mythic threats charging in from elsewhere, but piled bodies, failed crossings, a history of interrupted movement written into stone. Then it converts terror into proof. The giants are not attacking because violence is their essence. They are trying, season after season, to cross a gap. Summer pressure drives them frantic. Their homeward route is gone. What the tribe calls madness is, at least in part, a blocked return route mistaken for aggression.
Its tragedy is made of heat, stone, and a human habit of filing first and thinking later rather than of sorcery. No curse. No dark enchantment. Just overheated herbivores, trapped migration, panic, and pain. The book has the good sense to make that diagnosis ugly rather than soothing. When Taru and Hana encounter a giant eating an animal, the shock lands because the comic has already taught us the creatures are herbivores. Distress does not ennoble the displaced. It deranges them. That refusal keeps the book honest. Plenty of stories that ask us to sympathize with the nonhuman cannot resist polishing it into innocence. “Hana and Taru” is better than that. It understands that suffering can produce damage without producing virtue.
Ploup, the former hunter living in exile-by-choice among paintings, memory, and an almost weaponized quantity of maelisse, is the book’s sharpest, and best-scented, rebuke. She has not been attacked because she does not make war on everything she meets. More important, she complicates the comic’s tidiest binary. The conflict is not simply between old ways and new ideas. It is between one hardened tradition and another, between a tribal culture that mistakes force for realism and a nearly lost practice of attention, restraint, and cohabitation. Ploup gives the book history where it might otherwise have settled for allegory, and family damage where it might otherwise have settled for thesis. She is not a glowing lantern of wisdom dropped into the story to straighten everybody out. She is a reminder that better knowledge often survives in shabby, eccentric, half-ignored places.
The script is where the comic occasionally blinks. Schilling writes in short, declarative exchanges built to expose positions quickly. For a long stretch, the plain style does exactly the work required of it. The story remains readable without turning to paste; Taru sounds different from Hana; Vesa’s clipped authority is distinct from Ploup’s tart sidelongness. But plainness helps until it does not. In confrontation scenes especially, the dialogue can clamp shut too fast. Characters state conclusions the panels have already made visible. Vesa, in particular, can seem less at war with herself than arranged as the embodiment of a method: defend, control, escalate, repeat. The book gives her pressure and injury, which keeps her from flattening into a mere thesis, but the speech bubbles occasionally explain conflicts the panels had already rendered more subtly.
That is the price the book pays for making every path so well marked. “Hana and Taru” wants to be accessible, and mostly that is to its credit. But its verbal writing is not always as interesting as its architecture. The panels trust silence, recurrence, and residue; the dialogue sometimes arrives a beat later to underline the point in red pencil. The panels often trust the reader more than the script does. That gap is the book’s central limitation, and it is a real one. The comic is often smarter in image than in declaration.
Still, what the book does structurally is impressive enough to carry real weight. It has no interest in formal showboating, but it seeds details with care and cashes them with discipline. So when the final crisis arrives – Vesa ready to use fire, scent, and sheer stubbornness to drive the giants toward catastrophe – the solution feels assembled from parts the book has already laid out. Maelisse, first a smell, becomes a tool. The rooted tree above the ravine, first terrain, becomes passage. The ending patiently builds what a weaker book would merely proclaim. The giants are not slain. A route is made passable again. Fantasy does love a weapon; this book has the nerve to make a bridge the more radical object.
That choice reveals the comic’s sterner claim. A lazier fantasy would stop at the notion that compassion beats brutality. This one is less willing to let itself off easy. Compassion matters, but not by itself. Taru and Hana succeed because they track, compare, infer, and revise. They do the slow, unglamorous work of diagnosis. The comic’s deeper claim is not that nature is pure, or that people become wise the moment they listen to their hearts. It is that institutions cling to bad readings with frightening efficiency, and that force applied to a misread problem only makes the mistake louder.
There it brushes the present cleanly, without powdering itself in topical fuss. The pattern is grimly familiar: structural strain gets described as moral failure, old methods keep being deployed because they are old methods, and authority would rather escalate than admit the map is wrong. “Hana and Taru” does not preach any of this. It builds a world in which the habit is visible in bramble barricades, hunt plans, and the catastrophic confidence of a chief who would sooner light the forest than revise her diagnosis. The book does not need to flatter itself with current importance. Its relevance comes from how quietly exact it is about a recurring human embarrassment.
What lingers is not a speech but a chain of corrections: the giant stopping at Hana’s face; the ravine of bodies turning fear into proof; the stink of maelisse becoming salvation; Taru refusing the life her mother mistakes for destiny; the mountains at the end not as utopia, but as the possibility of living under other terms. The ending refuses the sweet little lie that one good insight can sew every wound shut. There is damage on both sides. No village is remade by revelation alone, and this one knows it. Taru does not return simply because apology has finally caught up.
At 85 out of 100 – a firm 4 stars on Goodreads – “Hana and Taru: The Forest Giants” is a smart, hard-earned graphic novel whose highest achievement is architectural. Its prose is clear and often affecting, though sometimes too eager to state what the art has already made plain. Its structure is where the book is most exacting: details introduced as texture return as instruments, and clues planted early ripen into a solution that restores passage rather than rewarding aggression. Sometimes the distance between a trap and a bridge is nothing more glamorous than whether anyone bothered to read the land before building.
Léo Schilling and Motteux give “Hana and Taru: The Forest Giants” the shape of an adventure, then use it to ask why communities so often prefer confidence, noise, and bad timing to evidence.
