Usagi Yojimbo vol. 24: Return of the Black Soul

This storyline was the reason I started reading Stan Sakai’s “Usagi Yojimbo” in single issue form, in addition to the trades, over three years ago.  It’s also the only time I’ve ever really experienced disappointment with the ending of one of the series’ extended storylines.

(Spoilers for this volume follow the break, eventually.)

These days there’s really no character in mainstream (read:  superhero) comics that gets my attention by their simple presence.  Not only have they all been overexposed to the point of ridiculousness, but I’ve since been trained to follow the writer, not the character.  Still, part of me is nostalgic for the time when a writer would wheel out the “special” villain — the one that you hadn’t seen for years and is now showing up to show you that he meant business with this arc.  I remember that the “X-men” used to do this well with Magneto back in the 90’s, before Grant Morrison pulled off one of the best examples of this kind of story and the character eventually became a supporting cast member in the regular series.

But I digress!  The point I’m trying to make here is that when the solicitations revealed that Sakai was bringing back Usagi’s arch-nemesis Jei, I knew I had to read that story now.  Aside from popping up every once in a while to remind you that he’s still out there, Jei has only had three major run-ins with Usagi:  his introductory issue in vol. 3, his kidnapping of Usagi’s son Jotaro in vol. 6, and when he came across the conspiracy to steal the legendary sword Grasscutter in vol. 12 — the series’ finest hour in my opinion.  As his spirit has been inhabiting the body of the swordswoman Inazuma since “Grasscutter,” and it had been hinted at in subsequent issues that his control over her was not complete, I was expecting some kind of resolution to this particular plot thread.  While I got it, it wasn’t in a way that I was expecting.

The main arc collected in the book, “Sparrows,” refers to the flock of bounty hunters that have gathered in an attempt to collect the now-astronomical reward on Inazuma’s head that’s being offered by Boss Bakuchi.  You see, even before she was possessed by Jei, the swordswoman was already headed down a dark path after she killed his son out of revenge, and took out nearly every bounty hunter that came after her.  What makes this story different from others is that one hunter manages to get off a lucky strike that would normally kill a person not possessed by an all-powerful demonic force, but winds up bringing a slow death to Inazuma/Jei.

Enter into this mix are Usagi, wandering the land as usual, bounty hunters Gen and Stray Dog, still on the hunt for Inazuma after their near-fatal encounter in the last volume, the Buddhist monkSanshobo, returning home to his temple after an exorcism, and an incredibly skilled swordsman named Isamu.  Each of them have their own reasons for wanting Inazuma/Jei stopped, but their goals put them in direct conflict with the mass of bounty hunters who were lured by the massive price on her head.  Meanwhile, Senzo, one of Sanshobo’s fellow monks, has been having terrible dreams these past few years after finding his fellow brothers dead at Inazuma/Jei’s hands way back in vol. 12.  Is he going crazy, or is this some well-engineered sleight-of-hand on the author’s part to divert our attention from the real truth.

To be honest, I did enjoy reading this story more the second time around.  Not having to wait a month or more between issues certainly helped, and certain details such as the head monk Hama’s role in the affair came through much more clearly once I knew to look for them.  That’s one of the real joys of this series, watching all the little details that Sakai sets up in previous issues play out over the course of a few issues or a few years.  His storytelling may not be the flashiest on the market, but it is the most reliably satisfying.  (Here come the spoilers…)

Then you get to the end of this arc and see Jei flee Inazuma’s body to inhabit that of Hama the monk.  It’s a cheap resolution that strikes me as more of a re-think of Jei’s current status quo than as a payoff to years of the Inazuma/Jei relationship.  What was the point of putting him in her body in the first place if the resolution was only going to be that he leaves her in a moment of crisis instigated by outside forces.  It also denies Inazuma her chance at redemption or damnation by taking the matter out of her hands.  For a character that exemplified the “shades of gray” morality tag, I think that to see her wrestle with such a choice would’ve made for fascinating drama.

With that, I have to make a confession:  After I read this arc, I felt that I could’ve written a better ending to this story.  Now I’m sure that NO ONE would agree that’s true.  I wouldn’t want to see anyone else writing “Usagi” any more than I’m sure Sakai would hand the reins over to me to do so.  Hell, I feel I’m being rude just by writing this; but, it’s never a good thing when something you’ve just read leaves you with that feeling.

That said, the story that precedes “Sparrows” in this volume is actually one of my favorite “Usagi” stories of all time.  I’d love to tell you more about why “The Darkness and the Soul” is so, but even though its premise can be boiled down to two words, to tell you them would be to ruin the story’s surprise.  All I’ll say is that it’s a story I’d never thought I’d see about this character, and when I found out who this character was, it blew my mind.

So yeah, even though the end of “Sparrows” was a letdown, I still enjoyed a lot of this volume.  It’s just that I’m so not used to seeing Sakai whiff on the game-winning-homerun out that I’m riding harder than I should be.  There’s also the fact that like a so-so numbered “Final Fantasy” game, this volume shows that an “okay” effort by Sakai’s standards is still better than most other’s best efforts.  While he hasn’t done an arc of this length in the last few years (or even given us a glimpse of what Jei has been up to), I’m still looking forward to seeing him bring back one (or both) in the future.