When the South Wind Blows
Mermaid Scales and the Town of Sand
By Yoko Komori
6 Sep, 2023
Translation
0 comments
Yoko Komori’s two-volume Mermaid Scales and the Town of Sand is a coming-of-age manga. Scales was serialized in 2013 and 2014 under the original title Aoi Uroko to Suna no Machi in You. The English translation appeared in 2023.
Following the disintegration of her parents’ marriage, fourteen-year-old Tokiko and her father leave Tokyo to stay with Tokiko’s maternal grandmother in Sunanomori. Tokiko has only been to the small coastal town once before, when she was four1. Tokiko does remember one aspect of the town quite clearly: this is where Tokiko was saved from drowning by a merman.