Samurai 8: Hachimaru Den
Samurai 8: The Tale of Hachimaru

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Samurai 8. Done. 43 Chapters. I could've probably squashed in 2.5 hrs but here I am. I almost a year later. Rushed climax aside, the heart of Kishimoto's second main title isn't one to be dismissed out of hand.

The story really did have the foundation to go far and maybe, clearer and more concise than Naruto got to be. If I presume there were reasons why Samurai 8 didn't succeed and if I had to guess I'd wager it was:

- The Aesthetic of the world of Samurai 8. There is a initial density of visual information combined with the amount of clear negative ... space from the Samurai tech and holders that leaves action sometimes hard to follow. I'd say though that this get cleaned up and refined as the series continues.

- The density of lore. Within the first 20 chapters, when we could probably assume that the Sam8 team didn't know they'd have to wrap up the series in 23 more chapters, we're getting a LOT of information. It's pointed out by Hachi that his teacher Daruma will go off on long lectures. While not the deepest dives, the idea that he exposits too frequently is right on the money even if self aware.

To compare to Naruto, Chapter 20 we knew about the Nine Tail fox, Ninja Presidents, evil ninjas, and the Sharingan but only it's copy function. I figure the reason we might of gotten a heavier hand at the start was either because Kishimoto after 15+ years with Naruto and ever aware of it's defects with plotting, wanted to establish more of the world's rules and continuity ahead of time. Or he felt a rush from early on to try to say as much as he could as quickly as he could in fear of a premature cancellation of this title. Regardless, I figure it would've calmed down if we were to have even been able to make it 10 volumes at least.

- Lastly, Boruto. I feel when "legendary" mangaka behind Naruto of Big 3 fame is coming out with a new work, it might be beneficial to be the one thing that the community you've fostered for more than a decade could follow. As an immediate sequel to Naruto, Boruto obviously would be the one with the greatest focus. Even with Naruto being used to boaster the advertising for Hachimaru, it would be strange to suspect that would be enough to tip the scales when Boruto can be said to have Naruto Uzumaki in it. So on top of being in the normal Shonen Jump weekly contest for supremacy but Samurai 8 was also in a fight to be the true spiritual successor of one of the greatest series in recent Shonen Jump history.

I recently saw a poll comparing Samurai 8 and Burn the Witch, Tite Kubo's newest project, for reader interest among Japanese readers. Burn the Witch won in a landslide and I figure that's because of the one shot drawing a direct connection to Bleach. From experience, I can tell you Burn the Witch is mid at best. It's alright. Girls are cute and the foundation on its own divorced from the parent story could be something fun to build on but it is suppose to be a Bleach follow-up. For the limited run, the main force driving me forward was trying to see how it connected back.

With all that said, Samurai 8 had solid characters and while some of the more modern tropes appeared to turn some people off, I can't help but have found the direction I felt the principle cast was going would've been a joy to see. It would've been a real thrill to see if Ann and Hachi would be able to prove that Kishimoto had improve his understanding of how to convey romance. It all felt very promising. And I enjoy myself up until the rush finale.

It's not great. Naruto, in it's totality wasn't either, but it was good. And if Kishimoto and Ookubo want to follow up on the sequel door they built in there at the end, I'd be all for it.

Couldn't really be Samurai 8 then huh? Probably Samurai Princess: Ann then.

Normally, a review of a manga should discuss elements of a work, but most of that has been said by other reviews already. Samurai 8 is mediocre, with weak character designs, motivations that aren't fully explored, and is artistically disconnected from what the writing is trying to achieve. You can feel that Okubo doesn't understand the story on the level Kishimoto did, and there is something missing from the way Kishimoto envisioned the work. Not all that different from the progression in the later volumes of Naruto where Kishimoto takes a back seat to Okubo. You gotta wonder if all the Zetsu art, Sai, etc ... were Okubo's doing, and it's confirmed he drew the reincarnated Zabuza and Haku. Many of Naruto's later designs begin to fall flat for the exact same reason Samurai 8's art, while an interesting variation of Katsuhiro Otomo's art, simply doesn't line up with the vision of the story.

