Manga Review – Basilisk 1: The Kouga Ninja Scrolls by Masaki Segawa and Futaro Yamada (4/5 stars)
Reading Level: Adult
Genre: Manga/fantasy
Size: 224 pages
Publisher: Del Rey
Release Date: May 30, 2006
ISBN-13: 978-0345482709
Stand Alone or Series: 1st book in the Kouga Ninja Scolls series
Source: Bought
Rating: 4/5 stars
This is the first book in the Kouga Ninja Scrolls series. I enjoyed it, it is action packed and the ninjas we are introduced to have all sorts of crazy powers.
The Iga clan and the Kouga clan have been enemies for hundreds of years. Only the Hanzo Hattori truce has kept the two clans at peace. Now the Shogun has dissolved the truce and ten ninjas from each clan must fight to the death to determine who will be the next Shogun. Caught in between the Iga and Kouga clans are the star crossed couple of Oboro of the Iga clan and Gennosuke of the Kouga clan. Can the love of these two overcome the hatred between their two clans?
This reminded me a bit of the movie Ninja Scroll in the strange and odd powers the different ninjas have. The drawing is very well done; in fact some of the backgrounds are incredibly realistic looking. There is a lot of action and fighting. There are also a lot of characters but they are very easy to distinguish from each other and keep track of. There is a key of sorts at the beginning that shows a picture of the character and their name and clan association.
In this book we are mainly introduced to everyone. I enjoyed most of the characters and all of the their rather disturbing characteristics. This is a very violent book and there is nudity so I would recommend for either older teen or adult.
The only character I didn’t like was Gennosuke, she was so girly and helpless and she kind of bothered me. Hopefully she develops more as a character in later volumes.
Overall if you liked action packed historical fantasy manga I would definitely recommend this series. So far I have enjoyed all the action, the quirky characters, and the illustration. The storyline is pretty straight-forward but I am eager to see where this story is going. I will definitely be reading future books in the series.
This book goes towards the following reading challenges:
– Graphic Novel Reading Challenge
– You Read How Many Books? Reading Challenge
– Mount TBR Reading Challenge
