Vagabond (manga)
| Vagabond | |
Cover of Vagabond vol. 21 of the English adaptation, featuring the protagonist Miyamoto Musashi.
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バガボンド (Bagabondo) |
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| Genre | Chanbara, Historical |
| Manga | |
| Written by | Takehiko Inoue |
| Published by | Kodansha |
| English publisher | |
| Demographic | Seinen |
| Magazine | Weekly Morning |
| Original run | 1998 – present |
| Volumes | 37 |
Vagabond (Japanese: バガボンド Hepburn: Bagabondo?) is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Takehiko Inoue. It portrays a fictionalized account of the life of Japanese swordsman Miyamoto Musashi, based on Eiji Yoshikawa's novel Musashi.
It has been serialized in Weekly Morning magazine since 1998, with the chapters collected into 37 tankōbon volumes by Kodansha as of July 2014. Viz Media licensed the series for English release in North America and has published 37 volumes as of April 2015. Vagabond won a 2000 Kodansha Manga Award and the 2002 Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize, and has sold more than 82 million copies worldwide.
Growing up in the late 16th century Sengoku era Japan, Shinmen Takezō is shunned by the local villagers as a devil child due to his wild and violent nature. Running away from home with a fellow boy at age 17, Takezo joins the Toyotomi army to fight the Tokugawa clan at the Battle of Sekigahara. However, the Tokugawa win a crushing victory, leading to nearly three hundred years of Shogunate rule. Takezo and his friend manage to survive the battle and afterwards swear to do great things with their lives. However, after their paths separate, Takezo becomes a wanted criminal and must change his name and his nature in order to escape an ignoble death.
Before Takezo becomes Miyamoto, we see him as a man who can draw the fear out of anybody, who lives on his wits and will quickly kill anyone who crosses him. This gets Takezo into big trouble, where he has to live in the mountains cut off from all but the hunters from his village who come to try and kill him. Eventually, the monk Takuan and Miyamoto's childhood friend Otsu help to capture Takezo, who is subsequently hung from a tree for several days without food or water. During this time, Tsujikaze Kohei, the younger brother of a bandit that Takezo killed, comes to claim his revenge on Takezo (but only because Kohei wanted to kill his brother first). Takuan scares him away.
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Wikipedia