Title: Samurai 8: Hachimaru Den Vol. 5
Author: Masashi Kishimoto (Story), Akira Ookubo (Art)
Publisher: Viz Media
Language: English
Format: Digital
Pages: 208
Genre: Shonen, Battle, Sci-Fi
Publication Date: February 2, 2021
The Story
We have arrived at the final volume of Samurai 8. As I feared, the final volume was incredibly rushed in order to bring things to a conclusion. Here, Hachimaru ends up locating another key holder who happens to be a lot closer than he thought. Right when he confirms it, they are confronted by Hanaichi who is also seeking the keys. Hanaichi is a rival of Daruma’s from the Ususama Style; however, we learn that Hanaichi is out for personal revenge after being betrayed by Ata. He patches things up with Daruma and joins forces with him. Little do they know, Ata has already located them and is on the way to collect the keys.
Hachimaru tries to fight Ata but he is completely obliterated. A blast from the past, Nanashi, ends up finding Hachimaru and sets him free. Before Hachimaru can decompose into a locker ball, he reaches enlightenment and, basically, becomes God. One insanely short battle later, and we get a typical “…and the adventure continues…” finale.
I left out quite a bit of detail as I don’t want to spoil too much of the ending… especially with what happens to Hachimaru after his battle.
Final Thoughts
This series continues to have the same issues throughout… and that it has great stories but none of As with any ending series, I typically skip over the Characters section since all development at this point, should have ceased or has come to a conclusion. While there is a lot of development here and new characters introduced, going into detail would spoil the final volume.
Overall, I liked Samurai 8; however, I was also highly frustrated with it. I’ve stated it before that I am aware that Masashi Kishimoto wanted to do 10 volumes with this series and it got drastically cut down to five. I can only assume that people didn’t find it as interesting as Naruto and; therefore, it was canceled before its full story could have been realized. It’s a shame because I could see all of the major plot points happening at a rapid pace but my imagination (or maybe you want to call it my Mind’s Eye) could connect the dots and see what kind of potential each plot point could have had should it have been given the proper time to develop.
Even while reading the final volume, half of the book was setting up a storyline… almost as if it were meant to be much longer. Then the ending hit with plot point after plot point happening in rapid succession and it just didn’t feel good. At the same time, though, I could see sense those invisible lines that would have gotten us there had the series have enough time.
Hachimaru, as a character, was too similar to Naruto in his attitude. He grew up REALLY quick in the final volume as his personality did a complete 180 on a dime. That kind of bothered me because it just felt so unnatural. Still, he possessed the same qualities as Naruto whether it’s a ninja way or a samurai way… you could sense the similarities between the two.
Funnily enough, as I was reading through the final volume, I thought of Nanashi and wondered if we would ever see him again. With the way the series was going, I thought that maybe Kishimoto just forgot about the character; however, a few pages later and we’re treated to Ann talking about her brother and how they came from the same village as Nanashi. Suddenly, Nanashi shows up after Ata completely wrecks Hachimaru. Funny how that works out sometimes.
The overall concept of the manga was a bit strange. I know that Kishimoto wanted to try his hand at sci-fi but there was just a LOT of convoluted information thrown at the reader in short amounts of time. It didn’t have a natural flow and if you really weren’t paying attention, it was quite easy to get lost in some of those explanations. To me, it just seemed a lot of these explanations were plot devices that enabled the characters to final a miraculous solution to their problems before just moving on to the next part of the story that would require, yet again, another “out of thin air” plot device due to the technology being used. I think that if things were kept much simpler, then it probably would have fared better with the readers.
I guess the best way to sum up this series is to label it as missed potential. This could have been great but too many mistakes were made with it. Again, I’m not hating on the series. I liked Samurai 8 but when you think about what it could have been versus what we were given, it’s a bit frustrating. Still, if you can use your own Mind’s Eye to see the potential of the series, I’d recommend picking it up but if you’re looking for deep substance here with long, intertwining plotlines like Kishimoto did for the Naruto series, sadly, you won’t find any of it in Samurai 8.
The sad part is… given the time, we could have had that.
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This item was provided for review by Viz Media
