Musashi

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Alternative Titles

Japanese: 武蔵

Information

Type: Manga

Volumes: 2

Chapters: Unknown

Status: Finished

Published: Jan 4, 1972 to Jun 20, 1972

Genre: Action

Themes: Historical, Samurai

Demographic: Shounen

Serialization: Shounen Jump (Weekly)

Authors: Motomiya, Hiroshi (Story & Art)

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Score: N/A¹ (scored by - users)

¹ indicates a weighted score.

Ranked: #39822²

² based on the top manga page. Please note that 'R18+' titles are excluded.

Popularity: #38478

Members: 148

Favorites: 1

N/A

Ranked #39822Popularity #38478Members 148

MangaShounen Jump (Weekly)Motomiya, Hiroshi (Story & Art)

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Volumes: /2

Chapters: /?

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Reviews

Oct 9, 2021

DrFunkerton

Mixed Feelings

Musashi review – Motomiya Hiroshi

Wow what a story. Surprised I even finished it.

Similar to the more well-known manga Vagabond, by Slam Dunk creator Takehiko Inoue, Musashi is a fictionalised account of the life of Miyamoto Musashi. One of the most popularly adapted historical figures in Manga, Miyamoto Musashi is known for being the strongest swordsman of all of Japan.

Story – 4
The story is a jumbled mess. That’s it really. I mean, 9 chapters right? You can’t expect too much ya know?

The story kind of jumps through events in Musashi’s life. Sometimes it can feel like it adapts too little and other times it focuses on ... seemingly inconsequential events. Your overall enjoyment would be better if you genuinely knew all the key events in Musashi’s life. Or if you’ve already read Vagabond which is probably why you’re here.

Art – 6
Pretty old art. I guess that’s what you get when you read a story from the 70s. I personally started reading this story because the cover had a similar art style to Ashita no Joe. There are some scenes that can be hard to follow, such as when a house is on fire, and scene composition occasionally makes you lose track of where the characters are or even where the main character is (he changes hairstyle once and I thought the story stopped focusing on him for 2 chapters until someone mentioned him by name once) but honestly? Definitely not the worst art style I’ve seen.

Also, there’s a lot of blood in this. Like, an assistant tripped the ink bottle over the page level of blood. Very much a product of the times. Definitely less gore this time though. Like it doesn’t focus on a dismembered body too much and kind of looks past it.

Character – 2
Yikes. Let’s focus the main character first shall we?
Musashi’s greatest character flaw is his wild nature. Which is a fine character flaw. The only problem is he can be very insufferable at times. The amount of times where Musashi just yells while slaughtering people and running off into the woods while everyone else yells at him to calm the flip down is a staggeringly large number. In fact, now that I think about it while writing this section, the story could have actually been interesting if Musashi was written with a diagnosable medical condition. The greater parts of the manga are the few scenes where Musashi genuinely comes to terms with his violent nature and attempts to overcome it. However, his personality always reverts just in time for the next chapter. I feel that the greatest flaw of the story is that Musashi’s character flaws are never really addressed with any kind of resolution.

The other characters are very hit and miss. But there are no hits. Only misses. Only one other character really grows without reverting and that is the eyepatch guy I couldn’t be bothered to remember the name of. Even major players like Sasaki Koujiro are left on the cutting room floor. As a person writing this review with no greater context, it feels like the story probably became unpopular and forced a rushed ending, which is a common practice of weekly shounen.

Enjoyment – 5
Other than a few chapters in the second volume, I did not personally enjoy a lot of the story. Normally senseless ultraviolence gives me amusement due to its self-gratuitous nature, but this one felt more like it didn’t know what kind of story it wanted to tell, and it really hurt it in the long run.

Overall – 5
The story kind of felt like a complete waste. It’s kind of hard to justify recommending this series to others, especially because Vagabond, a vastly superior adaptation exists. Honestly I could only recommend this to people who have already read Vagabond, and want more out of Miyamoto Musashi. But at that point, you should probably read Book of Five Rings instead. I find value in it because it was short enough to finish in an afternoon and write a review before sundown.

It also introduced me to Hiroshi Motomiya, the same man who made Salaryman Kintarou, a story that has enough buzz that even I had heard of it. So I’m guessing that he improved over time. I might check that story out and may even write a review about it, but I’ll cross swords with that when I feel like it.

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Jun 22, 2022

Trentin

Not Recommended

Coming from Hiroshi Motomiya's prior work Otoko Ippiki Gaki Daisho I expected something decent here, although I think it's important to preface this with how it was serialized at the time and the fact that I will be referencing and comparing parts to Otoko Ippiki as it's my reference point to Motomiyas work, i'd feel as though this review would be bland without that. Rumours go that Motomiya wanted to end his prior series and went to work on this one, it not being received very well which lead to it getting cancelled and rushed, with Motomiya picking up Otoko Ippiki back up afterwards, since ... this was so long ago it's likely difficult to find out if it's true, however based on the quality of Musashi I can definitely believe it.

Musashi is one of the rare old Jump manga you can even find translations of, never mind the fact that it's complete! Sadly it's also something I don't think anybody should read, it's just not good. The story recounts the events of Miyamoto Musashi in a fictional manner, a figure that has been heavily featured in other works of fiction, especially manga. I do not really know much about Musashi, and honestly I didn't learn much through this manga as the way it's structured and paced is messy with scenes blending into each other with little to no indication of time. No character really feels introduced properly and there's so many of them I had no idea who was who, It doesn't help that Musashi is given the nickname "Benzo" which lead me to think the main character might've been someone else for a few chapters. The chapter lengths also don't help with some being 60-90 pages long, it's really difficult to digest what your reading and hinders the pacing further.

The characters aren't anything amazing either, bland or have no time to develop or be anything aside from Benzo, who is horrible. He's impulsive and brash, he charges in and shouts all the time, which gets really annoying and that's not great for a character whose your main protagonist, even if they have some flaws there still needs to be some kind of anchor to who your reading about or you just won't care, and in this case I think it's handled very poorly. Other scenes in the first few chapters include him forcing himself on a woman in a really pathetic way, killing a lumberjack because he saw him cry and killing many people out of rage. He feels like a really shoddy villain, not the protagonist and not even a morally engaging one just someone brutal. Perhaps if the manga was paced better and took it's time his arc would be much more believable and he'd be relatable but as it stands he's just not. I found this to be especially disappointing as Mankichi in his previous work is this character done well. He's impulsive yes but he grows as a person and becomes much more than that, he's also charismatic, one of the most charismatic characters I've seen! So I have no idea what went wrong here as Motomiya can definitely write well!

The artwork is decent I like the periods style and Motomyia's artstyle in general, although I do find it a downgrade compared to Otoko Ippiki, there were a few great pages but it was far less memorable to me. There's a lack of flow to panels, and I don't find the composition as strong, the characters also look quite messy in some panels and the combat suffers as a result, especially when swords are involved. It doesn't convey the same weight as Otoko Ippiki, where I think Motomiya did really well, instead it seems to favour scenes of gratuitous blood and gore, which don't look good and only really serve to show how insane and unlikable out main character is. Character designs also didn't appeal to me very much, the raggedy appearance of the characters and their clothes made it hard to tell who was who.

To summarize I would avoid this unless you're really into old Shonen Jump manga and history, but even then don't get your hopes up. It's a mess with unlikable characters and horrible pacing, the only positive being some of the artwork, but overall it's one of the worst Shonen Jump manga I've read so far. I'd assume Vagabond would be a much better read to experience the same story, and I would suggest reading other Hiroshi Motomiya works instead of this one.