Bibliotekarien och seriefantasten Daniel Gustavsson tycker till om manga
http://mangabibliotekarien.blogg.se/200 ... sakai.html
Review translated from Swedish by Google (with a touch of editing)
I am, personally, a little confused on just what the author was intending to say in the final paragraph.manga librarian
Librarian and comic buff Daniel Gustavsson thoughts about manga.
Usagi Yojimbo by Stan Sakai
I make this series available on request. In the picture above to right, by the way the back of Sakai when he is rolling out the sign-samurai rabbit. The picture is from SPX08 at Kulturhuset in Stockholm.
Many seem to believe that Usagi Yojimbo is a manga. But despite the fact that the author has a Japanese name and the series is about a samurai-rabbit, there is no manga. Stan Sakai is American. He is born in Japan but grew up in Hawaii. His series reminiscent perhaps more on the classic American superhero series than on the traditional manga. This is not to say that it is bad, quite the opposite. Usagi Yojimbo is a very good series.
Usagi Yojimbo is Stan Sakai's biggest success but he has also done some comics for Marvel publisher and a Simpsons-series to the newspaper Bart Simpson's Tree House of Horror. He has also made a spin-off series to the Usagi Yojimbo called Space Usagi. It is really the same series, but has characteristics of space-adventure and place in a future (Space Usagi is a descendant of "Original"-Usagi).
The first two albums on Usagi Yojimbo [have been] translated from English. They are good but the series is even better later on. The two albums that Sakai himself cite as his favorites, I also think are the best so far, Grasscutter (which won the Will Eisner Award) and Grey Shadows.
The series is about samurai-rabbit Miyamoto Usagi, which is a Ronin (stray samurai who no longer has a lord, mainly because the lord has been killed). Usagi wanders through the country and kingdom, and of course, happen upon a lot of adventure. He meets both old (and new) friends and enemies along the way. Miyamoto Usagi is also loosely based on the real, legendary sword man Miyamoto Musashi.
Usagi Yojimbo is very vältecknad. Often Sakai has done much research on the surroundings and the stories are as realistic as possible. This is despite the fact that everyone involved is [anthropomorphic] animals. The series is sometimes violent, but can clearly be read from about 15 years. I expect, however, Usagi Yojimbo as an adult series. Albums are a thin red line, but can easily be isolated. Usagi Yojimbo is very good entertainment!
