After months of waiting, Samurai 8: The Tale of Hachimaru chapter 1 finally has been released and I decided to check it out and see what Kishimoto’s next big title is all about.
I’m not gonna lie, the manga’s pretty solid so far. When it was first unveiled, I had assumed that this story was going to be well ground on earth, little did I know that this manga about to involve the entire galaxy itself. Despite that, I could tell that this is the work of Kishimoto.
The story starts with the introduction of what it means to actually be a samurai. As it turns out, there are two stages to a fighter in this world, a warrior and a samurai. Now to be fair, I had a bit of trouble understanding whether being a warrior was a good or bad thing but from what I understood, it’s definitely a step lower than SAMURAI.
Samurais are in charge of protecting the entire galaxy while searching for something called a Pandora’s box, along with 7 keys needed to open it which means that we will be seeing all sorts of characters that won’t necessarily look human. they mentioned that a god of war called Master Acala sealed this power long ago and now is needed once more.
I’m very interested in seeing what Kishimoto will handle that aspect. The brief introduction also mentions a person that the samurais also have to stop, so already it’s building up a villain that supposedly extremely powerful.
Anyways, after that small world building that we got, we finally got to see our protagonist, Hachimaru. Hachimaru is already set up to be this weak kid with no potential to reaching his long desired dream of becoming a samurai. As it turns out, he’s hooked up to a machine that acts as his life support, and to be apart from that machine for longer that three minutes means death.
He’s personality seems pretty OK for the most part, in fact it reminds me of Boruto’s personality to some extent of him lashing out at his father, who by the way is working on a machine that will allow his son to move around. Along Hachimaru & his dad, we also got introduced to Hayatarou, a dog who thinks he’s a cat. Right after that we get introduced to another character, who is the first Samurai we are introduced to in the manga.
We haven’t learned his name yet but he seems capable none the less. He was the one that explained a lot more about the difference between a warrior and a samurai. Samurai’s are beings chosen by the God of War in which you commit Seppuku with a special blade. If successful, you will be granted a cyborg body with a special samurai soul that can not be destroyed easily.
Long story short, this samurai kidnaps Hachimaru’s dad after learning that a special sword known as the Vampire sword, due to its crimson colour, was hiding inside Hachimaru. In order to get it, he asked Hachimaru commit Seppuku to spare save his father’s life, he does and becomes a samurai. Now, thanks to the game that he’d been playing which was actually created by the second samurai introduced in the story called Daruma, he picked up on how to fight with a sword, or rather should I say downloaded the skills needed.
With that he took out the samurai with one swell swoop. Now his adventure to the stars begins. I must say I enjoyed the story for the most part. The art style will definitely be something I’ll have to get used to but it wasn’t anything too bad. It has potential so I look forward to see more in the future. Lets hope that the female protagonist that will be introduced won’t be as useless as as the Sakura.
