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| Go search Wikipedia for Miyamoto Musashi, and see what you get. You'll get a Kensei, a sword-saint, this single most famous swordsman from a country full of famous swordsman. There are movies about this character--books, too, the most famous being Eijo Yoshikawa's Musashi--and most of all, there are manga about him. And the best is Vagabond, by the very same author that brought you Slam Dunk.
It follows Takezo, who eventually takes on the name Miyamoto Musashi. The story of the manga tends to follow the many biographies and novels about the famous samurai, but deviates sometimes from the norm; Takezo, in the beginning, is a brute, a vagabond, not much more then a arrogant bandit. Of course, things change, and there are love interests, and many, many bloody battles:
And did I mention the art?
In short, fucking awesome.
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| It's been more then a year since I updated, and I doubt that anyone's reading by now--oh well, better to start anew, I suppose. Besides, my interests have changed, I'm in college (the how is rather beyond me), and my life is busier then ever. I also have a car, a beat-up Taurus stationwagon from eleven years back, but that's beside the point.
Anyways, I'm hoping to mainly talk about Berserk, the single best fantasy-horror-hack-and-slash-manga out there in the world today. With obsessively detailed art and one of the most complex heroes in the history of, well, imagination (to say that Gatsu's life is fucked up is like saying that Katrina was just a middling disaster), Berserk is--well, to say what Berserk is, I would have to give up and spoil the story, and I wouldn't want that.
Just a note: the manga is much, much better then the anime. A part of Berserk's charm is in the black-and-white art, way darker, way more imaginative then anything Frank Miller did.
The story starts--sorry, I can't help myself--with Gatsu (Guts in the English translations) wandering the world of Berserk, with a artificial left arm and a perpetually bleeding scar on the back of his neck. That scar is the 'Mark,' the mark of the sacrifice, and he was to have died, eaten, in--well, I can't go any further then that. Suffice it to say that the 'Mark' makes him a walking target for all the demons and spirits that rampage through the mortal world in the manga. He's currently searching for a 'Apostle'; and an Apostle, in Berserk's world, is a mortal or demon who has given up his soul (or his demonic equivalent) to one of the Four Hand of God in exchange for power and elevation to the status as, well, an 'Apostle.' There's also a part about how you have to sacrifice someone you love the most so--wait, did I say sacrifice? There's no way in hell that the mark on the back of Gatsu's neck could have anything to do with that, could it? No way!
So, Gatsu enters a town. And so begins the first volume, the gore, the blood, the battles, the killings, and you realize just what a total, utter badass Gatsu really is. He's awesome. Really.
-Here's a picture:
As for just where you can find Berserk, you can either do it the illegal way (which, I'll say, on record, is wrong) and grab some of the scanlations available on the Internet, or the legal way, which is to buy the Darkhorse volumes. They're upto volume twenty-two or something--and are good, by the way, though some of the art--along with the dark, dark coloring--seem toned down at times.
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| School for me starts in a week. A week. A week... That, people, is seven days, which is twenty-four hours multiplied sevenfold and cut by one-thirds thanks to that feature hardwired into our brain called 'sleep.' That's not a whole lotta time. In fact, I could argue that within that small period of time I couldn't even conquer Switzerland, let alone Mars.
I've been doing kendo for some time now, which means that I'm prancing around in an incense-filled dojo with weird black robes with a bamboo sword in hand. Well, no; I quit after three days, and proceeded to just continue in my backyard, without the robes, the incense, and the exorbitant fees associated with buying protective gear (hah!) and personal instruction. Who needs that shit? I asked myself. I'm perfectly suited to teaching myself, I thought, without paying that dirty sixty bucks a month. I'm adapt at concentrating fiercely, and I'm asian, which means that martial arts pretty much run through my blood, like how hardcore drinking is in the Irish or rampant sex runs through the French. (I hope you aren't taking me seriously here...)
So I tried. I have an old, rather worn shinai blade and a black walnut bokken that I carved myself, and I practiced with those, following the set of precepts laid out in Miyamoto Musashi's THE BOOK OF FIVE RINGS. It didn't work out. I tried sparring, and ended up blue and black, bruised all over the place with an extra large welt across my forearm. I have to say, though, that I chipped the smug little bastard's teeth. I hope so, anyhow; I don't think that punch really knocked him out like I meant to. Remind myself never to punch someone in the jaw again...
A note to all: TUMS works wonders. I had some problems with booze a week ago, and as I lay in bed moaning and throwing up spit and stomach acid four at a time every fifteen minutes, I found that Alka-Seltzer's just made things worse, and that Pepto Bismol just makes you crap like crazy. But Tums... now, there, people, is the modern day Mumia (ground-up essence of mummies, used in apothecaries as the miracle cure of miracle cures). It works wonders!
Gotta go; good day. | | |
| One of Sammael's, a.k.a. Lucifer Morningstar or more commonly called Shaitan, powers is the ability to bring to life an particularly unpleasant experience in one's life, thus immobilizing the poor wretch in his own worst nightmares as the imps close in and rip his balls out. Those with strong minds can resist this; I couldn't.
I worked in a woman's shoe store. Kinda like Al Bundy, but without the laughs. It's a bitch, folks; women tend to whine more about style and size then men, methinks, and sometimes you just get screwed over and end up having to assist a particularly bitchy lady. It's not uncommon for one to bring for some forty-ish woman with bulging stomachs and shrinking heads about ten or twelve pairs of lacy sandals that--
I didn't get my balls ripped out, by the way. The Chief totes a mean gatling gun, and a badass aim too.
I'll write more when I can: the glass doors of the local Starbucks (located conveniently next to the screaming wraith of Nero the Mad Roman Emperor) are currently being pulverized under the weights of zombies, revenants, and flying, winged things that creep at night above.
Ahnyung... | | |
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