By Demetris Papadimitropoulos | April 6th, 2026
The most dangerous thing in “Hana and Taru: The Forest Giants” is not a giant, not a stampede, not even the heat. It is a bad diagnosis, and it does not remain private for long. Léo Schilling and Motteux build their graphic novel around an old human reflex that never seems to go out of fashion: people see a crisis, name it too quickly, then fortify that name with watchtowers, bramble barriers, traps, and bruised pride. At first the book arrives in monster-story drag, all siege nerves and beastly silhouettes, before revealing a sterner line of inquiry. This is a story about what happens when fear hardens into explanation, explanation into rule, and rule into fresh damage.
Luckily, the book keeps mud on its boots. It is brisk, lucid, and funny in the manner of someone too busy surviving to announce a joke. People squabble. Mothers snap. Girls limp through undergrowth. A plant with a smell strong enough to clear a room turns out to be handier than a spear. The best thinking here hides in the load-bearing places, where a smell, a root, or a scrap of fur can quietly become fate.
To the tribe, Taru has already been filed under nuisance. She is too restlessly nosy to become the approved huntress her mother Vesa, the chief, would recognize as her own, and too unconvinced by custom to repeat what everyone else has agreed to call wisdom. The giants have been attacking for years. Taru keeps proposing a modest heresy: perhaps the tribe should study them, appease them, or at least try something more imaginative than hurling spears at a problem until it swells. The tribe hears this the way people register splinters and rashes: annoying, persistent, and best ignored until they worsen. Every community produces a Taru sooner or later. Most then get busy teaching her silence.
Her assigned usefulness is to watch Hana, a human prisoner found unconscious in the forest. In their early scenes, the book finally stands up straight. Taru brings food; Hana, caged but sharp, asks the questions the tribe has long since stopped asking. Taru, who has spent much of her life being treated as if curiosity were a defect in breeding, discovers the unnerving pleasure of being taken seriously. That small social miracle gives the opening its pulse. “Hana and Taru” understands that friendship can begin not in instant affinity but in the relief of finding another mind willing to stay with your thought until it reaches its awkward end.
During an attack, Taru notices something small and decisive: one giant stops short when it sees Hana. The others register danger and little else. Taru registers mismatch. That is the book in miniature. Its plot does not turn on prophecy or secret lineage. It turns on the plain fact that one person notices what does not fit the approved story.
Once Taru learns Hana may soon be executed in the name of discipline and utility, she breaks her out. They flee through an abandoned village and into the forest, and once outside the comic stops proclaiming and starts observing. The early pages are crowded with barked exchanges, obligations, enclosure, and command. Beyond them, the land starts keeping records. The forest no longer decorates the action; it records it in fur on bark, blood in mud, and plants flattened by passing weight.
These pages trust tracks, scratches, and mud more than speeches. Taru and Hana do not solve this by finding a better slogan. They solve it by reading the land the way hunters should and do not. They compare tracks in mud, fur caught on bark, blood mixed with water, the timing of attacks, the pressure of seasonal heat, the shape of routes. Taru’s real gift is not innocence, softness, or mystical intuition. It is method. She notices, compares, revises. The notebook is not a charming accessory. It is where the book teaches both girls, and us, how to look. To know the world, these pages argue, you must stare at it long enough to let it make you change your mind.
That formal commitment is the book’s real distinction. Motteux’s panels do not merely lay in atmosphere. They reason in public. The palette – swamp green, ink-blue hush, bruise purple, flare-bright red – is too tightly governed to be merely pretty. It separates panic from inquiry. Red seizes the page in moments of attack; cooler hues settle over hesitation, refuge, and watchfulness. Scale does its own argumentative work. Taru and Hana are repeatedly dwarfed by trunk wall, ravine, canopy, cliff, and herd. These are not sovereign observers surveying nature from above. They are bodies inside weather, topography, smell, and consequence. The comic is interested in smallness, and not sentimentally. Smallness here is epistemological before it is emotional. You do not know the world because you stand above it. You know it, if you know it at all, because you kneel in the mud long enough to notice what everyone else has stepped over.
The book is just as exact about pace. It knows when to cut, and when to wait. Revelation does not pounce. It gathers. We see signs before we can read them properly: a giant halting at Hana’s face, maelisse first arriving as comic stink and only later as tactic, repeated mention of hot weather before heat becomes explanation, the rooted tree before it becomes a solution. A weaker book would hide the answer. This one leaves the answer lying in the landscape until the characters have learned how to read it.
Here the gears finally bite. Taru and Hana discover a ravine filled with dead giants, and the image reverses the book twice over. First it supplies horror: these creatures are no longer mythic threats charging in from elsewhere, but piled bodies, failed crossings, a history of interrupted movement written into stone. Then it converts terror into proof. The giants are not attacking because violence is their essence. They are trying, season after season, to cross a gap. Summer pressure drives them frantic. Their homeward route is gone. What the tribe calls madness is, at least in part, a blocked return route mistaken for aggression.
Its tragedy is made of heat, stone, and a human habit of filing first and thinking later rather than of sorcery. No curse. No dark enchantment. Just overheated herbivores, trapped migration, panic, and pain. The book has the good sense to make that diagnosis ugly rather than soothing. When Taru and Hana encounter a giant eating an animal, the shock lands because the comic has already taught us the creatures are herbivores. Distress does not ennoble the displaced. It deranges them. That refusal keeps the book honest. Plenty of stories that ask us to sympathize with the nonhuman cannot resist polishing it into innocence. “Hana and Taru” is better than that. It understands that suffering can produce damage without producing virtue.
