Samurai Shodown Reviews

Samurai Shodown
Reviews http://samuraispirits.net
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Samurai Shodown
The Graphic Novel

The following preview are done by Jason Thompson

story by Kyoichi Nanatsuki
art by Yuki Miyoshi
b&w, 208 pages
$15.95 USA/$21.50 CAN

AUGUST 22, 1997 -- Viz Comics is proud to announce the shipment of SAMURAI SHODOWN, a graphic novel collecting the entire run, plus previously unprinted material, of the _only_ SAMURAI SHODOWN manga (or comic) to be printed in English.

SAMURAI SHODOWN, originally printed in SHONEN SUNDAY COMICS SPECIAL in 1994, is an original story by writer Kyoichi Nanatsuki and artist Yuki Miyoshi which tells the events leading up to the first video game.

The year is 1787, the Tenmei Era, a time of plague and famine in Japan, when ordinary swordsmen only add to the piles of corpses in the streets. Together, Haohmaru -- the headstrong, sake-guzzling samurai -- and Nakoruru -- Ainu priestess and protector of Nature -- set out on a journey to stop the carnage, encountering black magic and strange creatures as they oppose the disciples of the Dark Kingdom and the half-human wizard Madou Shiranui. On their way they also meet friends -- friends such as Shogunate ninja Hanzo and the 'Rose of Versailles,' the swordswoman Charlotte. If Shiranui's troops succeed in fomenting a war between Japan's warlords, the resulting devastation will clear the way for the Dark Kingdom's invasion of Earth...

"It's about time it came out in one big collection," said Jason Thompson, former Editor of Game On! USA. "GAME ON! USA, the magazine in which it was originally printed, ended at Issue 7 with more than 32 pages of the story left to go. Now it's all finally together, and it's a great tribute to the game."

"Plus, Nakoruru looks great," Jason added.

For more information, contact Viz Communications at: Http://www.viz.com or go to Game Online or send a mail to game_on@sirius.com, or Viz Shop-By-Mail at (800) 394-3042.

The following review are done by C. K. Gan

Short Summary
Nakoruru senses the evil spirits are growing stronger. As a nature guardian, she has to find out what is going wrong. Later, she meets Haohmaru. They find out that Yui Shosetsu is behind all this, With Hanzo's help, they start off their journey of seeking and defeating the evil Shosetsu.

Review and Thoughts
As you know, the graphic novel is only a fanfic done by Japanese, but is being translated to English. I would just rate this as an 'okay' manga(comics). First of all, the translation is not that great. Secondly, the characters in the manga is not as 'original'. Thirdly, the book is 'expensive'. Buy hey, it is not really that bad, there are still some good things about that manga. The artwork is decent and the story lines is pretty good. Sometimes, it is funny in a sense. Anyways, this is the only Samurai Shodown Graphic Novel available for all the Samurai Shodown fans, so you might want to consider about buying it, even though it is not that great.

Buyers' Guide
-Buy it if you are a Super Samurai Shodown/Spirits fan.
-Buy it if you have all the money you can spend in the world.
Actually, buy it if you can afford $10 U.S. of arcade spending everyweek.
-Buy it if you like to collect everything related to Samurai Shodown.
-Buy it if you are desperate to read it regardless how good or bad the book is.(If you are desperate, you probably have that book already.)

Links
The graphic novel is available from Viz.

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