Summary: Samurai seeking to avenge their master find in the perpetrator a very strange man. He claims to be the blade of the gods. The gods tell him who is evil and he does their bidding slaying the evil. When his work is done, he will become a god. He judges the samurai evil as well...

A terrible thunderstorm causes Usagi to seek shelter in an inn. The strange man who lets him in is named Jei. He is not the owner. The owner had been executed for being evil.

Jei sleeps, but wakes with the realization that Usagi is evil. They battle. Over the course of the battle, Usagi is struck by lightning, but the battle ends with Jei being struck by lightning. Was he incinerated? Or has he joined the gods?

Thoughts: Perhaps somebody else knows an analogue for Jei in samurai fiction. I know the similar character from many other genres. The crazed serial killer convinced he is doing God's work. Some thematic crossover for example with Night of the Hunter.

My understanding is that Jei's name is an intentional pun. That if you refer to him as Jei-San, it sounds like Jason, from Friday the 13th.

This issue has an ambiguous ending. Is Jei dead or has he become a god? Perhaps another question we should ask is, is Jei really dead? He appears to be incinerated. And I think he was meant as a one-off villain. But we shall see if Stan changes his mind about that...

This is a great issue, as the last several have been. The opening with a cawing crow sets the mood perfectly. Then the choice to not show the slaughter of the samurai, but to imply it, giving us the dramatic splash page of Jei after the battle. The look of the clouds in the background is familiar, similar to a Critters splash page of Usagi wandering with clouds behind him.

Usagi sees that Jei's blade is black. He reminds the reader that the blade is the soul of the samurai, so a black blade means a black soul.

We have yet another great fight scene. (To avoid repetition, I may just have to stop saying that and instead only mention fight scenes that are merely good.) This is heightened by the dramatic storm. Lightning crackling everywhere.

There is a question at the core of characters like Jei that fascinates me. He truly believes himself to be just. He is clearly not, but that is my perspective. I judge him insane, but he claims to be the rightful arbiter of what is sane, as the gods have chosen him. Not being chosen by gods, who am I to argue? But how does one reconcile finding an objective point of view? The easy answer is to point out that Jei is alone in his beliefs. The majority can see he is insane. But appeals to majority are never satisfying, as history is full of examples of the majority being wrong, and the visionary being labeled as crazy.

One movie analogue I know for a similar character is from the film Frailty. A more modern film, over a decade after Jei. But this movie had a Jei-like character about a serial killer who believed the people he killed were actually demons. The movie doesn't leave you with any certainty, as the final reveal is that the victims really were evil.

Jei is not going this route. Whether his first victim was evil, we cannot say. But certainly Usagi is not evil, so Jei must be insane.



Mustn't he?

Grade: A/A-