Ploup, the former hunter living in exile-by-choice among paintings, memory, and an almost weaponized quantity of maelisse, is the book’s sharpest, and best-scented, rebuke. She has not been attacked because she does not make war on everything she meets. More important, she complicates the comic’s tidiest binary. The conflict is not simply between old ways and new ideas. It is between one hardened tradition and another, between a tribal culture that mistakes force for realism and a nearly lost practice of attention, restraint, and cohabitation. Ploup gives the book history where it might otherwise have settled for allegory, and family damage where it might otherwise have settled for thesis. She is not a glowing lantern of wisdom dropped into the story to straighten everybody out. She is a reminder that better knowledge often survives in shabby, eccentric, half-ignored places.
The script is where the comic occasionally blinks. Schilling writes in short, declarative exchanges built to expose positions quickly. For a long stretch, the plain style does exactly the work required of it. The story remains readable without turning to paste; Taru sounds different from Hana; Vesa’s clipped authority is distinct from Ploup’s tart sidelongness. But plainness helps until it does not. In confrontation scenes especially, the dialogue can clamp shut too fast. Characters state conclusions the panels have already made visible. Vesa, in particular, can seem less at war with herself than arranged as the embodiment of a method: defend, control, escalate, repeat. The book gives her pressure and injury, which keeps her from flattening into a mere thesis, but the speech bubbles occasionally explain conflicts the panels had already rendered more subtly.
That is the price the book pays for making every path so well marked. “Hana and Taru” wants to be accessible, and mostly that is to its credit. But its verbal writing is not always as interesting as its architecture. The panels trust silence, recurrence, and residue; the dialogue sometimes arrives a beat later to underline the point in red pencil. The panels often trust the reader more than the script does. That gap is the book’s central limitation, and it is a real one. The comic is often smarter in image than in declaration.
Still, what the book does structurally is impressive enough to carry real weight. It has no interest in formal showboating, but it seeds details with care and cashes them with discipline. So when the final crisis arrives – Vesa ready to use fire, scent, and sheer stubbornness to drive the giants toward catastrophe – the solution feels assembled from parts the book has already laid out. Maelisse, first a smell, becomes a tool. The rooted tree above the ravine, first terrain, becomes passage. The ending patiently builds what a weaker book would merely proclaim. The giants are not slain. A route is made passable again. Fantasy does love a weapon; this book has the nerve to make a bridge the more radical object.
That choice reveals the comic’s sterner claim. A lazier fantasy would stop at the notion that compassion beats brutality. This one is less willing to let itself off easy. Compassion matters, but not by itself. Taru and Hana succeed because they track, compare, infer, and revise. They do the slow, unglamorous work of diagnosis. The comic’s deeper claim is not that nature is pure, or that people become wise the moment they listen to their hearts. It is that institutions cling to bad readings with frightening efficiency, and that force applied to a misread problem only makes the mistake louder.
There it brushes the present cleanly, without powdering itself in topical fuss. The pattern is grimly familiar: structural strain gets described as moral failure, old methods keep being deployed because they are old methods, and authority would rather escalate than admit the map is wrong. “Hana and Taru” does not preach any of this. It builds a world in which the habit is visible in bramble barricades, hunt plans, and the catastrophic confidence of a chief who would sooner light the forest than revise her diagnosis. The book does not need to flatter itself with current importance. Its relevance comes from how quietly exact it is about a recurring human embarrassment.
What lingers is not a speech but a chain of corrections: the giant stopping at Hana’s face; the ravine of bodies turning fear into proof; the stink of maelisse becoming salvation; Taru refusing the life her mother mistakes for destiny; the mountains at the end not as utopia, but as the possibility of living under other terms. The ending refuses the sweet little lie that one good insight can sew every wound shut. There is damage on both sides. No village is remade by revelation alone, and this one knows it. Taru does not return simply because apology has finally caught up.
At 85 out of 100 – a firm 4 stars on Goodreads – “Hana and Taru: The Forest Giants” is a smart, hard-earned graphic novel whose highest achievement is architectural. Its prose is clear and often affecting, though sometimes too eager to state what the art has already made plain. Its structure is where the book is most exacting: details introduced as texture return as instruments, and clues planted early ripen into a solution that restores passage rather than rewarding aggression. Sometimes the distance between a trap and a bridge is nothing more glamorous than whether anyone bothered to read the land before building.
May 24, 2026
The story takes a lot for granted. I don’t know if it was based on a book and then turned into a comic, or if the comic just decided to start midway into chapter … fiveish of a story. The comic begins with people talking about appeasing “them” and leaving offerings, and then we meet Taru on her way to feed Hana, a human, and a prisoner.
The two girls are chatty, almost friendly insofar as the power disparity allows. Taru talks about the madness of the forest, and how the hunters won’t be able to kill it. Eventually we learn the giants are, well, giant beasts who come to attack the village and Taru wants to find a way to reason with them while Taru’s mother, Vesa wants to kill them. With the way the world and story are established, I’m already on Vesa’s side because … these things keep coming and destroying villages and killing people.
What reasoning does Taru have for thinking she can communicate with them or find a way to solve this situation? The story gives me nothing. Hana and Taru eventually escape the village to venture into the woods and discuss how they want to save the giants (who are giant rodents) but again, no reasoning is given. Why? Why do these girls think the giants can be reasoned with? Why are they so interested in saving giant murderous beasts who are killing Taru’s people?
There are so many connecting scenes missing. Taru and Hana spend days, maybe even weeks with a mysterious old woman in the forest who lives in harmony with the forest and the animals, with time passing in a handful of panels. But still no talk about the whys or wherefores, only that it must be done because Taru has to be right, has to be the good one. Vesa, on the other hand, hunting food for her people, trying to protect her village from raving and destructive beasts, is painted as a villain.
