The story starts with the daimyo, or clan lord, organizing a tournament for samurai to fight each other with steel swords rather than the wooden boken they should have been using, mainly because this guy is a bloodthirsty creep who enjoys watching people die. His vassal objects, but ultimately does nothing to stop him, and that's the first instance of a hole being poked in the samurai way, whether deliberate or not. Fealty to your lord trumps common sense, and in this case it was common sense that could have saved a lot of lives. This daimyo is also shown to kill servants on a recreational basis. Anyway, the tourney is an opportunity for two old enemies to confront each other, despite both being crippled.
The cripple in the blue corner is Gennosuke Fujiki, a very traditionally-minded samurai
The cripple in the red corner is Seigen Irako,a less traditional samurai who violated several of
the bushido rules and was punished for it by having his eyes sliced. Yep, he's a blind samurai. He also walks with a limp because of a mysterious wound in his foot, later revealed to have been self-inflicted to enable a counter attack to a battle move thought to be unstoppable. He's supported by Lady Oku, the former mistress of the master who blinded him and now his mistress. So that's what's driving this story, right? He screwed around with his master's girl and he paid the price, right? That's only half the story. Whoo boy....
The rest of the story is told in flashback. We see Seigen attempt to leave his beginnings as the son of a syphilis-ridden prostitute behind by joining the Kogan-Ryuu school to learn the unbeatable technique, Nagare Boshi (Shooting Star). Gennosuke is already a student there himself, and the two are as different as night and day. Seigen neglects his practice to sleep around with random women and drink, relying on his natural talent to see him through, whereas Gennosuke trains so fervently that it's almost a mental disorder. Their teacher, Gonzaemon, is a big hulk (sometimes in flashes of metaphor, pictured as an ox) who wields a giant wooden practice sword as if it was a weapon and in his hands, it is. He also has a Chelsea grin that's disgustingly shown as being inflicted by his master.
And then we meet the master of this school, Kogan Iwamoto.
* Splitting his second-in-command's face open over a mild slight.
* Having his mistress' two fiancees killed and having the woman herself ostracized from the community.
* Molesting his only daughter and ordering his students to hold her down so she can be forcefully impregnated.
* Driving his wife to suicide.
* Ordering his second to kill his fiancee back home so that he wouldn't have attachments.
The man is a monster, but therein lies the problem people have when reading Shigurui. Whose side are we meant to be on? Kogan blinds Seigen after Seigen offers Lady Iku some compassion and when Irako trains up to counter the Nagare Boshi, he comes back and kills Kogan, and all of his students except for Gennosuke to wipe the technique from the world. Sounds reasonable. Then Mie recruits Gennosuke to take revenge for her. Wait, what? This is the man who ordered her rape, who drove her to anorexia, who drove her mother to suicide. Why does she want him avenged? They're also partially taking revenge for the other students and for Gonzaemon, although Gonzaemon killed the only morally upright person in this story, a guy who was only in the manga for five panels, because he was in the way.
I'm guessing it must be a cultural thing and the author is making a comment on how crazy the situation is too, because even from a Japanese perspective I can't exactly see Gennosuke as a hero and Seigen as a villain, but that's how they've been painted. Mie is very sympathetic but her motives are astounding, and although filial piety was highly regarded at the time the original story was circulating it's hard to imagine wanting to take revenge for such a monster. It doesn't help that Gennosuke is a total cold fish, bordering on autistic spectrum. Seigen is more charismatic and he's shown doing good things along with the bad, treating the battered Iku with great gentleness and saving a starving child, but he killed his master and therefore must die.
All the death in this series (and it's a real bloodbath) is shown not just in detail, but anatomical detail. The creator, Takayuki Yamaguchi, draws with medical knowledge and in such detail that I'm convinced he's not right in the head. He does x-ray shots of his characters to show the damage they're inflicting on each other and the cross-hatching and shade work puts a lot of Western comic art to shame.
Also, the comic is quite educational. I learned things about the samurai way of life I never knew before, and some things were things I didn't want to know. For instance, if a samurai thought he might be ordered to commit seppuku by his lord in the morning, he'd take an arrowroot solution to clear out his bowels so they wouldn't smell bad when he cut through them. Though I think at that stage it wouldn't really matter, it was to avoid offending the lord who ordered the suicide, but again at that stage I'd be happy enough to defile the nostrils of a guy who just ordered me to cut myself open.
Anyway, it's worth a read. Go read it, or watch it. Just do something!
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