[Review] Vagabond: Sasaki Kojirou arc

Manga: Vagabond バガボンド
Mangaka: Inoue Takehiko 井上雄彦
Volumes: 14-20
Chapters: 128-179

The timeline of Vagabond moves back 17 years to focus on Musashi’s greatest opponent, Sasaki Kojirou. The arc opens with Kanemaki Jisai who finds a new reason to continue with what he believes to be a worthless life when he learns that his former student, Sasaki Sukeyasu, has entrusted his new born son, Kojirou, to him. As if guided by destiny, Kojirou survives the journey across the sea with a keepsake from his parents in the form of a long sword.

One of the major challenges Inoue has undertaken in his interpretation of Yoshikawa’s novel is the alteration of the Sasaki Kojirou character into someone who is deaf and mute. While this might seem a little contrived at first, Inoue’s excellent story-telling builds Kojirou into an incredibly enigmatic character as we have to mostly rely on his expressions to guess as to what he is feeling or thinking about. It also provides great development for the character of Jisai, once a great swordsman who has now ended up alone due to his fixation on his swordsmanship in his younger days. Jisai’s anxiety coupled with his attachment to young Kojirou generates sympathy as we are allowed to understand his own feelings resulting from the life that he had pre-Kojirou.

At a young age, Kojirou demonstrates an inherent talent for the sword and after seeing Kojirou’s misplaced enthusiasm for fighting in the bout with Fudo, Jisai refuses to teach him anything. Jisai is afraid that Kojirou would journey down a similar path to loneliness as he did. He does seem to be sheltering Kojirou a little too much but one can’t really fault him for being overprotective. He loves Kojirou so much as this person is the only one (or perhaps the first in a long time) to give him a sense of family. He doesn’t want to part from Kojirou but Itou Ittosai’s words forces him to acknowledge Kojirou’s potential. Incidentally, we see Denshichirou and Ueda again as the former wanted to learn from Ittosai. Instead, they were treated to the overwhelming albeit raw strength of Kojirou.

Eventually, Kojirou willingly goes off with Ittosai, picking up a traveling companion, Muso Gonnosuke, along the way. They stumble upon the battlefield of Sekigahara and briefly encounter a young Takezou among the survivors. It is the first meeting between the destined rivals and Ittosai likens them to two demons on the plains. Ittosai later abandons Kojirou to a group of refugee hunters on the account that this is the fastest way to make him grow as a warrior, to acquire survival skills and to essentially ‘become him [Ittosai]‘. Ittosai also believes that Kojirou will be a worthy opponent for him should the latter survive the ordeal.

It’s amazing how Inoue can compel the reader to invest in even the minor characters of an arc with sufficient details on their motivations while maintaining a realistic tone to their thoughts, such as the group of surviving soldiers trying to make their way to their lord in Osaka who have a fatal encounter with Kojirou.

I also have to mention the prominent use of brushwork as the manga progresses resulting in some of the most STUNNING artwork I’ve seen in any manga. The gorgeous brush strokes almost reflects on the poetic atmosphere in Vagabond. More than a manga, we are looking at a painting of emotions that define these men who live by the sword. Amazing.

Final rating: 9.5/10

This entry was posted on February 26th, 2009 and is filed under Vagabond. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or Trackback from your own site.