I feel like so much is missing that it impacts the story too much. It’s a mess. The book brings in Vesa’s mother who left her daughter and the village because she didn’t want to be a hunter and told her daughter she was no longer thinking for herself, only for the village. But as the chief of the village … isn’t that her job? It’s fine to try to paint a picture of someone choosing to be different, wanting things to be different, but this comic wants the pat on the back for having a kind, animal loving character without doing the work to show Taru as having those characteristics.
It’s a jumble of scenes, and nothing feels earned. While some moments — such as discovering why the giants act the way they do or the cause of the madness — are done well, everything related to the characters is skipped right over. And, unfortunately, I think this comic should be skipped as well. The art is lovely, but the story’s a mess.
Thank you so much to Net Galley and the publisher for the ARC.
The two girls are chatty, almost friendly insofar as the power disparity allows. Taru talks about the madness of the forest, and how the hunters won’t be able to kill it. Eventually we learn the giants are, well, giant beasts who come to attack the village and Taru wants to find a way to reason with them while Taru’s mother, Vesa wants to kill them. With the way the world and story are established, I’m already on Vesa’s side because … these things keep coming and destroying villages and killing people.
What reasoning does Taru have for thinking she can communicate with them or find a way to solve this situation? The story gives me nothing. Hana and Taru eventually escape the village to venture into the woods and discuss how they want to save the giants (who are giant rodents) but again, no reasoning is given. Why? Why do these girls think the giants can be reasoned with? Why are they so interested in saving giant murderous beasts who are killing Taru’s people?
There are so many connecting scenes missing. Taru and Hana spend days, maybe even weeks with a mysterious old woman in the forest who lives in harmony with the forest and the animals, with time passing in a handful of panels. But still no talk about the whys or wherefores, only that it must be done because Taru has to be right, has to be the good one. Vesa, on the other hand, hunting food for her people, trying to protect her village from raving and destructive beasts, is painted as a villain.
I feel like so much is missing that it impacts the story too much. It’s a mess. The book brings in Vesa’s mother who left her daughter and the village because she didn’t want to be a hunter and told her daughter she was no longer thinking for herself, only for the village. But as the chief of the village … isn’t that her job? It’s fine to try to paint a picture of someone choosing to be different, wanting things to be different, but this comic wants the pat on the back for having a kind, animal loving character without doing the work to show Taru as having those characteristics.
It’s a jumble of scenes, and nothing feels earned. While some moments — such as discovering why the giants act the way they do or the cause of the madness — are done well, everything related to the characters is skipped right over. And, unfortunately, I think this comic should be skipped as well. The art is lovely, but the story’s a mess.
Thank you so much to Net Galley and the publisher for the ARC.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
First I would like to thank NetGalley, the Author, the Artist and the Publisher for this ARC.
I really like this story.
The world and the creatures are something different and so is the art style.
It's a story about trust, friendship, disbelieve, misunderstanding and how harmful one's believes can be.
There is a lot of "violence" and some scene's are gruesome, but overall this is a sweet story. I personally don't mind the "gore" but I would like to advise young readers to be cautious.
Tale as old as time:
Léo Schilling and Motteux build their graphic novel around the old human reflex that never seems to go out of fashion: people see a crisis, name it too quickly, fortify that name with watchtowers, bramble barriers, traps, and bruised pride and murder. At first the book arrives in monster-story, all siege nerves and beastly silhouettes, before revealing a deeper line of inquiry. This is a story about what happens when fear hardens into believe, believe into rule, and rule into damage. There is the lack of trust, misunderstanding, the all consuming thought of being right when others are wrong, not listening to others or other views and putting the blame elsewhere.
In the end the story has a "happy" ending but a lot of bloodloss had to precede that happiness.
The art is beautiful and both the story and the art are different from what is currently mainstream.
This is truly a graphic novel you would want in your collection.
I really like this story.
The world and the creatures are something different and so is the art style.
It's a story about trust, friendship, disbelieve, misunderstanding and how harmful one's believes can be.
There is a lot of "violence" and some scene's are gruesome, but overall this is a sweet story. I personally don't mind the "gore" but I would like to advise young readers to be cautious.
Tale as old as time:
Léo Schilling and Motteux build their graphic novel around the old human reflex that never seems to go out of fashion: people see a crisis, name it too quickly, fortify that name with watchtowers, bramble barriers, traps, and bruised pride and murder. At first the book arrives in monster-story, all siege nerves and beastly silhouettes, before revealing a deeper line of inquiry. This is a story about what happens when fear hardens into believe, believe into rule, and rule into damage. There is the lack of trust, misunderstanding, the all consuming thought of being right when others are wrong, not listening to others or other views and putting the blame elsewhere.
In the end the story has a "happy" ending but a lot of bloodloss had to precede that happiness.
The art is beautiful and both the story and the art are different from what is currently mainstream.
This is truly a graphic novel you would want in your collection.
March 16, 2024
Hana et Taru sont une BD vraiment immersive et sauvage, j’ai pris beaucoup de plaisir à la découvrir.
L’histoire sort vraiment de l’ordinaire, nous avons là un village de chasseurs qui tente de survivre aux attaques de ce qui touche la forêt et ses animaux, une sorte de folie créant des monstres sanguinaires.
J’ai apprécié suivre la façon dont ce clan e aux attaques, mais encore plus de découvrir et suivre la jeune Taru et ses idéaux en totale opposition à ceux des autres, dont sa mère, la chef du clan.