To make it clear, I'm the person this manga is for, Kishimoto wrote this for me. That's not an ego statement, that's to outline the fact I'm the specific audience Kishimoto wanted to read this manga. Kishimoto wrote this for Ghost in the Shell/Akira/Cyberpunk fanboys who rate Naruto 10/10, and are aging up into a "daddy phase" of life and starting to think about children. That's who this manga is for, but it serialized in weekly shonen jump, competing with Demon Slayer and Jujutsu Kaisen. At no point do either of those manga attempt to play a Father-Son relationship as the core dynamic in the manga. Teenagers don't relate to how parents feel. While this element is complex and understated in Naruto, with Jiraiya being a grandfather figure to Naruto, it is never directly addressed in the way Samurai 8 does those same relationships. The same is true for the romantic relationship between Hachimaru and Ann. Until the very end of Naruto (which everyone complains about and thinks he failed at) romance is never directly dealt with in a way that says "YOU ARE MARRYING THIS PERSON" Samurai 8's entire premise is "a princess bound to their samurai" and while it's stated not all princess marry/date their samurai, it's fairly clear in Hachimaru and Ann's case that was the destined result. Except he's also kind of her brother cause demon slayer or something? Stuff like that makes me think there is heavy editor influence from jump expecting "the formula", and meeting the minimums of what a modern shonen has to have in their eyes.

Sometimes a manga exists for the wrong reasons. Samurai 8 exists because Shonen Jump wanted a Cyberpunk/Sci-Fi story, and that's the simple reality. In an interview with the editor of Samurai 8, Hikaru Taguchi even says as much and implies that Jump approached Kishimoto knowing he was the only author at Jump they could trust to write cyberpunk. The issue with this is that while I personally love Kishimoto, and view Naruto as my favorite work alongside Ghost in the Shell, a cyberpunk work, Kishimoto is not a cyberpunk writer. Yes, he pulled his work from cyberpunk heavily, and arguably Naruto is the beginning of Ninja-punk, true cyberpunk works are infodump thick, seinen level explorations of human life, not a shonen series. Kishimoto is a cyberpunk writer in the same way Masamune Shirow would write an abysmal shonen. This mixed style is ultimately the reason this manga falls flat. You can't attempt to "blow a readers mind" philosophically while also following a traditional shonen format (under the limitations of Jump editors). To make it patently clear, Naruto is the guy who shouts DATTEBAYO at his enemies, which has absolutely no meaning and is just an audible shout to imply his emotions. While in Samurai 8 Hachimaru info dumps you with his motivations. To make the point even more clear, the LARGEST CRITICISM AGAINST NARUTO is "talk no jutsu" and Kishimoto has continually leaned on the Akira style info-dump even though that's not what he's best at writing. That would be fine if Kishimoto was writing a cyberpunk, but he is writing a shonen, and cyberpunk is as much it's own genre as shonen, shojo, or seinen. It has it's own tropes and world building style that don't necessarily mesh well with what shonen jump expects, and it's the root of the problem in this manga.

If I wasn't the audience for this manga, I'm sure my score would be even lower.

As an aside, I also want to specifically bring up the manga that replaced Samurai 8 in serialization. Undead Unluck. Currently I am 6 volumes deep on Undead Unluck, which is as much as Samurai 8 ever had, and I can say it is essentially Samurai 8 without the cyberpunk info dumps. Not only does Andy mirror Hachimaru (samurai, cuts off his body parts/regens them as his fighting style, Fuuko is Andy's princess) but even the world building towards a universal God confrontation between a "group" of chosen ones. This is not a coincidence, and I question how much was intentionally the same. I'll save the discussion of how Jump chooses a variety of genres/styles and never wants to overlap manga to simply say this manga was greenlit for all the wrong reasons. Without Kishimoto's name attached, any other sci-fi work could have taken it's place. Nothing particularly stands out, even for those this manga was intended for philosophically.

It's unfortunate this got cancelled because when I read the first volume or two it wasn't great but it wasn't bad. I was actually interested in how Masashi Kishimoto develops this world. Because he was told after that point it was being cancelled, he spends the last 3 volumes rushing to the end. As it stands, we get a pretty bad manga. All the redeeming qualities it started with are lost and we get a lot of plot holes, confusing art, and a very incomplete lore. There's a character who is introduced in the beginning, doesn't seem to reappear, but then he does at the ... very end with some power that saves everyone. Not only is it weird because we never saw him leave his planet, but when Hachimaru asks how he did whatever he did, his response is pretty much "oh yeah I did [insert sci-fi garbage not even worth putting together] and came here." This is the type of bad writing that plagues the last two volumes. It's probably not Kishimoto's fault because it was a direct consequence of being cancelled early, but he also needed a better start. The characters from the beginning feel like rejected Naruto characters. It's got the standard group of outcasts who all have baggage and dreams of being bigger than they are except they are not interesting. He had this cool vision that mixed ancient Japan with futuristic cyber-technology but the art does a horrendous job displaying it. In short, Samurai 8 is the textbook definition of wasted potential.