Review by Karl Verhoven

Just in case you’re keeping count, this is now Takehiko Inoue’s fifth Vagabond volume without the nominal leading character, and instead looking at the youth of Sasaki Kojirō, a master swordsman in his teens. He’s accompanying Itō Ittōsai, in his fifties, but with a formidable combat reputation.

Vol. 17 ended with Kojirō and Ittōsai confronted by a goon with facepaint and a showy costume almost looking as if Inoue was satirising another strip. As any fight was a forgone conclusion the feeling was of this being a throwaway comedy ending, yet it’s a sequence continued to open this volume. He’s eventually named as Musō Gonnosuke, but his presence over the early chapters is as a viewpoint, contrasting the braggadocio of youth with an actuality grimly hammered home by a subsequent death.

After eighteen volumes, just about halfway through the series as published in Japan, there’s no sign of Inoue slackening off. Where other artists might skimp with backgrounds, Inoue relishes them, making the changing conditions an integral part of the series. Nature is always drawn as alluring, yet the movement in the action scenes is equally poised. This isn’t artistic quality to be taken for granted.

Ittōsai is a very different guiding spirit for Kojirō, with a lust for life, yet very little concern about endangering that life. By the end we learn how he sees his task accompanying Kojirō, which is the interesting statement of “all I can say is, become me”. A war has been mentioned in a few volumes of Kojirō’s story, yet here is the first time it’s more than an abstract. We see a battlefield, we see the slaughter and we see the cast take on armed horsemen. We’re also reacquainted with someone who’s not been seen for some while, but right back prior to the beginning of their story as the series opened.

By the standards of what we’ve already seen, the threat introduced toward the end of the volume doesn’t appear especially menacing, notwithstanding a claim of “We’ll survive by cutting down anyone who comes our way”. Maybe they’ll prove more troublesome than anticipated in Vol. 19.

This content is also available in Vagabond VizBig Edition 6, recommended for not only for the larger format, but for still being in print.