The Elusive Samurai - Reviews

They do a lot of metaphorical pictures and unnecessary flourishes, which makes things feel tangential or over-narrated. Unnatural dialogue. Bad characterizations. Weak-ass forward motion that basically just consists of gathering allies and fighting sub-bosses on the way to the big boss, Ashikaga Takauji. They frame all of the encounters as games of Hide-From-The-Demon, and will make the opponents' faces look more demonic than normal. They like portraying people with exaggerated characteristics, which can lead to some sorta funny moments (like the eyeball stuff) but is primarily just exhausting and extreme. So far the "demons" that Hojo Tokiyuki has clashed with include feir uncle Godain, the flesh-eating boar Botan, and the archer Sadamune. Fe has a handful of retainers who help fem out, but honestly I'm not too invested in any of them. They use Tokiyuki's superhuman ability to evade people to create strategies of luring people into traps or otherwise attacking while running away.

In the first few chapters, they keep alluding to some future great changes that Tokiyuki would bring about, but a quick look at Wikipedia shows that fe lost...so I'm honestly unsure what this manga will end up portraying as so momentous. Maybe it'll create an altered version of historical events? Which honestly wouldn't be that hard to do, especially with the way they've chosen to portray Suwa Yorishige. They have fem able to see the future to some degree (allowing for jokes/references about modern-day life despite this manga being set almost seven hundred years ago), which means they could justify altering history by just saying that Yorishige saw what the original future would've been and led Tokiyuki down a different path.

[Reviewed at chapter 12]