Aion
Time-Traveller
Do any of you guys happen to know of any titles released in English that, despite being easy to buy, are still pretty much unknown; having less than 500 ratings on MAL? If so, use this thread to recommend the titles in question, like I'm about to now.
Manga: Yagyu Ninja Scrolls: Revenge of the Hori Clan
(I wish someone would change its title on MAL...)
What lead me to create this thread was the discovery of 'Yagyu Ninja Scrolls: Revenge of the Hori Clan'. It was created by the same artist that did the adaptation of Basilisk, which Gonzo went on to create a fairly popular anime adaptation of. The artwork, as well as the execution, is very reminiscent of Basilisk, and you could actually describe Yagyu as a sequel to Basilisk--its story occurring not too long after Basilisk's ending.
Where as Basilisk involved two ninja clans with a lot of hatred for one another being forced into a 10 vs. 10 battle to the death, Yagyu has a war of the sexes theme. At the start of the story, seven of Aizu's strongest warriors - warriors working for the evil lord Akinari - are forcing a rebel Aizu faction to walk many miles to their execution ground; tied up and dragged by dogs. But, instead of being taken to their place of execution, they're instead taken to the convent where their wives and daughters are hiding, following the failed rebellion. The seven Aizu men break down the gate of the convent - entering a female only sanctuary - and start killing the women in front of the men. In the end, only seven of the women survive, and that's where the Yagyu story begins proper.
The main difference between Basilisk and Yagyu is that the girls have justice on their side. In Basilisk neither side were fully in the right, and that made it easy for the numbers to decrease evenly on both sides. But, in the case of Yagyu, the girls are trained to get revenge on evil men; men lead by a man who kidnaps, rapes, and murders the women in his province for fun many times over the course of the story. The end result so far seems to be the women surviving and the men not, and that has, to a certain extent, taken away the kind of intensity that the shorter, far less predictable Basilisk had.
What Yagyu does have going for it are the strategies Jyubei comes up with that allow the seven women to get their revenge. Since Jyubei is only allowed to train and command the women and cannot kill the men himself, he has to be on the ball with his strategies in order for the women to kill vastly superior opponents, and its the variations between the mini-arcs where his plans play out that make Yagyu so gripping to read. For example, in one part of the story, Jyubei and one of the women act as husband and wife in order to get themselves kidnapped and, by doing so, infiltrate enemy territory.
Seven volumes in, out of what I believe to be eleven volumes total, Yagyu has been well worth the money paid for it. It is inferior to the faster-paced, more tragic Basilisk, and there is a bizarre amount of very nice nudity present in the story, mainly as a result of one of the main villains being an evil rapist guy, but I can't knock it too much. The art is distinctive, the small bits of humour have amused me (such as when Jyubei opened his eye after acting blind during one of his plans, saw two of the girls naked, and they blushed/hid behind another, tomboyish character), and the action has been quite intense. The only downer right now is that the V8/9 release isn't due out until Feb 2011--it clearly not being a seller.
It's a shame no-one buys the series because the releases look very nice; each volume having its own colour scheme. They're a little on the expensive side but the covers and sizes of the volumes make up for the extra expense.
Here's a scan of the spines of the volumes I own:
If you get up to date with the volumes released, you'll be taken up to chapter 60. Only 32 chapters are on the net at the moment.
Manga: Yagyu Ninja Scrolls: Revenge of the Hori Clan
(I wish someone would change its title on MAL...)
What lead me to create this thread was the discovery of 'Yagyu Ninja Scrolls: Revenge of the Hori Clan'. It was created by the same artist that did the adaptation of Basilisk, which Gonzo went on to create a fairly popular anime adaptation of. The artwork, as well as the execution, is very reminiscent of Basilisk, and you could actually describe Yagyu as a sequel to Basilisk--its story occurring not too long after Basilisk's ending.
Where as Basilisk involved two ninja clans with a lot of hatred for one another being forced into a 10 vs. 10 battle to the death, Yagyu has a war of the sexes theme. At the start of the story, seven of Aizu's strongest warriors - warriors working for the evil lord Akinari - are forcing a rebel Aizu faction to walk many miles to their execution ground; tied up and dragged by dogs. But, instead of being taken to their place of execution, they're instead taken to the convent where their wives and daughters are hiding, following the failed rebellion. The seven Aizu men break down the gate of the convent - entering a female only sanctuary - and start killing the women in front of the men. In the end, only seven of the women survive, and that's where the Yagyu story begins proper.
The main difference between Basilisk and Yagyu is that the girls have justice on their side. In Basilisk neither side were fully in the right, and that made it easy for the numbers to decrease evenly on both sides. But, in the case of Yagyu, the girls are trained to get revenge on evil men; men lead by a man who kidnaps, rapes, and murders the women in his province for fun many times over the course of the story. The end result so far seems to be the women surviving and the men not, and that has, to a certain extent, taken away the kind of intensity that the shorter, far less predictable Basilisk had.
What Yagyu does have going for it are the strategies Jyubei comes up with that allow the seven women to get their revenge. Since Jyubei is only allowed to train and command the women and cannot kill the men himself, he has to be on the ball with his strategies in order for the women to kill vastly superior opponents, and its the variations between the mini-arcs where his plans play out that make Yagyu so gripping to read. For example, in one part of the story, Jyubei and one of the women act as husband and wife in order to get themselves kidnapped and, by doing so, infiltrate enemy territory.
Seven volumes in, out of what I believe to be eleven volumes total, Yagyu has been well worth the money paid for it. It is inferior to the faster-paced, more tragic Basilisk, and there is a bizarre amount of very nice nudity present in the story, mainly as a result of one of the main villains being an evil rapist guy, but I can't knock it too much. The art is distinctive, the small bits of humour have amused me (such as when Jyubei opened his eye after acting blind during one of his plans, saw two of the girls naked, and they blushed/hid behind another, tomboyish character), and the action has been quite intense. The only downer right now is that the V8/9 release isn't due out until Feb 2011--it clearly not being a seller.
It's a shame no-one buys the series because the releases look very nice; each volume having its own colour scheme. They're a little on the expensive side but the covers and sizes of the volumes make up for the extra expense.
Here's a scan of the spines of the volumes I own:
If you get up to date with the volumes released, you'll be taken up to chapter 60. Only 32 chapters are on the net at the moment.
