Tweet
Usagi Yojimbo: Senso #3
Released by: Dark Horse Comics
Released on: October 1st, 2014.
Purchase From Amazon
Now at the half way mark of Stan Sakai's latest Usagi Yojimbo story, we pick up where the last issue left off as the War Of The Worlds style alien robots begin laying waste to the Japanese countryside. Usagi and company try their best to get everyone out of the town that the aliens have chosen for their initial attack, but as he sets out warning those who will listen an old enemy emerges only to be killed by the aliens before he can attack Usagi.
Meanwhile, in the field where all of this began, Takenoko and the elders try to decide if the ship that has landed is a god or a demon. Takenoko deduces that the ship belongs to one of the 'people of the heavens' and that it was sent as some sort of scouting expedition and that the next step is likely a full scale invasion. Fearing this, Jotaro and the rest of the soldiers charge towards the ship and soon find that it has unleashed another 'three walker' that quickly lays waste to many of their troops. They flee but call for the Neko Ninja to assist, one of whom will do just that and in the process find honor in death. When the 'three-walker' falls the samurai are able to quickly do away with the tentacled creatures inside and offer up the shell of the robot to Takenoko to study.
General Gennosuke and Jotaro head towards the crater to slay the rest of the creatures but find that they are not as defenseless outside of their robots as they first seemed…
Sakai takes things to some pretty epic extremes here, working Shakespearean style tragedy into the storyline and, without spoiling things, really dealing in big ways with the concepts of loyalty, honor and self-sacrifice. Given that Dark Horse's press materials for this issue clearly state that not everyone is going to make it out of this issue alive, it's fair to note that, yes, there are some fairly important players taken out in this third chapter. How it happens, however, is interesting and completely in keeping with the samurai code that completely dominates the code of ethics adhered to be so many of the characters in this series.
There's a lot of action in this issue and Sakai's art skills are still on par with his abilities as a writer. It all comes together so nicely, story and art mesh in wonderful ways, and while there are unresolved story threads from the first two issues still lingering (the big one being the parental plot involving Usagi and Jotaro) there's no reason to assume these won't be dealt with in the second half of the Senso storyline. Those who may have trepidations in the melding of H.G. Wells style sci-fi and old school samurai drama can put those fears aside. Sakai is firing on all cylinders here and kicking Usagi's thirtieth anniversary off in grand style.
