Unrivaled under the Heavens

The whole world's gone crazy. A man might as well be a dead leaf, floating in the autumn breeze.

Yoshikawa Eiji, in: Miyamoto Musashi

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The artwork of Vagabond is simply outstanding. Inoue Takehiko understands exactly how to fully capture the reader in his brush strokes that change to an insane degree depending on in-story situation. I have never seen anything that comes even close in leading the eye along the gorgeous artwork. Even if you don't care at all about the characters or the story, the art alone would make it worthwhile to read this work. The in-story calligraphy is nothing to sneeze at either.

The story roughly follows Yoshikawa Eiji's take on the life of Miyamoto Musashi, undoubtedly one of the the greatest swordsmen to have ever lived. The depth of his understanding of fighting and the art of the sword still eludes droves of sword students today. Starting this manga, I had read Musashi's Go Rin No Sho and the original Yoshikawa Eiji book and I think this made the experience all that more enjoyable. Some of the decisions Musashi makes along the way are much easier to understand with the background knowledge gained from Yoshikawa's book and there's various throwbacks to philosophical understandings Musashi expounds upon in the Go Rin No Sho.

Musashi's story roughly follows the style of a classic road movie, as told by his frenemy Matahachi years later. Just having survived the Battle of Sekigahara, Musashi sets out to become a better swordsman, takes on a student, continuously misses on meeting his childhood friend and primary love interest Otsu, gets taken advantage of by his other childhood friend Matahachi, and walks a spiritual path alone or under the guidance of unorthodox Buddhist monk Takuan Sōhō. Well, only when Sōhō isn't currently in the business of torturing or trying to outright kill him.

Meanwhile, Sasakibe Kojirō is an equally renowned swordsman itching for the thrill of battle against a worthy foe. He meets Musashi on several occasions, never realizing how close he came to either make an actual friend or at least have the battle of a lifetime. Sadly, we haven't reached the time of that battle yet – not for a long time. And seeing how this manga has gone on indefinite hiatus a few years ago, it's currently unknown if we ever will.

The story is usually split apart between these two leads and the various more important side characters and follows one character for several chapters at a time, with Musashi's main story line obviously given the most development.

Like Yoshikawa before him, Inoue takes various freedoms in timeline composition from what were the current best guesses about the life of the real, historical Musashi at the time of writing, but it's an action manga after all. Especially the bigger battles between Musashi and large groups of foes at once likely never happened like depicted.

If you see the characters as adapted from the Yoshikawa novel (rather than from their historical originators), then the level of adaptation is outstanding as well. They come across exactly like in the book, especially the three leads Musashi, Kojirō and Matahachi. Takuan, too, takes very well after the book character. If you haven't read the book, then the characters are still extremely well defined original characters, with clear goals, inhibited by human error and understanding, certainly utterly comprehensible in their life choices, whether your agree with them or not.

If any manga deserves the designation "unrivaled under the heavens", it's certainly Vagabond.