cocoon

by Machiko Kyo

San and her best friend Mayu attend a boarding school for girls in Okinawa, but their studies are interrupted when they and the other students are recruited to help the war effort as assistant nurses. Sent to the front lines, the girls must deal with more than just the threat of enemy bombs overhead. Stuck working in the horrifying caves of a field hospital, San wishes she could wrap herself and her friends in a cocoon of protection. But invisible threads of affection are no match for the carnage that surrounds them, and day by day, more students perish. Worn down by starvation and loss, what will San and her remaining friends do when they are told to find their way home through the fields of total war?

Kindle Edition

Expected publication June 16, 2026

About the author

Machiko Kyo (今日マチ子, Kyo Machiko) is a Japanese cartoonist and illustrator from Tokyo. She was born in 1980 and graduated from Tokyo University of the Arts.
Her daily one-page manga blog Sennen Gaho started in 2004 and was published as a book in 2008, attracting much attention. Among her comics are the slice-of-life series Mikako-san (2009-2013), the WWII drama Cocoon (2010) and the post-apocalyptic Mitsuami no Kami-sama (2011-2013). The latter was adapted into a short animated film in 2015 by the studio Production I.G., winning more than twenty awards around the world. In 2014, Machiko Kyo received the 18th Osamu Tezuka Cultural Award.
In addition to manga, she is also involved in a wide range of illustration and essay projects. Her war-themed picture book Ichigo Sensō received the 2015 Japan Cartoonists Association Award's Grand Priz. Her other illustration books include Essential, Distance and From Tokyo.