365 Samurai and a Few Bowls of Rice [Paperback]

J. P. Kalonji (Author, Artist)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 15, 2009

J. P. Kalonji wields a clean, street-informed style to deliver a tale that glistens with blood and drama, yet is ultimately uplifting. Nearly four-hundred pages long, this graphic novel employs full-page panels to tell the story of an Edo-era swordsman's quest for survival and enlightenment. When Ningen leaves his dojo at the request of his master - to travel the world and grow as a swordsman - he embarks on a journey that becomes a metaphor for the cycle of life and every human's spiritual growth.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Kalonji’s bare-bones quest tale begins in medias res. A man in a hooded fleece coat immediately faces three swordsmen, whom he cuts down before any of them can even begin swinging at him. As he trudges on, the fray repeats in silhouette. (Is the replay a self-critical review? Remaining unexplained, it looks marvelous, nevertheless.) At an abandoned villa, he rescues a young woman from samurai turned bandits, whom he slaughters. Answering her questions, he reveals that he’s on a mission to kill one samurai for every day of the year. His reward will be having learned the meaning of life. From the initial encounter to the salvific ending, Kalonji rivets attention with his one-frame-per-page procedure, a technique that mitigates the confusion that moving from long or middle perspective to extreme close-up during the fight action often entails in small-panel manga. Incorporating geometrically abstracted faces; a preponderance of bold, thick lines; and dynamic balancing of each panel’s compositional elements, the Swiss artist’s style suggests the similar work of fellow heroic caricaturist Jeff Smith (Bone). --Ray Olson

Product Details

• Paperback: 392 pages
• Publisher: Dark Horse; 1 edition (December 15, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 159582412X
• ISBN-13: 978-1595824127
• Product Dimensions: 7.2 x 5.1 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,422,292 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars An unformed idea executed well, July 11, 2010

By 

Clayton Hollifield (Battle Ground, WA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: 365 Samurai and a Few Bowls of Rice (Paperback)

The art was really nice (sort of in the vein of Jeff Smith and Scott Morse), but the book was such a fast read and the story so slight (the story seemed mostly there as an excuse to rehash those fantastic samurai fight scenes in "Lone Wolf & Cub") that I couldn't completely recommend it. I'd be shocked if it took me 15 minutes to read this entire nearly 400 page book. It's the comic book equivalent of cotton candy, which is fine if that's what you're in the mood for.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars 7/10, February 2, 2010

By 

Uthor - See all my reviews

This review is from: 365 Samurai and a Few Bowls of Rice (Paperback)

This is a mostly silent OGN made of single panel pages. The story is a classic story of a samurai out for revenge for his master's death. The art work is where it gets interesting. The style is very clean and simple with heavy lines and the faces are all caricatures, so it looks a lot like Jeff Smith's work. The pages are more like a series of paintings than a comic book and there is a lot of play with the composition of the images. There is a lot of interesting angles and poses. Unfortunately, this makes reading the book a little difficult. The transitions from page to page don't quite work well as each is a separate entity. Also, a lot of the "camera angles" are closeups of single features (like a hand or a foot). After the first fight, the novelty wears off of bit.