Harvest Home is an original English language manga based upon the conventions of the shōjo (girls’) genre in Japanese manga. It will be an ongoing series.
Although I am writing the story and Chloe Chan is drawing the art, Harvest Home is much more of a collaborative work than might be implied by that division of labor, and we want to leave room in the story, as it develops, for both of us to express our creative interests—and room for readers to have input too.
We’re writing Harvest Home for manga/anime fans already familiar with this genre as well as young adult readers who might be attracted to manga for the first time. If it had a “Parents’ Advisory” attached to it, the series would be labeled “Older Teen.” We intend to stay inside that limitation, but we will deal with mature subject matter, as do many young adult novels currently being published in the United States and Canada.
THE STORY
A sleeping boy in a glass coffin is transported to the outer walls of a circular city. As soon as he is awakened and released, he is forced to run through a terrible no-man’s-land patrolled by The Lone Gunman and his demonic dogs. Once inside this menacing city, the boy discovers that he has lost most of his personal memory. Like the other students, he can’t even remember his name. Then, to make matters worse, he finds that he has been mistakenly assigned to Harvest Home—the girls’ dorm.
We want manga readers to find much that is familiar—“Oh, I’ve been here before”—but also startled by new twists and developments. The setting—a boarding school—and the central characters—middle school kids—should be familiar, but the school is a dystopian version of a North American high school and the students are North American kids. They have been kidnapped—snatched from their ordinary lives back in what they call “The World.” They don’t know why they have been brought to the Academy, and no one will tell them. No one can escape, and those who try, are killed. These kids have to work out their own salvation, torn between violence and love.
We will begin posting installments of Harvest Home soon!
To see more of Chloe Chan’s art, check out her drawings for Tiffany.