Lone Wolf and Cub Volume 19: The Moon in Our Hearts

by Goseki Kojima and Kazuo Koike

Dark Horse Comics is proud to present one of the authentic landmarks in graphic fiction, Lone Wolf and Cub, to be published in its entirety for the first time. Lone Wolf and Cub is an epic samurai adventure of staggering proportions -- a 17th century story of a disgraced Shogun's executioner wandering the country as an assassin.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1569715912
• ISBN13: 9781569715918
• Release Date: March 2002
• Publisher: Dark Horse Manga
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 4.3" x 6.1"
• Age Range: 16 years and up

Customer Reviews

Ogami Itto and Daigoro finally walk on the moon...

You always have to be wary about what is going to happen next in the Lone Wolf & Cub saga, but I have reason to believe that "The Moon in Our Hearts," Volume 19 in this manga epic constitutes the end of a major act. At the end of this volume, in the titular story, Ogami Itto and Daigoro "walk on the moon," and wait until you see what that means. Volume 19 offers up five stories:(93) "Four Seasons of Death" offers a nice variation of the climatic battle between Lone Wolf and those who try to arrest him in a story where he is mostly a spectator to the action. A young woman on her way to her wedding is kidnapped by her lover, who holes up in a house and threatens to kill them both before letting her marry another.(94) "Wives and Lovers" offers another different love story between Chiga, the widow of a Fukaya Han retainer and Karube Genjiro, a cavalry officer, who had been searching for four years for the Ronin who murdered her husband. During this time the two have become--well, that is the question here, which only becomes further complicated when the pair cross paths with Lone Wolf and Cub.(95) "The Marksman" finds Retsudo Yagyu ordering Inaba Shigemasa, the foremost marksman of his age, to gun down Ogami itto, who has abandoned the baby cart to the sea and is climbing cliffs never climbed before by man (with Daigoro hanging around his neck). (96) "A Mother's Flavor" is a story in which a prostitute spots Lone Wolf & Cub walking through town in the middle of the night and decides that if she follows them she will be free of her servitude. Noting that any one may walk the Shogun's roads, Ogami Itto allows her to follow. The title comes from the fact that Daigoro eats to survive and the taste of their rice means nothing to boy, who does not know "his mother's flavor." Before their paths diverge, the woman tries to do something about that. (97) "The Moon in Our Hearts" finds Ogami Itto and Daigoro taking to the sea as the extended Yagyu clan comes to Edo for the final showdown. Meanwhile, Retsudo has the Shogun's finest warships patrolling the sea to blow Lone Wolf and Cub out of the water. Kazuo Kokie provides some of the most poetic descriptions of Ogami Itto's quest in this pivotal story that brings the assassin and his son one step closer to the end of their journey.Once again there is a sense of the quiet before the storm, as Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima focus more of characters and less on a high body count in these five stories. Lone Wolf & Cub is a transcendent "comic book," now on the cusp of its 100th episode while maintaining a level of superior story telling that is unrivaled in the field. If there is something else this grand, I certainly have not heard tell of it to date.

The Lone Wolf saga continues

The genre-defining masterpiece of visual literature that is Lone Wolf and Cub Saga continues in this book. Former Shogun's Executioner, the ronin Itto Ogami and his son Diagoro attempt to enter Edo, the stronghold of the dreaded Yagyu clan of Assassins to settle once and for all the feud that is the focus of the entire saga. Bushido (the Japanese warrior philosophy) is never as well illustrated as it is here as Ogami is forced to cut his way through men who admire him but are honour-bound to stop him. Powerful storytelling and stark, brutal visuals with few restraints.

On to Edo.

This episode, Retsudo throws more fodder into Itto's path. An interesting passage in which Retsudo refers to and strategizes Ogami Itto as if he were an entire army, which for all practical purposes he is.Also, there is an stylized melee in which we see none of the fighting, only the horrfified looks of peasants as they watch the massacre, with the sounds of battle and dying scattered through the images. Pretty grim.If you're reading this review, you probably don't even need to be - if you've gone through the first 18, you'll keep on going.