Musashi

Coming from Hiroshi Motomiya's prior work Otoko Ippiki Gaki Daisho I expected something decent here, although I think it's important to preface this with how it was serialized at the time and the fact that I will be referencing and comparing parts to Otoko Ippiki as it's my reference point to Motomiyas work, i'd feel as though this review would be bland without that. Rumours go that Motomiya wanted to end his prior series and went to work on this one, it not being received very well which lead to it getting cancelled and rushed, with Motomiya picking up Otoko Ippiki back up afterwards, since this was so long ago it's likely difficult to find out if it's true, however based on the quality of Musashi I can definitely believe it.

Musashi is one of the rare old Jump manga you can even find translations of, never mind the fact that it's complete! Sadly it's also something I don't think anybody should read, it's just not good. The story recounts the events of Miyamoto Musashi in a fictional manner, a figure that has been heavily featured in other works of fiction, especially manga. I do not really know much about Musashi, and honestly I didn't learn much through this manga as the way it's structured and paced is messy with scenes blending into each other with little to no indication of time. No character really feels introduced properly and there's so many of them I had no idea who was who, It doesn't help that Musashi is given the nickname "Benzo" which lead me to think the main character might've been someone else for a few chapters. The chapter lengths also don't help with some being 60-90 pages long, it's really difficult to digest what your reading and hinders the pacing further.

The characters aren't anything amazing either, bland or have no time to develop or be anything aside from Benzo, who is horrible. He's impulsive and brash, he charges in and shouts all the time, which gets really annoying and that's not great for a character whose your main protagonist, even if they have some flaws there still needs to be some kind of anchor to who your reading about or you just won't care, and in this case I think it's handled very poorly. Other scenes in the first few chapters include him forcing himself on a woman in a really pathetic way, killing a lumberjack because he saw him cry and killing many people out of rage. He feels like a really shoddy villain, not the protagonist and not even a morally engaging one just someone brutal. Perhaps if the manga was paced better and took it's time his arc would be much more believable and he'd be relatable but as it stands he's just not. I found this to be especially disappointing as Mankichi in his previous work is this character done well. He's impulsive yes but he grows as a person and becomes much more than that, he's also charismatic, one of the most charismatic characters I've seen! So I have no idea what went wrong here as Motomiya can definitely write well!

The artwork is decent I like the periods style and Motomyia's artstyle in general, although I do find it a downgrade compared to Otoko Ippiki, there were a few great pages but it was far less memorable to me. There's a lack of flow to panels, and I don't find the composition as strong, the characters also look quite messy in some panels and the combat suffers as a result, especially when swords are involved. It doesn't convey the same weight as Otoko Ippiki, where I think Motomiya did really well, instead it seems to favour scenes of gratuitous blood and gore, which don't look good and only really serve to show how insane and unlikable out main character is. Character designs also didn't appeal to me very much, the raggedy appearance of the characters and their clothes made it hard to tell who was who.

To summarize I would avoid this unless you're really into old Shonen Jump manga and history, but even then don't get your hopes up. It's a mess with unlikable characters and horrible pacing, the only positive being some of the artwork, but overall it's one of the worst Shonen Jump manga I've read so far. I'd assume Vagabond would be a much better read to experience the same story, and I would suggest reading other Hiroshi Motomiya works instead of this one.