#Shigurui

[yoan-le-grall]

[trulyunpleasant]

伊良子 清玄 (Seigen Irako)

Spurned successor of the Kogan Dojo.

From Shigurui by Takayuki Yamaguchi and Norio Nanjo.

[ruiniel]

Shigurui, Yamaguchi Takayuki

[cyrsed]

GOD the splash pages are sensational!

[dani-xis]

[ogamipukobye]

[sweetdreams-aremade]

On Berserk and Takayuki Yamaguchi.

I'm making this post to vague about a stranger, and also to talk about Takayuki Yamaguchi, who rules.

Someone once said that, in the wake of Miura's untimely death, Takayuki Yamaguchi should take on the mantle of writing and drawing Berserk.

No offense (OK, some offense) to the guy who wrote this, but I can't think of a mangaka with a more diametrically opposed creative voice to Miura's, even if they both had similar root influences (Go Nagai, Fist of the North Star, Phantom of the Paradise and henshin heroes like Ultraman, Kamen Rider and Kikaider) and aesthetic interests (intense gore and violence, muddy textures, weird and often extreme sexual imagery).

For one, Takayuki Yamaguchi is a man who IIRC has directly stated that he's not great at subtle or nuanced emotion and thus excels at creating narratives built off of repressed characters unable to fully express themselves and asking him to illustrate a manga whose identity is partly defined by its creator's mastery of expression and subtle emotion isn't a great idea, really.

He was good at rendering subtle emotions once, during the early chapters of Shigurui, and he then promptly abandoned that skill in favor of intense stoicism for good reason.

One, he makes it look good, two, his work is defined by its detached, clinical tone. He deliberately views characters at a distance, by either using impersonal, novelistic third-person narration, viewing his protagonists through the lens of others within the narrative, or through something as simple as avoiding language and explicit information, valuing weighted silence over exposition. This dovetails *beautifully* with the narratives he handles.

Gekikou Kamen is about a tokusatsu enthusiast's relationship with Imperial Japan as reflected in the art he consumes, Shigurui is a critique of rigid class structures and loyalty to the state, and Exoskull Zero is his version of Casshern Sins I.E a manga about a former superhero in a doomed, fantastical landscape at the end of time out to save people who might not even exist.

They're manga that require an ambivalent approach to function: any kind of emotional scrutability or visceral intimacy would contradict Yamaguchi's novelistic style and frank examinations of flawed social structures and the people they produce.

Shigurui's macroscopic critique of Edo Japan doesn't work as an emotionally intimate narrative, and Gekikou Kamen's critique of the imperialist subtext behind much of tokusatsu doesn't work if you were immediately sympathetic to or understanding of its wannabe imperialist lead, for some examples.

If you asked Miura to draw a Yamaguchi manga, he'd have failed spectacularly because of his love of intense, emotionally intimate storytelling and illustration. He was simply not capable of (or perhaps more accurately simply uninterested in) the kind of emotional ambivalence that Yamaguchi excels at.

Hell, as I'll discuss later, intimacy vs. ambivalence might be the best summation of the differences between Miura and Yamaguchi's respective styles.

I don't think Yamaguchi would be a great choice for Berserk's action scenes either. Yamaguchi displays his mastery of action illustration by dilating time to show every individuated step of the process of movement, making his action feel intensely deliberate and methodical. Every step, and every step within that greater step, matters.

Kentaro Miura, meanwhile, often did the opposite with Guts, depicting the beginning and end of a sword swing and deliberately excising everything in between to generate a sense of speed and kinetic intensity.

[buruhaato]

藤木源之助 Fujiki Gennosuke

[driftingform]

I did a thing, guys!

[none-shall-caricature-me]

Shigurui (Death Frenzy) by Takayuki Yamaguchi - Analysis, Ending Explanation and Review

So I found Shigurui recommended on a blog and finished reading it.

PROS : The fight scenes were very good and strategic, and I appreciate the no - holds - barred, brutally honest approach to the living conditions, politics, exploitation and violence that happened in past times (and still does tbh). The ending is a very very good climax of the story's central themes. I also liked that the characters and their actions were mostly very realistic.

CONS : In between the aforementioned excellent scenes are many. many boring diversions to other, insignificant characters, pointless flavour dramatics and details. I'm talking a 60 - 40 or 65 - 35 ratio of slop to brilliance. The plot swings between meh and AWESOME, with no in between.

Overall, whether I would suggest this manga to you depends on your willingness to skim a big big bunch of slow - ass moments for a lesser percentage of great ones (and there are a total of 84 chapters). It's the kind of story that doesn't begin to truly shine until you reach the end, imo. I personally finished it because the anticipation buildup worked on a bored sucker like me. It was the final chapters that gripped me to write the following analysis. HUGE SPOILERS AHEAD.

