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Comic Review: Lone Wolf and Cub, Volume 1 (Koike and Kojima)

I've talked about some of my feelings about Japanese things before, so I'll try not to repeat myself too much. I love the idea of samurai and ninjas and all that stuff. Lego ninjas were probably more exciting to me than Lego Star Wars. So now I have finally gotten around to starting one of the classic manga set in medieval Japan. I had a friend in middle school was into it, but he wasn't excited about sharing things, so I never saw much of it. But it was always on the mental list of things I should read.

So, after all that buildup, what did I think? I was a little disappointed. I think I still lack the background of Japanese culture to fully appreciate some of the stories (like the one with the prostitute at the hot springs) and nuances. The artwork was beautiful, but I sometimes had to flip back to verify which character was which. Some of this were the slightly more ambiguous word balloons, and some was the storylines which don't hold your hand through everything, but I think I started to adapt to it as I went on. I also noticed a lot of the differences from American comics as described in Understanding Comics (which I should have reviewed already, but I'm behind. Apologies!) I also wondered if, since this was the first volume, that some of the premises and personalities were being discovered as things went on - media often takes time to get up to full speed.

One other surprise for me was thesmall size of the reprints. It says it is the "original Japanese format" but I often wished for larger reproductions of some of the pages. But it was convenient for reading, and it was cheap, so it wasn't all bad.

Overall, I enjoyed this, and am cautiously optomistic about future volumes, but if it continues on just the same, I don't think it is my thing.

Are my views on Japanese culture finally changing? Uh oh.