Aidé par Hana, une humaine que nous rencontrons via sa captivité au sein du village, nous allons pouvoir suivre une aventure terrifiante et porteuse d’espoir.
Taru va devoir faire des choix, difficiles, douloureux, elle sera épaulée par la jeune humaine et d’autres personnages que nous allons découvrir progressivement, mais qui, je l’avoue, sont vraiment très intéressants.
L’histoire s’installe rapidement, l’atmosphère est lourde et oppressante au travers des planches de dessins de l’auteur. Les couleurs jouent un rôle essentiel, alternant entre celui de l’espoir et celui de l’horreur la plus absolue, car oui, certains passages sont très violents et marquants.
Dans l’ensemble, j’ai passé un très bon moment à suivre Hana et Taru en quête d’une solution pour comprendre cette folie de la forêt.
L’histoire sort vraiment de l’ordinaire, nous avons là un village de chasseurs qui tente de survivre aux attaques de ce qui touche la forêt et ses animaux, une sorte de folie créant des monstres sanguinaires.
J’ai apprécié suivre la façon dont ce clan e aux attaques, mais encore plus de découvrir et suivre la jeune Taru et ses idéaux en totale opposition à ceux des autres, dont sa mère, la chef du clan.
Aidé par Hana, une humaine que nous rencontrons via sa captivité au sein du village, nous allons pouvoir suivre une aventure terrifiante et porteuse d’espoir.
Taru va devoir faire des choix, difficiles, douloureux, elle sera épaulée par la jeune humaine et d’autres personnages que nous allons découvrir progressivement, mais qui, je l’avoue, sont vraiment très intéressants.
L’histoire s’installe rapidement, l’atmosphère est lourde et oppressante au travers des planches de dessins de l’auteur. Les couleurs jouent un rôle essentiel, alternant entre celui de l’espoir et celui de l’horreur la plus absolue, car oui, certains passages sont très violents et marquants.
Dans l’ensemble, j’ai passé un très bon moment à suivre Hana et Taru en quête d’une solution pour comprendre cette folie de la forêt.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Ooooh, der Comic war richtig schön 🥹 ich mag den Zeichenstil - er ist sehr markant, an vielen Stellen weich und detailliert. Ebenso wirkt er auch etwas “schwammig”, aber auf positive Weise. Die Kombination macht es sehr interessant. Dazu kommen die unterschiedlichen Charaktere und Rassen - Hana ist eher an einen Menschen angelehnt und Taru.. hmm, ich würde sagen, einem Ork in gewisser Art und Weise? 🤔 Sie könnten kaum unterschiedlicher sein, gleichzeitig ähneln sie sich aber auch stark. Hana wird von Tarus Dorf gefangen genommen, woraufhin Taru sich um sie kümmern soll - dabei freunden sich die beiden etwas an. Gleichzeitig hat das Dorf mit Angriffen von “Giants” zu kämpfen. Da das Dorf aus Jägern besteht, greifen sie sie ebenfalls an. Doch die beiden jungen Frauen sind der festen Überzeugung, dass es eine andere Lösung geben muss..
Die Story wirkt durch die stellenweise wortlosen Panels teilweise recht ruhig und gleichzeitig sehr imposant. Währenddessen bekommt die Geschichte immer mehr Tiefgang und man baut zu den Protagonisten schnell eine große Bindung auf. So leidet man mit ihnen, erfreut sich aber auch an ihrer Freundschaft. Der Comic vermittelt eine tolle Message und zeigt mal wieder, dass Gewalt keine Lösung ist und es immer einen anderen Weg gibt. Ebenso, dass es wichtig ist, einander zuzuhören und auf den anderen einzugehen. Vielleicht bekommen wir hierzu ja auch noch einen deutschen Release - wäre jedenfalls toll 🥰
Die Story wirkt durch die stellenweise wortlosen Panels teilweise recht ruhig und gleichzeitig sehr imposant. Währenddessen bekommt die Geschichte immer mehr Tiefgang und man baut zu den Protagonisten schnell eine große Bindung auf. So leidet man mit ihnen, erfreut sich aber auch an ihrer Freundschaft. Der Comic vermittelt eine tolle Message und zeigt mal wieder, dass Gewalt keine Lösung ist und es immer einen anderen Weg gibt. Ebenso, dass es wichtig ist, einander zuzuhören und auf den anderen einzugehen. Vielleicht bekommen wir hierzu ja auch noch einen deutschen Release - wäre jedenfalls toll 🥰
February 18, 2024
Un récit prenant et une leçon sur la nature humaine et sa relation avec la faune qu'elle rencontre !
Taru ne se sens pas à sa place parmi les siens : éprise de tolérance et de paix, elle se rebelle contre son peuple qui ne vit que de la chasse. Surtout depuis que les Rois de la Forêt ont été touchés par la folie de cette dernière. Pour ne pas devoir faire du mal à la seule personne qu'elle considère comme son amie, Hana, une prisonnière humaine, elle décide de la faire évader et de s'enfuir dans la forêt à la recherche d'une solution pacifiste.
Ce titre aborde de manière intéressante la peur de l'inconnu et la volonté de vouloir s'en débarrasser au plus vite pour reste dans sa zone de confort. Il parle également de la répétition des schémas familiaux plutôt toxiques mais également du courage de la volonté de comprendre et de l'amitié. De beaux thèmes évoqués d'une manière assez crue voir violente, mais qui passe des messages fort.
Coté illustration, le style est assez particulier et ne plaira pas à tout le monde, cependant il est rafraichissant et colle bien à l'univers et l'ambiance du récit.
