Please note

This review is all subjective and my own personal opinion. You do not have to agree with it, nor am I asking you to. I hope that this just helps you get an idea of what the manga I am talking about is like and form a basic and general consensus on it. The ratings I give anime and manga are mostly my personal overall enjoyment. This review may contain some spoilers, but all of them will be hidden using the spoiler tag. There will be some images sourced from the manga, but they should not be any major spoilers. TL;DR will be at the bottom.

Introduction

Sekiro Side Story: Hanbei the Undying, written and illustrated by Yamamoto Shin, depicts the story of Hanbei the Undying, before he found himself at the Dilapidated Shrine, his adventure and battles he overcame in his undying journey.

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Plot

In a similar manner as the game, the manga begins with illustrating the war that took places during the Sengoku period with the two warring factions, Ashina as one of them. This could be to pay homage to what the Sekiro game first shows to the player when they start the game, and to also provide a refresher to the reader. The manga quickly gets into action, a significant part of the manga.

Soon after this quick refresher, the manga moves onto Hanbei's story, how he finds himself in a small village. Overall, the plot is not long (after all it is only eight chapters), and mainly revolves around Hanbei and the events that happen in the village, and how he helps them out. Quite simple really, and easy to follow. It is not long making it harder to get bored and drop reading this manga. These complications themselves were engaging enough to keep me engrossed in reading the manga. I kept reading, wanting to know what was going to happen next. The nature of these events should be familiar to those who have played Sekiro. The plot provides some backstory to Hanbei, providing more character development that was never present in the game.

For a manga of this length, I felt that it was paced fairly well. It was short, but it did not feel rushed nor did it have an abrupt ending. It does not take too long for things to get started, which is vital for a manga of this length. If it spent too much time before things took off, then there would be no time left to create a meaningful story.

The plot developments were not something I can say I was completely unexpecting, but it was not so obvious to make it boring. How the plot played out was entertaining and I looked forward to seeing what happened next. The ending was something else I liked about this manga, I felt that it wrapped things up nicely and led up to it well.

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Characters
There are not too many characters here to talk about, and it is expected given the manga length. It would be difficult to fit in many characters into something of such a short length.

This is Hanbei, the main character of the story. As most Sekiro players would know, Hanbei is undying, essentially immortal. This is shown quite early on in the story. This is a key trait of his character, as it plays a role in his actions and personality. He might give off the impression he is a bland and boring character and in some aspects, maybe he is. I find it hard to describe his character, but he was pretty interesting and I liked reading the scenes with him included in them. His fighting skills were also a delight to see. He has some development, but it is not as big as the next character I am to discuss. Masayoshi is another major character in this story. Although he is not as significant as Hanbei, he still plays an important role in the story. He is quickly introduced in chapter one. You could say he is a simple character, someone determined to protect his family and village from outsiders. In that way, his character is not that unique, but I still found him engaging enough. He was not boring at the very least. He is a bit arrogant in the beginning, but this develops over time. His character development was well executed in my opinion.

The relationships Hanbei had with the characters were decent, again nothing special but still enjoyable.

Other than the two character mentioned above, there are not as many characters to discuss. They either are not significant enough or appear too late into the story. The villains in the story were alright, nothing too bad. Their motives were a bit bland but nothing that made no sense.

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Art and Action
The action is one of the biggest parts of the manga, and I can say that it one part I really enjoyed. The action was reminiscent of the game, providing nice call backs to techniques used in the game.

A famous technique, the Ichimonji, is illustrated here. These techniques were drawn well and nicely implemented into the fights. The fights themselves were quite entertaining as a fan of the action in Sekiro, and I looked forward to the next fight that would play out. They were not just put into the manga for no reason, they had reason in the plot and were implemented properly.

The art is also something I must discuss. I found the art to be exceptional in some scenes, like this one for example.

This scene is shown early on into chapter one and set the mood and tone for the manga quite well. It showed the gritty and bloody nature of the conflict that took place, as well as depicting the power of the samurai. Not just this scene too, the art throughout the manga did well to illustrate not only the action, but the settings and characters too. Certainly a strong point of the manga.

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Conclusion and TL;DR
At the end I could not find too much else to discuss about. With everything said, I quite liked this manga. It is made for Sekiro fans, and catered to me well. I enjoyed the action and everything else that was mixed in with it. To someone who has not experienced Sekiro this may just be an average manga, but to fans I would imagine it would be much more. As such, this is an easy recommendation to any Sekiro fan. In summary:

• A decent plot that is well paced and wraps up nicely.
• The plot developments were entertaining enough.
• The characters provide a familiar face for Sekiro fans.
• The cast had some nice development for the short duration of the manga.
• The action is one of the strongest points of the manga, also showing some techniques used in the game.
• The art exceptionally illustrates the action among other things.

That brings us to the end of the review. If you want to send me feedback on my reviews, please post a comment on this thread. Hopefully you were able to get something out of this review. If you did not like this review, then I apologise for wasting your time.