Vagabond vol. 36

It’s the eye of the tiger/

It’s the thrill of the fight/

Rising up to the challenge of our rivals…

Wait, where was I with this title?  Ah yes, Musashi was still looking for the key to progress as a swordsman and is determined to find it while being a surrogate father to an orphaned boy while working as a farmer in a run-down village.  Despite being singularly unsuited to such work, the man is determined to cultivate life by turning the soil in front of his home into a rice paddy.  It takes a consummate pro such as mangaka Takehiko Inoue to have Musashi’s dedication actually break down the indifference and hopelessness felt by the village’s resident farmer and miscellaneous inhabitants and not feel utterly contrived.  The parts where they’re all working together against time and nature actually feel pretty invigorating.  It’s only when winter hits that the problems in this approach start to surface.

While Musashi and co. do manage to create a functional rice paddy before winter hits, the fact that everyone was on the brink of starvation is really driven home by the mangaka.  Given that the planting and harvest are still months away, one has to wonder just what the point of the whole endeavor was.  An argument could be made for the fact that it was to prove their existence in the face of impossible odds, but only if you were a gigantic troll.  When Inoue spends pages after pages at the end showcasing the skeletal villagers and Musashi reduced to grinding up bark off trees just to survive I find it hard to feel any sympathy for them after they failed to observe basic common sense in this scenario.  In the end, Musashi takes steps to enlist outside forces to aid in this crisis that will likely send him towards a confrontation with Kojiro and the finale of the series.  Maybe this arc will read better in retrospect as the basketball matches did in “Slam Dunk” did.  However, in the here and now, I’m left only wanting this part of the series to be over and done with.