chomiji | Shaman Warrior, vols. 1-5 (Park Joong-Ki)

Shaman warriors have the ability to transform their bodies in various ways, making them formidable war machines. As this series opens, a legendary shaman, Yarong, meets his death under circumstances that seem highly suspicious to his servant, the massive fighter Batu. Batu swears to defend his master's child, Yaki, but he soon finds this far more difficult than he expected: shaman warriors are being hunted down and killed, with the circumstances of Yarong's death being twisted to provide an excuse. Batu at last decides he must take desperate measures to ensure that little Yaki survives and becomes able to defend herself.

Thus far, this is playing out like an almost gender-blind shounen/seinen adventure. There are more male characters than female characters (especially in the first volume), but the female characters we've encountered thus far are fighting, doing magic, and adventuring along with the men. These female characters are also generally drawn with reasonable bustlines and amazingly modest clothing. The story includes betrayal, loyalty beyond the grave, a variety of non-romantic attachments (siblings, master-servant, parent-child, team mates, etc.), and complex politics. The artwork is gorgeous, illustration rather than cartoon, along the lines of Inoue's work on Vagabond and Samura's work on Blade of the Immortal (and when we do encounter grotesques, they're all the more unnerving because they're so well-drawn).

Oh, and telophase? Batu the Destroyer traveling with little Yaki is just your kind of thing!

Shaman Warrior, vols. 1-5 (review)

(FYI - that's teenaged Yaki in the icon.)

OK ... wild theories time. The Mr. and I don't think Yarong was Yaki's father. We think Yarong was Yaki's mother.

This may sound like total crack - after all, we have a number of pictures of bare-chested Yarong in vol. 1, and that's a totally masculine-looking torso, very much in the realistic mode: not tapered and bishie-ish, but compactly muscled and slightly stocky. But think about how Yarong has a tiny baby, and Batu keeps urging him to take it easy because "you can't fight anymore. Your body can't take it" and the General who sends Yarong off on his fatal mission apologizes that he had to "inform you of this while your body is still changing," and then later this same General thinks of Yarong with this statement:"I have plucked the most beautiful flower in all Kugai ... ."

I guess only time will tell.

Park gets a little weird with names: there is a character called Genji (female, and supposedly Batu's sister) and another called Aragorn (the tattooed warlord of a clan that's being forced out by the General). Genji is a lot of fun - frankly outspoken, a skilled fighter, and a master of disguise. Aragorn's a pretty good character too, but I keep twitching every time I read that name ... .

Yaki's experiences in the Butcher Camps are all too realistic, except in one area, and I think Park is actually to be commended for not going for the sexual angle in most of what happens to her. I also like how Yatilla gives her a reason to go on and be strong. He's a very promising character, and I hope we'll see more of him.

My only regret thus far is that Yarong was killed off so soon. He was just my sort of character.

Current Mood: lonely

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From:

avierra.livejournal.com

I haven't read the SDK manga at all. I started the anime (although I have been given to understand it doesn't bear much resemblance to the manga), but it was too much for me to absorb at that point in time and I stopped watching it. Thirty-eight volumes is a lot! I read Naruto and it is currently at volume 28 in English. I do think I would like SDK based on what I know of the story-line. But also! Hot samurai guys with freaky powers, dark secrets and big swords..... mmmmmmmmmmm.

Both BotI and Fake sound like my cup of tea, I will definitely have to check them out. The drawing style on the BotI scans was wonderful; I think I mentioned to you that that is very important to me.

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From:

chomiji

Hey, if we want manly men with swords, beautifully drawn, in a realistic setting, we need Vagabond!

There's a nice picture gallery of it here.

From:

avierra.livejournal.com

Wow, those are AWESOME.

From:

chomiji

I thought you'd like it! Vagabond is based on a famous biography of swordsmaster Miyamoto Musashi. The art is just gorgeous. Most of those scans are from the artbook Water, which I bought myself at Katsucon. The story makes a pretty good shounen manga, with lots of the "must get stronger" stuff going on. There's also a fair amount of political stuff. The bearded guy with the cropped hair in some of the scans is Takuan, a wandering monk - he's one of my favorite characters. The wild-haired young guy (also in my icon) is Musashi himself.

From:

chomiji

Oh, yes, tons of dark secrets, and even the bad guys are compelling (especially once you get past the sort of introductory story arc).

I know the art is important to you, and SDK has a slight funky style - it's almost shoujo-ish in its detail, and you get many tiny frames around the main pictures on some pages - for example, you might have a stack of "reaction panels" for all the characters in a scene as something dramatic happens. It can be a little busy. Here are places to tale a look at SDK art:

meganbmoore has a gallery of SDK color stuff ... like Minekura, Kamijyo is rather better in color, from a sheer artistic viewpoint. This is a mix of covers, artbook stuff, and original manga extras.
meganb also did a summary of a significant scene involving my favorite SDK guy, Sanada Yukimura, in vol. 9 ... this will be spoiler-ish, but it will give you an example of fairly mature Kamijyo artwork in an action sequence.
I did a post about a particular style of multi-view picture Kamijyo likes to do. This was back when I hadn't read very many manga. I've since seen some other artists do the same thing - but not as often. (There's an example in Saiyuki in the scene where the ikkou first encounter Lirin, and she's just knocked the huge crab shikigami out of the way to rescue a kittycat.) Some of these pix are also spoilers, though.

From:

avierra.livejournal.com

Hehe, I like Yukimura also. One of the SDK episodes I saw with him had him dressing up as a woman so he could enter a fighting contest. He was quite the belle. ;) Anyway, I thought that was wonderful... that he, a renowned and skilled samurai, was unafraid of poking fun at himself in that way, and indeed actually revelling in it. Kyo wouldn't... nay, couldn't do it.

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From:

chomiji

Yeah, that scene didn't exist in the manga - one of those rare instances of the cartoon having more than the magazine, I guess! Did he actually have a kimono in the anime? In the manga, it's a ladylike outfit with pants, somewhere between a cheomsang and an ao dai. (And not all that different than what he ends up wearing during most of the Mibu Arc.)

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From:

chomiji

I should have known better than to bring up specific garments with you! It was the pants underneath, and the relatively close fit, that made me think it couldn't be a kimono. Kamijyo seems very conscious of the fact that a guy's Adam's apple will give a cross-dressing disguise away - the other cross-dresser in the series always has something up around his/her neck also. (I'm not sure if that character shows up in the anime - not in the manga until vol. 22.)

How far are you now? Saizo shows up in the Yuki gaiden, which may, of course, increase your shippiness. And there's a delightful cartoon that's in the artbook, which sanada translated for me, that shows a little more of their relationship - as well as more evidence for Yukimura crushing on Kyo ... but it has spoilers for the character who doesn't show up until vol. 22. Such complexities ... .

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I'm in my head again tonight

Shaman Warrior, vols. 1-5 (Park Joong-Ki)