[Spoiler Warning]
I read Vagabond to see what all the fuss is about. It's a very fast read. There are huge image panels and barely anything happening per chapter, which flows well if you're reading straight through but hellish if you're waiting chapter by chapter. The art is simply gorgeous - probably the best I've ever seen in a manga - but stands in stark contrast to the lack of actual story... sort of like special effects in a movie.
The "story" appears to be the warrior's drive to be the best, err, I mean "invincible under the sun." This results in such battles as the infamous
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 Alternative TitlesJapanese: バガボンド More titlesInformationType: Manga
Volumes: 37
Chapters: 327
Status: On Hiatus
Published: Sep 3, 1998 to May 21, 2015
Demographic:
Seinen
Serialization:
Morning Statistics Ranked: #32 2 based on the top manga page. Please note that 'R18+' titles are excluded. Popularity: #15
Members: 383,672
Favorites: 42,321 Available AtResources | Reviews
Filtered Results: 6 / 96
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Dec 1, 2022
Vagabond is a strange case. It's hard to suggest a manga when I think the first third is mostly average despite the beautiful art. It sounds like a big commitment to say the first 90 chapters have little going on, but it's a fast read at the start, and I would almost recommend for some people to skip to 128 where it changes gears completely. But I got what I wanted out of the last third, one of those amazing philosophical deep dives into why someone is the way they are, though despite what most say, I really do think the start feels very superfluous.
It's ... 
Nov 6, 2021
Honestly, Takehiko Inoue is extremely overrated. Mainly, Inoue stands out, because he draws in a realistic style, which only a few manga artists use. But his work is very stiff, mechanical, and repetitive. Lacking life, style, and imagination. It's a bit hard to explain, but I'll try. First, when it comes to drawing actions or movements of the figure, he is quite subpar and often lacks dynamic. He is fairly good at drawing heads, but I don't think the range of expressions conveyed through them are particularly broad or effective - it also has many blank, hard-to-read stares. That's why, his art lacks life. He
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Aug 11, 2021
Vagabond really disappointed me. I thought i was going to read a real masterpiece, but that never happened. The only thing that truly amazed me was the art by Takehiko Inoue.
Story The story is about the samurai Shinmen Takezo who wants to be the strongest samurai. He does this by beating other samurai and becoming stronger. This got rather repetitive for me and made me lose interest. 5/10 Characters Overall are all the characters fine and i really liked Miyamoto Musashi and Sasaki Kojiro, but the rest didn't really matter to the story and Matahachi Honiden was just an annoying character from the start. As for Otsu. They ... 
Oct 8, 2019
Vagabond is a story that really wants to be deep and interesting, but doesn't do nearly enough to earn it.
The plot follows some wandering samurai trying to be the strongest in the land, fighting harder and harder opponents, winning, losing, learning what the way of the sword means... until it isn't. Then it switches to another guy who does the same things, and then over to another guy who is a failure at everything that he does... and like all of this happens without any real indication so you don't have a good idea of when things are going on since it'll go from past ... 
Oct 19, 2021
A dissapointing read...
Despite its promising start and beautiful art style, I was overall quite bored from this 300+ chapters story. The story tries to tackle typical themes and questions for a ronin sotry, such us: what is true strength, how can we become an honorable man and so on; these are fine topics, but it was handled without much originality and poor pacing, but more importantly I couldn't get interested in the story at all because of the lack of compelling characters I wanted to latch on. The story doesn't have a main plot since it focuses on the personnal journey of several characters who ... |
