So after reading Samurai 8: The Tale of Hachimaru Chapter 2, I’m starting to get a feel of what to expect going forward. What I’d like to discuss is whether we’ve prematurely proclaimed this manga to be great just because the author is Kishimoto.
Chapter 2 was a lot shorter that the first chapter so there wasn’t a whole lot of information to digest this time around. Hachimaru decided to utilize his new found body to the max by eaten practically everything that he wasn’t able to eat before. He also got to take his dog for a walk for the first time in years.
If there’s one thing I would criticize about Samurai 8, it is its art direction. The world is very well detailed but the black and white outlines creates this noise that makes it difficult to grasp everything that’s going on in a panel. Too many times have I had to spend some extra minutes on a page to figure of what’s going on or to check to see if I had missed anything.
I hope that they’ll improve the art work with future chapters as I kind of expected more from the an established mangaka that is Kishimoto. The manga continues on with Hachimaru being knocked out of the sky by an unknown attack. At the time, I couldn’t figure out what knocked him out of the sky. Was it just a random blast, a shot from the tank we saw early? It wasn’t clearly illustrated for me.
This is where Hachimaru encountered this kid with no name. Apparently, he doesn’t know his own name and doesn’t even know what gender he is, with his hands basically arguing which gender he should take. Anyways, we learned that the nameless kid like Hachimaru, has never left his home for more than eight years and has spent most of his time playing the Samurai game.
It seems that he is the second best player in the world, and it was here that we learned that Hachimaru was the number one player. That how they’re explaining why Hachimaru is so well versed with a blade. So when the nameless kid finally gets a name and becomes a Samurai, he’ll most likely be a rival to Hachimaru.
Overall, with the slow pacing of this chapter, it gave me some time to ask some questions that still haven’t been answered yet. Such as, what happened to the Hachimaru’s Samurai spirit and the sword that was sealed inside of him? You’d imagine that he’d inherit the sword as his own. Also, how did Hachimaru’s father obtain such a legendary sword in the first place? Not once did it come up while they were having breakfast.
Anyways, I still see potential in this manga but I’m going to temper my expectations going forward. Kishimoto has written a number of manga in the past, some great, some not so great. We will just have to wait and see what he has in store for us with this new adventure.