Bref, une lecture intéréssante, à découvrir ! ^^
Taru ne se sens pas à sa place parmi les siens : éprise de tolérance et de paix, elle se rebelle contre son peuple qui ne vit que de la chasse. Surtout depuis que les Rois de la Forêt ont été touchés par la folie de cette dernière. Pour ne pas devoir faire du mal à la seule personne qu'elle considère comme son amie, Hana, une prisonnière humaine, elle décide de la faire évader et de s'enfuir dans la forêt à la recherche d'une solution pacifiste.
Ce titre aborde de manière intéressante la peur de l'inconnu et la volonté de vouloir s'en débarrasser au plus vite pour reste dans sa zone de confort. Il parle également de la répétition des schémas familiaux plutôt toxiques mais également du courage de la volonté de comprendre et de l'amitié. De beaux thèmes évoqués d'une manière assez crue voir violente, mais qui passe des messages fort.
Coté illustration, le style est assez particulier et ne plaira pas à tout le monde, cependant il est rafraichissant et colle bien à l'univers et l'ambiance du récit.
Bref, une lecture intéréssante, à découvrir ! ^^
March 17, 2024
Intriguée par le synopsis, je remercie les éditions Dargaud de m'avoir permis de faire cette découverte via la plateforme NetGalley.
Léo Schilling et Motteux nous offrent une fable écologique à travers deux personnages que tout oppose mais qui arriveront à faire de grandes choses ensemble. J'ai apprécié le traitement des personnages dont les personnalités sont à la fois diversifiées et attachantes.
En revanche, j'ai moins été sensible aux traits des personnages. L'univers visuel est réussi, même si ce n'est pas le style graphique avec lequel j'ai le plus d'affinités.
En bref, j'ai apprécié découvrir cet ouvrage et je suis curieuse de savoir s'il y aura une suite compte tenu de la fin ouverte.
Ma chronique :https://psycheedelik-unehistoiredemot...
Léo Schilling et Motteux nous offrent une fable écologique à travers deux personnages que tout oppose mais qui arriveront à faire de grandes choses ensemble. J'ai apprécié le traitement des personnages dont les personnalités sont à la fois diversifiées et attachantes.
En revanche, j'ai moins été sensible aux traits des personnages. L'univers visuel est réussi, même si ce n'est pas le style graphique avec lequel j'ai le plus d'affinités.
En bref, j'ai apprécié découvrir cet ouvrage et je suis curieuse de savoir s'il y aura une suite compte tenu de la fin ouverte.
Ma chronique :https://psycheedelik-unehistoiredemot...
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
That was different yet refreshing to read!
The story was about "beast" attacking Taru's village and Taru tried to solve that without killing the "beast". At the same time, there was Hana, someone completely different from Taru and her tribe, as village's prisoner. Taru was appointed to "guide" Hana and from there their friendship (and more) formed, followed with their "adventures" to solve the "beast" problem.
I don't know why but the illustrations reminded me so much of the movie "Warcraft" eventhough the story was completely different. Maybe because Taru and her people looked like orc to me.
The storyline was solid and unpredictable, at least for me. While there were quite many unexplained background stories, for me the ending was also make sense.
Thank you to Léo Schilling, Oni Press, Magnetic Press, and NetGalley for the ARC.
The story was about "beast" attacking Taru's village and Taru tried to solve that without killing the "beast". At the same time, there was Hana, someone completely different from Taru and her tribe, as village's prisoner. Taru was appointed to "guide" Hana and from there their friendship (and more) formed, followed with their "adventures" to solve the "beast" problem.
I don't know why but the illustrations reminded me so much of the movie "Warcraft" eventhough the story was completely different. Maybe because Taru and her people looked like orc to me.
The storyline was solid and unpredictable, at least for me. While there were quite many unexplained background stories, for me the ending was also make sense.
Thank you to Léo Schilling, Oni Press, Magnetic Press, and NetGalley for the ARC.
March 7, 2025
« Hana, stop! Je dois arrêter la folie de la forêt. Mais j’ai besoin que tu m’aides! Ma tribu ne réussira pas! Tout ce qu’ils vont faire va attiser la colère des rois, et chaque attaque sera plus violente que la précédente! Je veux leur prouver qu’une autre voie est possible. » (Schilling, Léo et Motteux. Hans et Taru: La folie de la forêt, p.46)
4.2 Splendide bandes dessinées qui rend hommage à la nature et à l’audace. Une ode à la différence qui prouve que de tenir tête en se faisant confiance, en se respectant et en essayant de s’ouvrir aux besoins de l’autre peut sauver davantage qu’un village. Les personnages y sont ici à l’image de la qualité des illustrations: brillantes, éclatantes et hautement sensibles.
4.2 Splendide bandes dessinées qui rend hommage à la nature et à l’audace. Une ode à la différence qui prouve que de tenir tête en se faisant confiance, en se respectant et en essayant de s’ouvrir aux besoins de l’autre peut sauver davantage qu’un village. Les personnages y sont ici à l’image de la qualité des illustrations: brillantes, éclatantes et hautement sensibles.
March 10, 2026
4.25 stars
This was a very interesting graphic novel. It kind of gave me Nausicaa vibes.
In this book we follow Taru who is some kind of creature I think. Her people have been attacked countless times but what they call the giants. Most of Taru's people are hunters and they hunt these giants to try to stop them from attacking. Taru is tasked with trying to get information out of a prisoner named Hana. Taru and Hana both think there might be a different way to stop the giants rather than hunting and killing them, but Taru's mother and head of their people will not listen.
