It’s no lie to say that things have been busy lately, nevertheless this post has been a long time coming and for that I apologize.
This is a story that takes place thousands of years ago in a pre-unified Middle Kingdom (international known as China) during the Warring States Period of its history. A city of peasants is besieged by an army of soldiers many times its size. Coming to the defense of the cowed people is a single man who goes by the name of Ge Li, a warrior of Mo, an ancient school of philosophy, scientific exploits, and martial art. Mohism is one of the four principle schools of thought that emerged from the period of the Hundred Schools of Thought along with Daoism, Legalism, and of course Confucianism. Through out the story Ge Li has to not only contend with the cunning enemy general (the confrontation between the two characters is key), but the internal politics of the city’s decadent aristocracy.
The story is superbly researched, showcasing many of the unique weapons, the exotic weapons, as well as a few of the decidedly modern weapons that could be found in ancient China. I’d like to thank Omanga for bringing this amazing work to us via French raw scans. The only downside is that names of places and people are romanized under Japanese pronunciation rather than Chinese, which undercuts the authenticity a bit (remember Japanese uses the Chinese writing system of hanzi/kanji).
A film adaptation of this was made in 2006, called A Battle of Wits. Some of the promo posters are shown below. I’ve not seen it, but I look forward to watching this movie when I do get a hold of it.
COMPLETE
-ps Since we just had a fresh post by Archer, this will be the only series upload this time. The next one will be another very comprehensive one like the Naoki Urasawa mega post. In the meantime please enjoy this if you’re a new reader and of course the new stuff available one post down.
June 2nd, 2011 at 1:02 AM
this one’s read left to right.
June 2nd, 2011 at 8:43 AM
strangely, i’d never heard of this.
read it all last night, was quite good.
nice post.
June 2nd, 2011 at 11:53 AM
Silly you, I posted this manga 4 or 5 times already.
June 2nd, 2011 at 1:33 PM
orly?
i’m confused.
June 2nd, 2011 at 3:54 PM
I had this one for quite some time on my plan to read list, maybe this is the push I needed to finally start reading it.
June 2nd, 2011 at 6:29 PM
This is why I do a writeup to provide some heads-up information.
Recognition doesn’t speak to its quality, some superb series can be overlooked evidently.
June 2nd, 2011 at 6:31 PM
Archer, if you’ve still yet to read this manga, I seriously recommend you set the next weekend aside for it, it’s definitely worth it. :)
June 2nd, 2011 at 6:46 PM
I reread 4 vols last night, some of the unique weapons I spotted:
The Dagger-Axe
Whirlwind Catapult
June 4th, 2011 at 3:39 PM
Oh, many thanks for this recommendation! I also never heard of it, but it pulled me in right away!
Btw, it takes real mastery to tell an epic story in *just* 11 volumes. It was great to read such a condensed and focused work. Mangas these days often tend to drag on so much… :/
June 15th, 2011 at 9:27 AM
Watched the movie, and sadly, I would not recommend it. Especially if you liked the manga. Guess it’s ok to watch if you haven’t read the manga, but those that have, and those that have an inkling about Chinese history, might find the female cavalry captain a tad bit annoying.
The movie only (barely) covers the first fort and they tried to stuff the romance in there as well.