From the creators of Lone Wolf and Cub comes Samurai Executioner. It's true! Few know of this precursor to the legendary ronin saga, but before Koike and Kojima created Itto Ogami, they created Kubikiri Asa, better known to Lone Wolf readers as Decapitator Asaemon. He was the equal to Itto, bearer of the sword Onibocho, the man charged with the duty of testing the swords for the shogun. Shogun Executioner is based on the decapitator himself, in life before his fatal duel with Lone Wolf. Expect the same legendary drama, frantic action, and stoic samurai stature, combined with the exemplary art and storytelling that made Lone Wolf and Cub one of the most popular and influential comic books in the world!
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Booklist
The 28-volume Lone Wolf and Cub is one of the least conventional-looking manga series to Westerners. Instead of the big-eyed people, sketchy backdrops, and sticky-cute aura of youth manga, it features realistically rendered Japanese, settings that Americans will recognize from historical samurai movies, and the atmosphere of such films. This book inaugurates an English-translation series of the Lone Wolf and Cub spin-off Samurai Executioner, which is a stunner in every way. Like youth manga, it has plenty of violence--but graphic, realistic violence. Unlike youth manga, it has plenty of sex--brutal and perfunctory, though hardly pornographic (no visible genitals). Dialogue is sparse; period terms are merely transliterated (a brief glossary is appended). Best of all, imagery, angles of vision, composition, and visual-narrative procedure bespeak Kojima's deep knowledge of classic Japanese cinema (the late artist's last works were graphic novelizations of Kurosawa films). The five stories here are crime shockers with medieval-Japanese-style police-procedural elements; the first also introduces the executioner, thereafter a secondary character, though always around at each tale's climax. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Samurai Executioner,
This review is from: Samurai Executioner, Vol. 1: When the Demon Knife Weeps (Paperback)
Dark Horse Manga, an imprint of Dark Horse Comics, has recently begun publishing English translations of Samurai Executioner, written by Kazuo Koike and illustrated by Goseki Kojima ($9.95 US, available in the UK). Koike and Kojima are best known as the creators of the critically acclaimed and wildly popular Lone Wolf and Cub series (also published by Dark Horse). Available for the first time in America in the Japanese format, these individual volumes look nothing like regular comics. The Samurai Executioner books are 4x6 inches, soft cover, and average around 300 pages with approximately 3 complete stories per book.
Fans of Lone Wolf and Cub and manga generally will want to pick up this book, slated to run for 10 issues, in order to see the formal origins of an extremely successful manga which spawned a veritable pop culture industry in Japan. Samurai Executioner, set in Edo Period (Feudal) Japan, was the precursor to the Lone Wolf and Cub characters and series. Because of its close connections to Lone Wolf and Cub, it's hard to judge Samurai Executioner based solely on its own merits. Every evaluations feels like an implicit comparison. If that is how it is being marketed, though, then perhaps comparisons are warranted. Like Lone Wolf and Cub, Samurai Executioner presents its readers with meandering, but poetic, narratives punctuated by graphic, sometimes gratuitous, violence and sex (it is labeled "Mature Readers"), as well as samurai philosophy illustrated through a simple yet strong pen and ink style artwork. The titular character, Kubikiri Asa, is not so much an executioner as a "sword tester." It just so happens that he tests the swords on the bodies, sometimes living and sometimes dead, of criminals. Lone Wolf and Cub gave its readers a view into Samurai high culture as that period was drawing to an end. It is a world populated by nobles and ronin. Samurai Executioner's strength lies in its differences. Asa's role as sword tester is one of the few places where high and low, rich and poor, condemned criminal and judge all meet and interact. This is what makes the book so interesting- not the samurai, but the peasants, and the gangsters, and the prostitutes, and the police who try to keep Edo functioning as smoothly as possible and come in and out of Asa's world. Itto Ogami, the main character of Lone Wolf and Cub, lived and breathed Bushido, the warrior code or philosophy of the samurai class, often imparting wisdom to those that he was about to cut to pieces. Asa, on the other hand, is trapped by his role in society. It is his awareness of his role that gives him a complexity that Ogami was lacking. Forced to kill his own father, having vowed never to have children, Asa is man who is waiting for the end. Itto Ogami attempted to rebuild his family clan, whereas Asa is counting the days until his can end. Bushido, family, responsibility: for Asa, these are a chore, not a joy or path to enlightenment. If there is any character development in the traditional sense, it is about how Asa feels about being inextricably stuck in this role as sword tester. Samurai Executioner is being market on the strength of Koike and Kojima's previous work, but it can and does stand up on its own and serves as a good introduction to manga culture.
