Vagabond Volume 1: An Unflinching Ride

He’s alive and not ready to die just yet. This is the picture we are afforded in the opening pages of Vagabond—a restless prodigy of combat. And if you wished this introduction could’ve been more hypnotic, we are given this life-like image. Never have horses looked more majestic.

Vagabond initially deals with Musashi and Matachi, two friends with different mindsets. Musashi is a full-blown coward, a friend who isn’t made for the battlefield or basic relationships. Musashi, by comparison, is a tough-wield and charismatic warrior. It’s less of a friendship and more of a father-and-son relationship. Musashi picks Matachi’s slagging due to their history and maybe due to loneliness. Silence is worse than befriending a follower. After a good gist of their dynamic, Musashi ends up collapsing due to his injuries with a girl sitting above him. They both awake to Akemi and Oko’s welcome. This mother and daughter are thieves, but ones trapped by the samurai’s desires, and this is illustrated when Akemi struggles to keep it together at the sight of the man who killed her father. These two seem to be trying to seduce Musashi and Matachi, to Musashi’s annoyance and Matachi’s interest.

Things quickly blow up as Oko’s place is attacked, leaving Matachi and Musashi with weapons to defend themselves, but only Musashi is able to get a hit on the enemy. Even at this moment, it’s clear Musashi is an outsider and one that can’t operate with Matachi. He lives by his own accord and respects Matachi as a friend, but Matachi is your standard soldier. He is not a man of steel, and is not vulnerable to jealousy and getting carried away. While Musashi is reflected as the mature one, both these two are immature as their journey is only beginning. But the difference between the two is not just skill, Musashi is an animal in battle. He spares no time or hesitation in killing his prey.

But it’s important to say Matachi and Musashi are close friends when they can be, due to their enthusiasm at murdering their enemies. Yet these parts can be called trite in their meaning, as this could be a way for Inoue to comment on a fractured relationship. Their joy is not in mastering the sword, but in the blood they, or mostly Musashi, sprayed.

In turn, you could call Musashi a broken sword, someone who fights to never lose and for his friend’s approval. Musashi is an animal who won’t back down from a fight but consistently pushes for a greater challenge, a better risk. But he seems untrained in his skill when compared to someone like Inshun later. I see Matachi as a fan and a follower, someone who follows Musashi to be like Musashi, while never embracing anything that defines Musashi, to his regret. He’s unskilled since it never feels like he has lived that life. Later, we finally get the line in which Musashi calls himself a ‘vagabond’ before some foes arrive. 

Inoue perfectly sets this out, and while the manga certainly improves in aspects, this level of skill is not really reflected again. You could tell from the jump he knew every fiber of Vagabond‘s world, and over time that fell out, likely due to him also writing Real. At present, it’s nice to bask in the believable landscape he draws us to.

You see more of Matachi’s inadequacy as a best friend as he practically leaves Musashi to die as his priority shifts to love. This really helps to highlight Matachi’s relationship with Musashi. It’s less a friendship and more a desire to be Musashi, but like any desire, it always stakes itself on what seems more important, making the friendship artificial. 

If Matachi couldn’t be any worse, his ill-tempered mother Osugi blames Musashi, assuming her son is dead. This leaves Musashi with death on ringing doors and a terrible best friend. Thankfully, he’s awarded an interaction withOtsu who freaks at his bloody appearance. Musashi is tragically an outcast, forced to live out in the woods all because of his putrid choice of friendship. Matachi becomes officially the most annoying character of the cast, as it turns out he didn’t just abandon his best friend when he really needed him most, he’s also cheating on his wife. While Osugi is certainly a devoted mother, her tactics are rotten with bias. Otsu is the victim of all this wrongdoing as she is left lonely and trapped in a lost marriage. Osugi becomes more cruel as rather than accepting her son has left and found another love, she rejects that notion, tricking Musashi in order to kill him. Otsu is now broken, realizing the man she has loved has deceived her, finding another.