I came across the art for this while I was doing Yuletide icon research. I'd love to know the history of it - I wouldn't have thought that Doa was even literate! Perhaps Isaku or Anotsu taught her to read. Anyway, I'm going to be mixing it in with my other reading and manga icons, and you're welcome to have it as well, if you like.
I was looking for some examples of Hiroaki Samura's art work for the discussion of manga in the comments of my previous post, and I came across this picture (set up to pop in a separate window or tab), which is frickin' adorable! The only thing is, I don't recognize all the female characters who are shown in school costumes. From the left, I see Hyakurin as the teacher, then Rin, Makie, and Doa, but who are the other three?
I've been having much too much fun with my icons. At first I felt very protective and parental and didn't want to let any of them go, but now that I have lots of them, I don't mind so much ... and it's very warm and fuzzy to see them show up in other folks' posts.
Samples:
If there's another one I use regularly that you'd like to have, you can always ask ... (the ones I still feel the most protective about are the Yukimura ones I use regularly), and I love making them by request too.
ETA: And I meant to put all the disclaimers: no hotlinking to my poor Earthlink account, please credit, etc. etc.
Rin has decided that she needs to beef up her martial arts skills so that she can be less of a liability to her bodyguard Manji in their quest to avenge her parents' death and have his curse removed. However, no matter how hard she trains, she doesn't seem to be getting any better, and she's getting despondent. Then a chance encounter causes her to begin doubting the wisdom and ethics of her entire quest. Her ambivalence leads her to make a very dangerous choice in handling the next Itto-Ryu swordsman she encounters, and Manji has his hands full trying to rescue her.
I should once again note that this isn't a series for the squeamish. In addition to a lot of general bloodshed during a fight scene, there's another flashback, in more detail this time, to the deaths of Rin's parents. Samura is a very talented storyteller, which makes this scene extremely unpleasant. His artwork remains stellar.
( Read more ... with spoilers! ) Manji is a samurai who's gone bad. For this reason, he's been afflicted with an odd form of immortality: although he can be killed any number of times, with all the accompanying agonies, he'll never actually die. His body, infested with odd symbiotic parasites called kessen chu (usually translated in the story as "sacred bloodworms"), will be knitted back together again each time. He's already started to see this for the curse it's meant to be.
Rin is a scrawny, passionate 16-year-old girl who's seen her father - an artist of the sword and master of a martial arts school - slaughtered and her mother raped and carried off. She's sworn vengeance on the perpetrators, the young master of a rival martial arts school and his followers. Although she's trained for two years to this end, her skills are still only basic, and in the meantime, her opponent's power has grown even greater. Her quest seems doomed to failure.
Manji comes to see Rin's mission as his salvation. If he can kill enough true villains while in service as her bodyguard, he will be free to die like anyone else. The result is a strangely satisfying partnership, and a story that I'm enjoying quite a bit.
I must note here that although the artwork is really great in this series - like that of Vagabond, it's more like conventional illustration than it is like manga - Samura presents rather more anatomical detail in his depictions of the bloody results of combat than do most mangaka whose work I've seen so far. This isn't a series for the faint of heart or the weak of stomach!
( Read on ... with spoilers )
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