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Onibocho...broken?!,
By Stefan Bauer "Steff" (Europe) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Samurai Executioner, Vol. 1: When the Demon Knife Weeps (Paperback)
So...this is the second series of the wonderteam Kazuo Koike and Gojima Goseki, prior to the LONE WOLF AND CUB Series...so i guess, many here want to know if it's up to the other series, and strangely, the answer to that question is not as easily given as somebody would believe. Iam not quite sure myself. When i finished SAMURAI EXECUTIONER: WHEN THE DEMON BLADE WEEPS, i was a little bit speechless, because this book contains two of the most shocking stories i ever read in a comic book...and perhaps easily four to five brutal and sinister scenes, which are not easily to stomach. LONE WOLF AND CUB wasn't a children's tale either, but i think Samurai Executioner is something for an even older audience...in WHEN THE DEMON BLADE WEEPS there is for example a story about a child murderer/rapist, who is dying very brutally and the last story stars a woman, whose job is to wash the heads of the condemned Asaemon Yamada (The "Hero" of the Series) killed. That's the structure of the series up to date: Episodic tales about Asaemon Yamada dealing punishment to lawbreakers, whose tragic stories you're experiencing prior to their meeting with the Decapitator. It lacks in an overall story like LONE WOLF AND CUB, and Asaemon Yamada himself is not really the determined hero pledging himself to achieve some quest, but more a working joe who is fulfilling the shoguns will. A kind of Ogami Itto, who didn't lost his honour and standing. The first two Stories - the first about the killing of his father...three little guesses, who is delivering the kindly coup de grace and the second are about Asaemon himself and attempt to round up his personality and character. He is - essentially - an archetyp samurai like Ogami Itto, dedicated to the shogun and his duty, a master swordsman and full of bushido and honour. I look forward in seeing him fleshed out more, but this isn't primarily a problem, because Ogami Itto too was in LONE WOLF AND CUB pretty stereotypical and distant and it worked there too...the anti-heroes of the little stories were the heart and the soul of LONE WOLF and supposedly you can find that in SAMURAI EXECUTIONER too and more so, i believe. The only problem is that a kind of overall story of Asaemon like Ogami had in LONE WOLF AND CUB lacks and i hope Koike implemented some later on. Because we know full well how Asaemons LIFE will end...and i sure hope he experienced a nice little story with meaning before his fateful duell with the invincible One, when he stuttered dying: Onibocho...broken?!
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Samurai classic,
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This review is from: Samurai Executioner, Vol. 1: When the Demon Knife Weeps (Paperback)
This is the first installment of the series, I was quite impressed with the character and storyline(s). So much so, I went and ordered the rest of the series. If you are looking for action, then this series may not appeal to you. However, if you are looking for something that will make you think and try and get into the head of the main character.....then this may just be to your taste. More than often in the stories told, there is a problem or mystery that needs to be solved. Our man Yamada sama must resolve them. Sometimes before execution sometimes after, only for his understanding, reasoning, and discipline that the pieces come together.
I also should mention the graphic content and what not, but I somehow thought, given a title Samurai Executioner, would be self explanatory to that extent. Do you know of any Samurai stories that the characters are not carrying swords and welding them with bloody intent? And despite some peoples belief, Executioners are not Executive Auctioners, they are people who kill people, simple as that. I did not want to give anything away and spoil the experience for those diving into the series. Some of the stories may shock you, but that is the objective the author wanted to impress upon you. On how deplorable and twisted the element that the Samurai Executioner has to deal with. I hope you find the first book in the series entertaining and thought provoking as I have.
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