A stunning example of writing failure (so much more surprising because Naruto nailed the initial emotional turmoil), an unusual case of masterful tech designs being a detriment to enjoyment of reading, Samurai 8 Hachimaru Den is seriously stunted.

Samurai 8, most likely, was supposed to be a lighter, more upbeat story, separating itself from Narutoverse by going into a techy spacefaring future and swapping ninjas for samurai. A space fantasy with magic-like consistently designed technology, with interstellar travel, mysticism and cyber superhuman warriors … A more contemporary hero, initially frail and disabled, gaining powers through his parent’s sacrifice and gaming… What could go wrong?

Turns out almost everything. Even the art is problematic. For starters, it’s unreadable because of the lack of shading, and shading had to be omitted to make way for the wealth of tech details. The situation becomes better in later chapters, but page layouts still look like a mess. It boggles the mind, considering the amount of effort put into visuals here. The samurai designs were carefully bred to become viral, to ensnare little boys, they have it all – variable, complex, dynamic, yet recognizable, sporting that linework oomph with a tiny pang of cool nasty. They travel on turtle spaceship. They have support animal cyborgs. They can fight in space. The level of pandering is on par with MMOs. Yet in the end it all drowns in visual debris. Consequently, with the plot failing to take off, the richness of visuals becomes an annoying dissonance.

These types of overcomplicated settings often fail, and Samurai 8 addresses none of the typical major issues. The old Japan and a biotechy sci-fi have different audiences, which may not intersect much. Advanced technology mimicking pre-industrial world structures and practices needs a very strong suspension of disbelief. And info dumps are unreal. Just like the art, the text of this manga is more often than not rendered unreadable by the amount of terms, titles and names. I love delayed exposition with passion, but it should never take up to 80% of text, which happens in Samurai 8. And then the remaining 20% of narrative are mostly pow-pew-friendship rules-woosh.

The characters are rubbish. I try to see the best even in standard stories, it’s very possible to do them right, but high energy doesn’t hide the vapid emptiness of the cast here. I couldn’t connect to anyone, and the speed and inelegance of introductions are painful. The main group is supposed to be a band of misfits – a formerly sheltered orphan, a cutely uncute freckled girl, a gender ambiguous weird kid – but they are not truly human-like or sympathetic. The protagonist, initially physically disadvantaged, immediately gets the whole adventure-ready package – a body that can do it all with a guarantee, an old legendary weapon, a famous mentor (somehow now literally a cool cat), a robot buddy (both feline and canine), a homely fate-bound girl, institutional support and recognition, and an unfolding galaxy saving quest to take on. He’s lost some things, but he’s reached his dream of being a samurai, the best social class and immortality right from the start, so he’s happy. He’s also a gaming champion, because of course, and that’s how he’s learned all about samurai and how to fight as one. The rest of the kids just tag along, somehow captivated by a former social recluse. It’s boring, he’s boring. Naruto was much more alive and balanced.

If you stop and think even for a moment the whole setting is very disturbing. The samurai are enshrined as manifestations of a warrior god, they give up their bodies in a ritual suicide to gain immortal vessels and then only seem human. The naturally following moral dilemmas and the highly probable body dysmorphia are not addressed in the manga at all, as far as I saw. Everything else in their world revolves around the samurai. They are neither “natural” superheroes, nor a separate society of jianghu, everyone wants to be a samurai, they are a major asset for a nation. I find a militaristic religion revering inhuman war machines and a society focused on producing them off-putting. Girls are driven to the role of princesses, who sort of give birth to samurai, are bound to a predetermined samurai by “fate”, give them power. There’re some female samurai in the lore, but 99% of them in the main story are male, even though it makes no good sense considering they are cyborgs. Seems like this technologically developed future digs ancient times not only in aesthetic. But it’s hard to speak about nuance here, not only because I dropped this in the first half, but also because there doesn’t seem much of it going on. It is just a loud by the book adventuring, which tries to hide its narrative failures by flexing the character design muscle.

Samurai 8 is a chore to get through, nothing sticks for me. It’s too in your face with its plan to be a self-insert “awesum” adventure for a tween nerdy gamer weaboo, and maybe to cash in on toys. And, like, that’s what Shounen Jump is for, but both story and visual composition here collapse in an unsightly way. The impressive cyber samurai designs can’t compensate for all, and they have ethical and aesthetical issues too.

According to the wiki, they try to save a galaxy from the entropic death in Samurai 8. The underdog protagonistin overcomes his initial limits, has an exciting journey and leaves a mark on the world. But the manga itself remains underrealized and weak, the entropy in it almost palpable. The garbled pace of an axed work right from the start, the bad page composition and the cumbersome unnatural narrative make it very hard to follow, to immerse or to care. I believe this is objectively a poor manga, sadly, the only thing to take out of it for the majority of readers being certain points in designs.