Vagabond: Volume 13

by Takehiko Inoue, based on the novel Musashi by Eiji Yoshikawa, 212 pages

Musashi and "Shishido Baiden" take their weapons demonstration to the next, deadlier, level. Old nicknames resurface and it's the God of Death and the Demon Child all over again. Has either of them really changed that much in the intervening years since their last encounter? And what of their confrontation's two anxious witnesses?

This volume, as does the one before, intersperses the present plot with a good deal of backstory. Inoue employs his skills of silent understanding to show blood-soaked Tsujikaze and the child Rindô's almost wordless bonding as the former changes from enemy to family, from student to master. We see their horrible origins and how life has made them what they are...and how, now that they have come together, they are the only things keeping each other from falling back into that hopeless cycle of revenge and blood and death.

Names have become a major theme in this series. There are names we are given, names we shed, earn, choose, or vow never to forget. One such name is that of the first man to defeat Tsujikaze--and the man whose name Matahachi has stolen: Sasaki Kojirô.