Takehiko Inoue's: Vagabond

As a martial artist, I like to have other things in my life such as movies, games, and manga have martial arts action in them involving some hero that's trying to perfect his technique and become a better person along with being a better fighter.

However, most martial arts manga usually involve something like.....ninjas in orange jump suits or....MMA fighters that expel poison out of their bodies just by "magic coincidence".

As you can imagine, it's hard to find a martial arts manga that is realistic and you can relate to on not only the character's attitude but on the techniques and the struggle of real combat.

That's were one manga comes in and leaves all other martial arts manga in the dust......

That manga ladies and gentlemen, is Vagabond by Takehiko Inoue.

First off, it's important to know what exactly this manga is about. The manga is based off of Eiji Yoshikawa's novel Musashi, which is of course a fictional novel about the legendary sword saint of Japan, Miyamoto Musashi. If you don't know who that is, basically, Musashi is the one true master of the Japanese sword and revolutionized Japanese sword fighting by integrating both swords that the samurai wore on their belt.

The manga follows our grungy hero as he attempts to become "invincible under the rising sun". The story begins after Musashi's defeat at the battle of Sekigahara (which is the fall of the year 1600). After his army has been defeated and left for dead, Musashi and his childhood friend Matahachi pick their wounded selves up and begin their quest to make names for themselves. Musashi eventually hones his wild animal like swordsmanship skills and becomes a smelly, tattered, and feared beast of a man among the swordsmen of Japan. The manga is still currently running and I impatiently wait every 2 months for it to arrive in the US translated.

What really hits me about this manga more than just the story or the characters is the artwork. The artist does a good majority of it using ink brushes as if it was calligraphy.

Here we have Inoue-sensei doing some of his artwork on a wall.

This is the finished project with Musashi on the left wall and his rival in the manga, Sasaki Kojiro.

Of course it's hard to imagine this on paper so here:

Here it's amazing to think he does all of this by hand with ink and an inkbrush. The sword effect of Musashi cutting is what got me with this one.

This one is done very well and I like the contrasting themes of snow and blood.

This combination of ink and watercolor is incredibly well done. I doubt I've ever seen anybody use both to bring such life to any image before.

This manga has won the Osamu Tezuka Rising Manga award (which is NOTHING to sneeze at in the world of manga) in 2003. Not to mention several others on top of that!

It's beautiful to look at, it's witty, full of internal struggle, amazing fight sequences, and is a story that I'm sure nearly everyone could fall in love with.

Vagabond by Takehiko Inoue folks. Make sure you read this one! It has become my number one favorite manga without a doubt.