Reviews

The pacifist message at the heart of Vinland Saga is one I personally admire deeply but it is definitely too pervasive and in-your-face overall throughout the entire narrative, making it a bit thematically redundant and didascalic. Still, it never loses its powerful emotional impact and dramatic flare thanks to some really amazing storytelling prowess from Makoto Yukimura. The author ingeniously uses the setting of 11th century Europe with its warmongering civilizations, all-encompassing conflicts, diverse cultures and obscure episodes shrouded in mystery to weave a powerfully grounded tale where the neverending tide of unbridled violence and brutal injustice, fully depicted with uncompromising but never gratuitous precision and detail by Yukimura, spares no character: they either thrive in it, succumb to it, die by it or choose to reject it to find a truth of their own. Their psychological developments are almost always fully earned through slow, organic growth, and all of their different stories compose a beautifully diverse, sprawling web of journeys where idealized, dazzling hope finds its way through the cracks of this harrowing, brutal world, but still needs to compromise with it. The grounded realism of it all is only occasionally compromised by some exaggerated comedic elements and a few over-the-top characters that more often than not feel awkwardly out of place in a story otherwise so effectively anchored in serious authenticity.