by SE Mathews

Created on: February 23, 2009

Title: Vagabond, Volumes 1-10
Author/Artist: Takehiko Inoue
Released in US by: VIZ Media starting in 2002
Category: Manga/Seinen/Action-Adventure/Historical/Samurai

Rati ng: 4.5 stars (out of 5)

Summary: Takezo Shinmei is a young man with a demon sitting inside him. He was abandoned by his mother, challenged by his samurai father, and reviled by his fellow villagers. It is only in his friends, Matahachi and Otsu, that he has a shred of peace and even that does not last.

In the aftermath of the battle of Sekigahara, Takezo and Matahachi turns towards home, but when a woman appears before them and tempts away Matahachi and causes him to betray an unsuspecting Takezo, the match is struck for Takezo to start his tortured, bloody path towards his own kind of enlightenment.

Impression: Vagabond is Takehiko Inoue's retelling of Eiji Yoshikawa's Musashi. Takezo Shinmei is the young man who becomes Musashi Miyamoto, the samurai who is revered as a sword-saint in Japanese history and literature.

In Volume 1, the story opens with scenes from the battle of Sekigahara (the decisive battle that gave the Tokugawa Shogunate the rule of Japan for 250 years). There are two survivors and the teenagers are from the village of Miyamoto.

Matahachi finds inspiration in his friend's will to survive, but that will is tested when Takezo and Matahachi are attacked by samurai who are rounding up refugees. In that skirmish, the reader gets the first glimpses of Takezo's ferocity in what will become Inoue's trademark rendering of down and dirty fight scenes.

Later, Takezo and Matahachi encounter Oko and her sister Akemi. It is due to Oko that Matahachi will commit his betrayal of Takezo when he leaves Takezo to fight a gang of thieves alone while he escapes with Oko. Takezo does not know of this betrayal and when he returns to the village of Miyamoto, he delivers the news that Matahachi is alive to Matahachi's mother, Osugi, and his fiance, Otsu.

Angry and bitter that her son has not come home, Osugi smears Takezo's already shaky reputation and sets in motion the events that will drive Takezo from the village.

But Osugi does not get what she wants either as Otsu receives news of why Matahachi did not return. With the machination of the monk, Takuan Soho, Otsu becomes the bait to capture Takezo but not to return him to the village and the creepy Captain Aoki, but to set him on his path of enlightenment. It is Takuan, with Otsu at his side, that Takezo is renamed Musashi Miyamoto.

There ends Volume 2 with

• 1
• 2
• 3
• Next Page >>