First off, the artwork of this graphic novel was quite beautiful. It paints an amazing picture of this fantasy world and these strange creatures.
As it is quite a long graphic novel, the story itself was pretty well fleshed out. I think it worked well as a graphic novel - the visuals were very helpful in picturing the world which was a really important part of the story. The outcome made sense and showed how a different perspective can change everything.
Thank you to Netgalley and Oni Press for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!
This was a very interesting graphic novel. It kind of gave me Nausicaa vibes.
In this book we follow Taru who is some kind of creature I think. Her people have been attacked countless times but what they call the giants. Most of Taru's people are hunters and they hunt these giants to try to stop them from attacking. Taru is tasked with trying to get information out of a prisoner named Hana. Taru and Hana both think there might be a different way to stop the giants rather than hunting and killing them, but Taru's mother and head of their people will not listen.
First off, the artwork of this graphic novel was quite beautiful. It paints an amazing picture of this fantasy world and these strange creatures.
As it is quite a long graphic novel, the story itself was pretty well fleshed out. I think it worked well as a graphic novel - the visuals were very helpful in picturing the world which was a really important part of the story. The outcome made sense and showed how a different perspective can change everything.
Thank you to Netgalley and Oni Press for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!
April 19, 2026
taru comes from a hunter/warrior tribe while hana is a human being held as their prisoner.
coming from different backgrounds, they find comfort and companionship knowing that they're aiming for similar things. forced to reckon with generational trauma, they are determined to be better than those who have come before them - even if it means being outcasted for trying.
since the cover had me hooked, seeing the rest of the pages (in full color!) did not disappoint. i found that it captures the depth and intensity of the wilderness quite well
thank you NetGalley and Oni Press for the eARC!
coming from different backgrounds, they find comfort and companionship knowing that they're aiming for similar things. forced to reckon with generational trauma, they are determined to be better than those who have come before them - even if it means being outcasted for trying.
since the cover had me hooked, seeing the rest of the pages (in full color!) did not disappoint. i found that it captures the depth and intensity of the wilderness quite well
thank you NetGalley and Oni Press for the eARC!
April 20, 2026
I absolutely loved this!!! I had honestly forgotten I had requested it and then I was looking through my Netgalley shelf and saw it and read it all in one sitting!
I loved the story so much! I thought the messaging was great! I really loved the characters and relationships! I thought that the characters were really good and interesting! I love that we got some generational trauma going on in this too, and breaking the cycle!
I also LOVED the character designs!! I thought they were super cool and unique! The art was so gorgeous and fun!
A gorgeous story about nature and the relationships between animals and people!
I loved the story so much! I thought the messaging was great! I really loved the characters and relationships! I thought that the characters were really good and interesting! I love that we got some generational trauma going on in this too, and breaking the cycle!
I also LOVED the character designs!! I thought they were super cool and unique! The art was so gorgeous and fun!
A gorgeous story about nature and the relationships between animals and people!
May 6, 2026
**ARC provided by NetGalley for honest review**
Hana and Taru: The Forest Giants by Léo Schilling is a graphic novel about two unlikely friends teaming up and escaping into a forest to try and solve the mystery of the wild beasts that are running wild through the villages and destroying them. The mom character was really irritating. This story definitely had more of a serious and dark tone than I usually prefer reading about, but there was a lot of character growth for many characters by the end, which I appreciated. The setting and plot both felt a bit reminiscent of Princess Mononoke to me.
Hana and Taru: The Forest Giants by Léo Schilling is a graphic novel about two unlikely friends teaming up and escaping into a forest to try and solve the mystery of the wild beasts that are running wild through the villages and destroying them. The mom character was really irritating. This story definitely had more of a serious and dark tone than I usually prefer reading about, but there was a lot of character growth for many characters by the end, which I appreciated. The setting and plot both felt a bit reminiscent of Princess Mononoke to me.
May 21, 2026
Thanks to the publishers and NetGalley for this e-arc for review!
This was an adventurous fantasy graphic novel about a hunter-warrior named Taru that is told to watch over a captured human girl named Hana. They bond over the time they talk to each other, but the other hunters don't like that Taru was befriending Hana. Taru tells Hana that she must escape or she'll die, so they escape together go on to survive and find out more about what is really going on between the beasts and the hunters.
The story involved overcoming generational trauma, found family, learning to solve problems without violence, and so much more. It was an interesting adventure with a lot to learn from it.
This was an adventurous fantasy graphic novel about a hunter-warrior named Taru that is told to watch over a captured human girl named Hana. They bond over the time they talk to each other, but the other hunters don't like that Taru was befriending Hana. Taru tells Hana that she must escape or she'll die, so they escape together go on to survive and find out more about what is really going on between the beasts and the hunters.
The story involved overcoming generational trauma, found family, learning to solve problems without violence, and so much more. It was an interesting adventure with a lot to learn from it.
May 26, 2026
A ghibli-esqu, ecological fantasy about two women - one an unconventional, harmony-oriented member of a clan of orcish warriors, the other a young human scholar - must come together in order to save themselves and their loved ones from a path of extinction.
I thought this to be a wonderful graphic novel about coming-out-of-age, friendship of differing origins, engaging with generational trauma and finding one's place in nature. Especially recommended to readers who grew up and endeared to movies such as Princess Mononoke or Nausicaa.
Also, beautiful art.
Thanks to NetGalley and Oni Press for an ARC for an honest review.
I thought this to be a wonderful graphic novel about coming-out-of-age, friendship of differing origins, engaging with generational trauma and finding one's place in nature. Especially recommended to readers who grew up and endeared to movies such as Princess Mononoke or Nausicaa.