Speaking of the ending and of Seigen, Fujiki explicitly says in that final arc that Seigen 'was pride itself' and 'was disgusted at being ordered to kill'. Throughout the story we're shown multiple instances of people at all positions in the samurai / feudal hierarchy resolving to humiliate and harm others, or putting themselves in great peril / abjection, because they are ordered to by a superior they respect or fear. The Kogan school does many cruel things like the 'beautification', inventing murder culprits and enacting career - destroying punishment on Seigen, all to maintain their supremacy. Fujiki apathetically slices off the fingers of one who asked for a friendly duel, only because he guilelessly stated the fact of Seigen's victory over Iwamoto Kogan. Of course, these things were sanctioned by the moral code of that time, but then our faithful samurai are often on their receiving end - the futawa to prove absolute obedience, loyalty to your senile master even when he slices your gums open, gratitute to Kogan who gave them the chance to become samurai and rise in society even though it involved incredibly dangerous training. I don't entirely fault the Kogan disciples for this attachment though, seeing as they were struggling in life before their sensei took them in.

On the other hand is Seigen, who embodies individualism and self - determination. He doesn't subscribe to dehumanising merit, fealty before mercy or lauded servitude over concrete personal gain and independence. He wants to be his own master. He's not self - sacrificing, he does kill or endanger lives when he thinks it advantageous to his plans - see him killing his acupressure teacher who disapproved of martial kosshi jutsu, his former martial arts instructor, and - if I'm not wrong - his mother, to either end her misery and his heartbreak over it, avoid shame by association, or as a symbolic sloughing of his burden. He also tries out risky sword techniques on and involves Iku in his revenge plans. It's possible that he was the one who tied Fujiki's armour too tight so he could then rescue and one - up him. But he does this all to rise to a life of security, pleasure and respect from his horrible condition as a prostitute's child. He doesn't play by the feudal system's extortionary and unnatural ideal of bushido and lord - worship. He uses the system to his own ends or rejects it. At the same time, he has a rather humane side - rages at his mother's deprivation, empathises with and looks after a scorned beggar, refuses to allow the Todouza member to demean himself while exalting him, asserts the innate equality of humans across social classes, feels camaraderie with his fellow disciples assuming they shared his views. He does care for Iku, too, and can at the very least recognise Mie's agony at being imperiously pinned down to mate for the sake of the clan.

In the final battle, Fujiki does not waver while rending Seigen's body in two. He reminisces about his past with him, but his thirst for vengeance does not falter. It is only when he is ordered to rip off the head of this rival that he quakes. Like he says, Seigen was pride personified, someone who hated being a tool of others. Fujiki despised Seigen but also genuinely admired him as a swordsman and a paragon of unfettered insight, selfhood and freedom. He also knew that until that point Seigen had the favour of even the Shogun's brother. To see how quickly the aristocrats changed their tune upon his defeat, calling him a presumptuous blind man unfit for the sacred battle grounds, and urging this disrespect to his corpse as both a Samurai rite and a test of deference, breaks Fujiki's worldview. He does it anyway after hesitating a while, probably to restore the Kogan clan's standing in the Shogunate.

He is shell - shocked and looks to Mie for comfort but she has already killed herself. Why ? Because earlier, Mie had latched onto Seigen for being the only one to stand up for her personhood against his lord's orders. She considered him one of the few who were humans and not puppets. After Seigen's 'betrayal' of the clan, she looks to Fujiki as another dude who commits to retribution and restoration against all odds - seemingly a person with agency. But when she sees him, her source of optimism, becoming the ultimate quiescent pawn in desecrating Seigen, she loses all hope in a dignified, self - sovereign life in this cruel society of puppets and puppeteers. To renew the clan would require such acts routinely conducted in unfeeling thraldom and self - preservation. Mie, someone who yearned to break free of such dog - like conduct, could never stomach this.

Some other interesting things I noticed - one, if I'm not misremembering, then Seigen's revenge killings of the Kogan disciples only gave Mie joy for his revival. On the night Seigen was to arrive in person, logically to kill his final wrongdoer, Mie was euphoric. She never expected that he'd kill her dad. Does that mean she believed Fujiki to be the target, and was totally fine with it ? That makes sense considering she likely scorned him for remaining Kogan's lackey even during her coercion and Seigen's despair. Which means that her later acceptance of him was either forgiveness due to his earnestness or pragmatism in order to avenge her father.

But I'm still confused at why Seigen left a cure for Fujiki's coma. It was such a huge risk to his career and his life and he ultimately paid for it.

It's also noteworthy that the instant before Seigen's death has a dream - like vision of him almost embracing Fujiki. That's not at all out of the blue lol, these two could've been friends and at points wished to understand the other but they took opposing paths and were limited by their own biases. Seigen never came to know that Fujiki fawned over violent Kogan not purely due to calculating or dumb complaisance, but due to a family - like bond. Fujiki never considered Seigen's perspective or his pain until the end.

[trulyunpleasant]

藤木 源之助 (Fujiki Gennosuke)

Star pupil of the Kogan Dojo.

From Shigurui by Takayuki Yamaguchi and Norio Nanjo.

[ruiniel]

um

[blackcat-brazil]

Shigurui

[aorticarchnemesis]

Is this a diss?

[transangledlozengeggbutt]

[dani-xis]