April, 2003
Lone Wolf and Cub, Vol. 14: Day of the Demons
Kazuo Koike (Writer)
Goseki Kojima (Artist)
Trans. Dana Lewis
320 pp
Dark Horse Comics PB
It's been a while since I read one of these, 'cause volumes 13 & 14 weren't part of the stack of LW&C books I bought at The Stars Our Destination last summer. But, I succeeded in acquiring them, so it's onward with the adventures of samurai-assassin Ogami Itto and his son Daigoro.
This volume contains four stories. Two of them continue the trend of using the central Lone Wolf and Cub story as a mere framework for telling other people's stories. "One Rainy Day" is about a ronin who killed a corrupt lord and all his retainers, in order to prevent a peasant uprising (Samurai logic. Don't worry about it.), and how he passes his final days as he prepares for seppuku. Like the second story, "O-Shichiri Man," it explores and illustrates the samurai ethos of self-sacrifice and martial honor.
The third and fourth stories are Ogami-centric. In "The Kyushu Road," Ogami is harassed by yet another group of guys who are out to kill him, this time on the orders of a lord who wants to curry favor with Ogami's nemesis Retsudo. The fourth story, "Day fo the Demons," is the best. It deals with an aspect of medieval Japanese society which has not previously come up in the series-- the brutal oppression of Christians by the Tokugawa Shogunate. Daigoro makes friends with a little Christian girl, and he and papa have to rescue her from execution. It features a rather interesting method of mass execution: the Christians are staked out upside-down on a beach, and left to drown as the tide comes in. Pretty macabre, but I'll have to remember it as an overly-dramatic way to dispose of my enemies when I become an Evil Genius.