Also, beautiful art.
Thanks to NetGalley and Oni Press for an ARC for an honest review.
April 19, 2026
Hana et Taru est à la fois un récit initiatique et une petite fable écologique portée par un message pacifiste, qui n’est pas sans rappeler l’univers de certains films Ghibli. On y suit Taru la personnage principale, en rupture avec les idéaux de sa mère et aidée d'une amie, qui cherche à comprendre les autres et à les respecter malgré leurs différences.
J'ai bien aimé le style graphique de la tribu de chasseurs-guerriers qui change de ce qu'on a l'habitude de voir.
Aussi cette nature sauvage est très sympa à explorer, d'autant que les géants ressemblent à d'énormes capybaras à défense.
J'ai bien aimé le style graphique de la tribu de chasseurs-guerriers qui change de ce qu'on a l'habitude de voir.
Aussi cette nature sauvage est très sympa à explorer, d'autant que les géants ressemblent à d'énormes capybaras à défense.
April 21, 2026
A fantasy world where a human girl and an ogre girl (maybe) become friends. Taru's village is threatened by these big woolly mammoth creatures that stampede through each summer and no one knows why. The village's response is to try and kill them all. But the chief's daughter wants to understand why this has started happening in order to stop it. She runs away with the human girl to try and find a different way than killing everything. It's pretty good. Maybe a little long for the amount of story.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
“Hana and Taru” is both a coming-of-age story and a short ecological fable with a pacifist message, reminiscent of the world of certain Studio Ghibli films. We follow Taru, the main character, who breaks away from her mother’s ideals and, with the help of a friend, seeks to understand and respect others despite their differences.
I really liked the artistic style of the tribe of hunter-warriors, which is different from what we’re used to seeing.
Also, this wild landscape is really fun to explore, especially since the giants look like enormous capybaras with tusks.
I really liked the artistic style of the tribe of hunter-warriors, which is different from what we’re used to seeing.
Also, this wild landscape is really fun to explore, especially since the giants look like enormous capybaras with tusks.
February 26, 2024
Je me suis penchée sur cette BD par la couverture et des conseils libraire mais sans regarder vraiment le résumé. Et j'ai bien fait !
Le style graphique est différent de ce que j'ai l'habitude de lire, il m'a fallut un petit temps pour l'apprécier. Mais le message de compréhension, de stop guerre et d'écologie qui sont transmis m'ont convaincus. J'ai bien aimé cette lecture finalement !
Le style graphique est différent de ce que j'ai l'habitude de lire, il m'a fallut un petit temps pour l'apprécier. Mais le message de compréhension, de stop guerre et d'écologie qui sont transmis m'ont convaincus. J'ai bien aimé cette lecture finalement !
February 28, 2024
Une belle histoire qui parle de famille, d'amitié, d'acceptation de soi et de sa place dans le monde. J'ai beaucoup aimé les dessins et la palette de couleurs. L'histoire est originale, mais il m'a manqué quelque chose pour totalement y succomber, peut-être quelques planches introductives sur l'univers afin de creuser un peu plus les enjeux dès le départ ?
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
Thank you NetGalley for the ARC!
Hana and Taru is a short graphic novel with a good base story and a couple of interesting lessons.
The dynamic between the parents and the mother wound was particularly prominent, as was the importance of standing up for yourself and the power of nature (we have to observe and look for the patterns).
Sadly it feels like half of a story, as we didn't get to know the tribe well (where are the fathers?) not the aftermath.
I hope that there will be a sequel one day.
Hana and Taru is a short graphic novel with a good base story and a couple of interesting lessons.
The dynamic between the parents and the mother wound was particularly prominent, as was the importance of standing up for yourself and the power of nature (we have to observe and look for the patterns).
Sadly it feels like half of a story, as we didn't get to know the tribe well (where are the fathers?) not the aftermath.
I hope that there will be a sequel one day.
June 11, 2026
3.5 ⭐
Hana and Taru has a very dreamy artstyle that perfectly suits the forest setting, and I do agree with other reviews pointing out its similarities to Ghibli works!
Personally, the story wasn't my favourite - if you enjoy the darker Ghibli films, I think you'll enjoy this a lot more, but if you're like me and prefer Totoro or Ponyo, you might find it slightly more violent that you'd like.
Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the eArc!
Hana and Taru has a very dreamy artstyle that perfectly suits the forest setting, and I do agree with other reviews pointing out its similarities to Ghibli works!
Personally, the story wasn't my favourite - if you enjoy the darker Ghibli films, I think you'll enjoy this a lot more, but if you're like me and prefer Totoro or Ponyo, you might find it slightly more violent that you'd like.
Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the eArc!
June 30, 2026
An interesting world to step into, Hana and Taru try to find a way to stop the attacks on Taru’s village and understand why the creatures are attacking them.
I was interested in this new world, throughout the book the heat, scale of the danger, and violence of the characters was (intentionally) unsettling and created a good sense of urgency and suspense.
I was interested in this new world, throughout the book the heat, scale of the danger, and violence of the characters was (intentionally) unsettling and created a good sense of urgency and suspense.
November 25, 2024
Une BD à l'univers sympa et aux messages importants (écologie, autre solution que la violence) mais parfois le manque de précision du dessin et le choix des couleurs de certaines planches m'ont perdu côté compréhension des événements, dommage.
December 16, 2023
Très Miyazaki vibe ✨
October 9, 2024
A story about two young women, understanding nature and battling generational trauma.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 43 reviews