TAKEMITUZAMURAI

A mysterious masterless samurai, SENOU Soichiro, turned up in a tenemen in the city of Edo one day. Deliberately wearing only a bamboo sword, he lived his days in idleness, however, his sword and background invited evil spirits.

First of all, the reader will be fascinated by the cover picture, then he will be drawn to turn the pages, allured by the flowing frame work and absorbed in reading beside himself. Admittedly, I have fallen in love with this manga, but it is my opinion that it is a work produced by a manga artist who is well-versed in the medium and skilled at producing work for a knowledgeable audience. Manga is the “art of frame works.” I am not sure how much care the artist took in calculating the frames for this work, but the result is that the montage of frames fully illustrates the vivacious lives and lifestyles of each character. It is also excellent that this work is taking on the nature of entertainment, one of the essential factors of manga, in such a casual way. It reminds me of FUJISAWA Shuhei’s famous historical novels and it leaves us anticipating the possibility that the artist could adapt those novels to manga.