Manga Thoughts: Vinland Saga 12
Mar. 7th, 2022 08:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
When the twelfth double-length volume of Makoto Yukimura’s Viking manga Vinland Saga went on sale I was finishing up the anime adaptation of the story’s first volumes. A certain familiar tension at the thought of too-close comparisons between “anime adaptations” and their original sources was somewhere in my mind, but so too was that unfortunate, hard-to-shake feeling that anything brought in from outside should be left to sit for a while before handling at any length. That’s been stuck in my mind for almost as long as I’ve been waiting between volumes. In any case, with all of the instalments in between where the anime left off and I’d got to in the manga I was wondering a bit about how I’d catch up to the story again.
For all of that said, it didn’t seem hard to understand what was happening as the runaway bride Gudrid met face to face with Sigurd, the man who’d been chasing her down for quite a while. I did happen to think I must have had the past impression this would have been where real trouble started, but those thoughts were mixed with an awareness of the actual moment being quiet and low-key. Sigurd returning to try and face his father Halfdan (described as “horrible” in the back-cover blurb) took up pretty much one of the original Japanese volumes combined in the translated release, and it was interesting to get a sense of another character having gone through enough to reach the point of just sort of stepping away from the performative violence of his time and place.
At that point there’s a jump ahead in time. I had gathered this would happen from the colour plate inside the front cover giving a sense of the other cover of the original Japanese volumes, although once it had happened I realised I’d forgotten some things about the story and supposed more time would have been skipped over than actually needed to. However, in the time skipped over Thorfinn and company did manage to make it all the way to Byzantium via river systems, sell their narwhal tusks as “unicorn horns,” and travel back to Iceland. I have to admit that sense of “possible adventures” untold did sting a bit, although there was just a bit of a flashback (and a comment that south of Kiev, a point with more unfortunate significance now than had I nerved myself to read the volume as soon as I had it, they could no longer speak the language).
I did appreciate there being a moment of real happiness in the story (Yukimura made a point of that himself in an afterword), and afterwards things remained peaceful as Thorfinn prepared for the colonizing voyage to Vinland. The introduction of new characters with their own reasons for trying to get away led to a bit of “gender identity exploration.” That, though, had me wondering about this case springing from “what someone’s told” rather than “innermost conviction,” but at that point I started worrying I was at the very least letting hitherto unrealised hangups show and drifting towards what might even be a bad-faith critique. It was a bit of relief to move on, and sort of interesting for Halfdan to argue about the unrealised necessity of “a monopoly on violence” even as Thorfinn comes to the optimistic thought “we can trade with the people there and everything will be all right!”
The length of the preparations left me wondering how this volume would end, but in fact the voyage did set sail. There was, though, a first bit of impending trouble known to the audience but not to most of the characters. How “inevitable” it’ll all be in the end and how long it’ll even take to begin finding that out are open questions. Even so, I did appreciate the breathing space of this instalment and the chance to take it in.
For all of that said, it didn’t seem hard to understand what was happening as the runaway bride Gudrid met face to face with Sigurd, the man who’d been chasing her down for quite a while. I did happen to think I must have had the past impression this would have been where real trouble started, but those thoughts were mixed with an awareness of the actual moment being quiet and low-key. Sigurd returning to try and face his father Halfdan (described as “horrible” in the back-cover blurb) took up pretty much one of the original Japanese volumes combined in the translated release, and it was interesting to get a sense of another character having gone through enough to reach the point of just sort of stepping away from the performative violence of his time and place.
At that point there’s a jump ahead in time. I had gathered this would happen from the colour plate inside the front cover giving a sense of the other cover of the original Japanese volumes, although once it had happened I realised I’d forgotten some things about the story and supposed more time would have been skipped over than actually needed to. However, in the time skipped over Thorfinn and company did manage to make it all the way to Byzantium via river systems, sell their narwhal tusks as “unicorn horns,” and travel back to Iceland. I have to admit that sense of “possible adventures” untold did sting a bit, although there was just a bit of a flashback (and a comment that south of Kiev, a point with more unfortunate significance now than had I nerved myself to read the volume as soon as I had it, they could no longer speak the language).
I did appreciate there being a moment of real happiness in the story (Yukimura made a point of that himself in an afterword), and afterwards things remained peaceful as Thorfinn prepared for the colonizing voyage to Vinland. The introduction of new characters with their own reasons for trying to get away led to a bit of “gender identity exploration.” That, though, had me wondering about this case springing from “what someone’s told” rather than “innermost conviction,” but at that point I started worrying I was at the very least letting hitherto unrealised hangups show and drifting towards what might even be a bad-faith critique. It was a bit of relief to move on, and sort of interesting for Halfdan to argue about the unrealised necessity of “a monopoly on violence” even as Thorfinn comes to the optimistic thought “we can trade with the people there and everything will be all right!”
The length of the preparations left me wondering how this volume would end, but in fact the voyage did set sail. There was, though, a first bit of impending trouble known to the audience but not to most of the characters. How “inevitable” it’ll all be in the end and how long it’ll even take to begin finding that out are open questions. Even so, I did appreciate the breathing space of this instalment and the chance to take it in.