‘Afro Samurai’ – Takashi Okazaki (Tor/Seven Seas)

So far my journey into Manga has been a mixed affair to say the least. For every tale of superhumans, or the undead, there’s either a Benny Hill style ‘comedy of errors sex story’ or a sex story without the comedy. It’s been a bumpy ride but I think I may just have come across something that will restore the balance, maybe even tip it over into the realms of cool. Ninjas and Samurai are cool by their very definition but an Afro Samurai on a mission of revenge....? That’s just ‘cool squared’!

In a futuristic, yet feudal, world the number one warrior has all the power. The only person who is allowed to challenge him is the number two warrior and anyone is allowed to challenge ‘number two’ (for the right to take his place and challenge ‘number one’). All fights are to the death.
Afro’s father was ‘Number One’, years ago, until Afro saw him taken down by a maniacal gunman named Justice. Justice is now ‘number one’ and Afro has spent his life rising to the position of number two so he can challenge Justice. The final battle awaits but in the meantime Afro must battle his way past countless hordes of assassins and thugs who all want a shot at ‘number two’...

The story is as simple as that and leaves Okazaki free to devote his time to throwing new dangers at Afro and seeing what happens. This can get repetitive but complements the grim tone rather nicely and also gives us little hints at Afro’s character and what he is prepared to do in his quest to reach Justice. This is a grim and violent world where survival of the fittest rules and this is no more apparent in the trail of bodies that Afro leaves behind and his using a disabled girl as a human shield against a machine gun toting assassin (well, she did want her dead brother back, Afro killed him too...) An interesting parallel is also drawn when Afro kills a man in front of his son in exactly the same way that Afro witnessed his father die. I wonder if this will come back to haunt Afro in the future...

This approach is needed as Afro doesn’t really say much (if anything), most of the dialogue falls to his side-kick Ninja Ninja who provides the light relief much needed in the midst of all the carnage and gore. There is a lot of this and if you’re not into this kind of thing (along with gratuitous swearing) then you should probably give ‘Afro Samurai’ a miss. This is just my kind of thing though so I loved it :o)

The only thing that did bug me was that the artwork in my copy, although very detailed and nice to look at, sometimes got lost in various shades of grey and it was a little difficult to make out what was going on. You can excuse this (to a point) in terms of things moving quickly (and movements being blurred as a result) but it would still have been nice to see a little more sometimes...

This is a small niggle though in a book that entertained me and had me wide eyed in awe on more than one occasion. I’m going to make sure that I’m around to see where Afro Samurai heads next, I may even have to find myself a copy of the anime DVD...

Nine and a Half out of Ten