Vagabond - Vizbig Vol. 1 - 4
I picked this up mostly because I remember it being recommended to me from a few sources. Having been a big fan of Lone Wolf and Cub back in the days, I’m always good to read more stories from what is arguably The Romantic Period of Japanese history.
Vagabond is principally about the story of how Miyamoto Musashi, one of the most premier swordsman of his era, author of the “A Book of Five Rings”, came to become who he was. The series is definitely a novelization, as details about the early parts of Miyamoto’s life is sparse and mostly speculative. So I guess one more speculation doesn’t hurt. Given that this is a mostly historical novelization and the broad strokes are known, the story mostly deals with filling in the details between the broad strokes.
I’ve got to say, the first 4 books have me checking out the rest of the series. Note that I’m reading the VizBig version of the books, so the 12 Vizbig volume represents the entirety of Vagabond’s run if I’m not mistaken. The tankobon versions number 36, so each Vizbig volume represents about 3 tankobon.
In any case, since the main plot of the series is already spoiled by history, its mostly the details that matter and the details are beautifully rendered in this manga. There’s quite a lot of historical speculation and it pretty much comes out in this series. The action is tight, the plotlines are multi-layered, and the characters, both the real ones and the ones invented for this series are all fairly compelling thus far.
Highly recommended. The art is quite well done as well. Will review the rest of the series when I’m done with it.