The Sword of Shibito, Vol. 1

by Hideyuki Kikuchi

The in the middle of a bloody war. The a strange castle in the Adachi fields where they say the demons live. The Saezuki family performs a forbidden act when they attempt to take a living soul and bind it to the cold flesh of a sewn-together corpse. From eternal sleep, Shibito returns!

Genres: Manga

208 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

菊地秀行

Reviews

[Anthonia]

Very good manga book. A must read. I enjoyed reading it a lot.

[Leila Anani]

A Samurai is resurrected by a female demon. He collects together body parts - the body of a strong soldier and the beautiful head of a pretty boy actor, sews them together and then performs a ritual to transfer the soul of his mummified son, the titular Shibito into this new Frankenstein body. His aim is to get his son to be the subordinate of the most powerful man in the land, hoping that eventually Shibito will kill his master and become all powerful and restore their family's greatness.

I rather like this one. There's a bit of Dororo here with the Frankenstein swordsman and the artwork is reminiscent of Bastard!! in places. There are quite a few Kikuchi trademarks - the beautiful faced laconic, undead swordsman hero, the mysterious dollmaster, intelligent crow servant, portals to other realms, bloody death and weirdness.

So far this is annoyingly all I can get hold of of the series - CPM published 3 volumes in English but 2 seems to have vanished of the face of the Earth. I can only find the entire series in French. I hope that it does get republished at some point as this is a very promising start.

[Sparrow]

I remember liking this manga when I got it my first time at Anime Expo. But my likings have developed far away from manga. I don't think the story in this manga was very coherent. It started with three odd characters, then moved to Shibito and the weird puppet-master (who, for no reason, decided to leave and no one stopped him...) and then it moved to the girl and the samurai. I think it jumped around too much. The art is beautiful if not gory, but the story is just not well organized or even that interesting or easy to follow.

[edel]

It's a shame that more people haven't read this. Although it isn't the greatest manga out there, it's a good read. Though the action is hard to follow sometimes, and the characters may be confusing, it has a great plot. It's rather gory though. Blood and guts everywhere, but if you're a regular manga addict, this will come to no surprise to you.

[k10]

Panel sequences are pretty tough to follow. The drawing itself is interesting, but narrative clarity should take priority imo.