Creators: Kazuo Koike, Goseki Kojima
Translation: Dana Lewis
Publisher: Dark Horse
Age Rating: Mature
Genres: Crime, Drama
RRP: $9.95
Samurai Executioner v1
Reviewed by Park Cooper

First created in 1972 but now republished in English thanks to Dark Horse, Samurai Executioner is good. It’s from the team that brought you Lone Wolf and Cub, after all. If anyone had thought to import Samurai Executioner, too, I think the manga revolution might have happened a good 20 years earlier than it did in America.

Or maybe not, because the story of a ronin and his infant son roaming the countryside killin’ them what needs killin’ is a slightly better premise for telling different kinds of stories than the one we have here, although the creators are certainly working this premise better than anyone else could.

Basically, the main character has inherited the job of being in charge of his master’s swords. So, what, he polishes them and keeps them shiny? Yeah, but he’s really more of a convention-floor sword-demonstration expert, if you will, and what that means in his era is that he demonstrates how top-notch the local lord’s best swords are by being the local executioner, the headsman. Chopping heads is a fine art, and he’s truly the best at the world in walking up to a kneeling human and using a fine, fine samurai sword to cleave flesh and bone.

How do we get multiple, non-repetitive stories out of this? Well there’s his secret origin, which we get right off the bat—how Dear Old Dad bribed officials to let his boy practice on corpses, and, finally, when Dad got too old and sick for the job, how Dad made sure that his son’s audition as replacement would go well by insisting that his son have one round of practice on a live target for once: Dad himself.

Sonny Boy did so perfectly, and that’s how he got his reputation as being the stone-coldest, most frozen-hearted man alive... but it isn’t true at all. Criminals are criminals, but when our hero’s first job is the woman who, years before, thought he was handsome and, uh, helped make him a man... the fact that in the intervening years she turned to a life of hard crime doesn’t make our hero’s job any easier, and so he’s able to speak a message that gives the woman a little peace of mind before she goes. It’s very clear that while some criminals, like the guy who had a holy name tattooed down the back of his neck so that it would be blasphemy to cut his head off—or so he thought—bring out some righteous condemnation in our Samurai Executioner, he also claims not to be judge and jury—JUST executioner.

The truth is, though, for all his skill with using a sword to kill, as he one day does through a solid wall, quickly ending an unpleasant hostage-taking situation for the police—he’s lying to others and himself with his claim. The truth is, he DOES sometimes become the spiritual judge of the crimes he resolves, and his heart is sometimes wrathful, sometimes very merciful, as with the time he grants a woman an unusual request concerning the head of the guy who ruined her life many years ago.

Yeah, Lone Wolf is truly the Samurai Batman of killin’ people, wandering Japan spreading death like Quentin Tarantino does in his sweetest dreams, and it’s hard to argue that a guy who just kills criminals who come to him, and without having to exactly FIGHT them per se, is as cool, spiritual wisdom notwithstanding, misunderstood-soft-hearted-guy-in-the-job-of-a-stone-killer existence notwithstanding.

But I’ve thought about this book for weeks, and I’ve decided that it, and Lady Snowblood (more on her later), and by extension Dark Horse in general, are my new answer to a certain type of fan. I’m talking about the type of fan who, when you ask them if they’re into manga, say “Oh sure, I know about manga. I read Lone Wolf and Cub, Crying Freeman, I was big into Appleseed back in the day, all that stuff.”

Well... yeah... you can’t say that that’s not a manga fan. But... it’s also obvious that there’s something about modern manga that must not be making them feel invited in. Well, to those guys, I’m now gonna say, “well sure, but have you read Samurai Executioner? What about Lady Snowblood? I think you might even like a little title called Oldboy. They’ve got what it takes to really appeal to someone who is kicking it Old School such as yourself.”

In tribute to this valiant herd of stallions, these pioneers who saw the glowing potential of what manga had to offer to us 20-odd years before America was remotely ready to truly drop it all in our laps, in tribute to these proud and noble princes of Old School possibly joining the rest of us here in the 21st century, I salute Samurai Executioner, and give it an A.

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6 October 2009
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