Ranked #373

Takemitsu Zamurai (Manga)

Story: 9
Your typical samurai with a haunted past moving to a new place to try and forget about it all. (Rurouni Kenshin, Sword of the Stranger, Gintama even) The manga pulls from historical, action, and slice-of-life genres, culminating in an amazing battle between Senou and a larger-than-life assassin. Moments of serenity, sorrow, sentimentality, and savagery intermix in a simple but poignant plot.

Art: 10
Takemitsu Zamurai is filled with tropes from the samurai canon, but it paints these cliches anew with vivid brush strokes, truly making the story and exploiting the essence of manga as a medium as opposed to the (light) novel, making full use of splash panels, dialogue-less scenes, and humorous doodles to convey much more than words can. The style is entirely unique in manga (at least in my limited experience), as if drawn from a Japanese calligraphic painting, or perhaps a darker Okami. The art is really what makes this piece; it creates the atmosphere and absorbs the reader into it.

Character: 10
Senou Souichirou is our hero here, and a great deal of time is spent on his characterization. However, his interactions in Edo bring him into various vignettes of the lives of others around him, contributing to the slice-of-life feel, although in TZ, these slices-of-life will often come from a katana.

Enjoyment: 9
Nothing to complain about, just not enough to bring it to a full 10. Certainly worth my time.

Overall:

This manga is not ground-breaking in any fashion (except for perhaps the artistic direction), but it is an exemplar example of the classic samurai tale and if you enjoy that sort of thing - I know I do - Takemitsu Zamurai very much deserves your attention. read more

Glorious, subtle, beautiful, moving, detailed, evokes Hokusai, the Edo era, unusual-don't be put off by the art, it is so against the grain of mainstream manga but it is astonishing, the use of shade and light and ink blots. I think the only manga I have even given 10 in every category, but I cannot fault it. The story is so perfect as well, interweaving and intensely thought-provoking

PLEASE read it or try-a fantastic story and piece of artwork-just..wow