Tsunami Girl
by Julian Sedgwick and Chie Kutsuwada
Yuki is staying in Osama when the world starts shaking. She’d only just arrived in Japan. Struggling with her identity along with the pressures that many teenage girls face, her parents had decided a trip to the Japanese coast to see her beloved grandfather might help her out of her funk. She was still getting over her jetlag from the flight from London when everything starts to fall apart.
Haunted by the things she has seen and suffering from survivors’ guilt, Yuki throws herself into her passion for illustration, a passion she also shared with her lost grandfather. Through her drawings, her friendship with fellow survivor, Taka, and particularly the creation of manga super-hero Half Wave, Yuki begins to come to terms with the trauma that she experienced, and finds the courage to embrace her future.
A part-manga, part-prose powerful coming-of-age story about a fifteen-year old girl caught up in the March 2011 Great Eastern Japan Earthquake and Tsunami.