Lone Wolf and Cub Volume 17: The Will of the Fang

When Ogami Itto slew the last of Retsudo Yagyu's children, the head of the Yagyu clan ordered a frontal assault on Lone Wolf & Cub, which began by putting a price of 50 gold pieces on the assassin's head, bringing forth every bounty hunter in Japan. However, in "The Will of the Fang," Volume 17 of this epic manga, the ante is upped considerably when the bounty is increased to 5,100 pieces of gold. This means Ogami Itto and Daigoro now have to worry about every peasant in the country:(83) "To a Tomorrow That Never Comes" offers the return of a character who has crossed the path of Lone Wolf and Cub before. The orders have gone out for everyone to kill the assassin and his son, but there is one person who feels an obligation to instead help the duo make their way closer to their goal of Edo, where Ogami Itto can (we presume) show the secret message of the Yagyu Letter to the Shogunate. (84) "Bounty Demons" is where the bounty on Ogami Itto and Daigoro goes from 50 ryo of gold to 100, with an additional 5,000 from the Yagyu. This story focuses on the cream of the crop of bounty hunters: the Sanka-Gumi, the Sendo brothers, and old O-Kuma herself. Think of this as the Edo period version of tag-team bounty hunting. (85) "The Will of the Fang" reveals another chapter from Ogami Itto's past as he crosses the border into Sanuki Han. Once he makes it past the border, Ogami Itto encounters Masatsune Dono, who was once his student in trying to learn to be Suio-Ryu (the Suio School of Swordsmanship) by perfecting the wave-slicing stroke. For both warriors, this duel has meanings within meanings. Normally I quibble with which episode gives the book its title; not this time around.(86) "When the Wolf Comes" finds all twenty-six villages of Togo making every effort to earn the large reward for Lone Wolf and Cub. After all the exotic weaponry we have seen in some of these stories there is something to be said for the ingenuity of using pinecones. This story has a nice little ironic twist at the end.(87) "Life in Death" is the change of pace episode in this collection, with Ogami Itto hiding out in the mountains nursing a very ill Daigoro. The boy refuses to eat no matter how hard his father supplicates the demons they serve. But when Daigoro gives the slightest indication of what he would like to eat, there is nothing on land or sea that will stop his father from getting that for his son. I am really getting a sense for how Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima are pacing the Lone Wolf & Cub saga, so that I fully expected there to be a couple of opening acts in this part of the drama, as we shift from professional bounty hunters to hungry amateurs trying to capture Ogami Itto and Daigoro. As much as I enjoy the individual stories, one of which I read each night before retiring, it is the complex pattern of the entire epic that is impressing me more and more.