Lone Wolf and Cub Volume 26: Struggle in the Dark
by Kazuo Koike, Goseki Kojima

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Book Reviews of Lone Wolf and Cub Volume 26: Struggle in the Dark

Book Review: The end of the road for the poisoner Abe-No-Kaii
Summary: 5 Stars

(128) "Tales of the Grass: Nindo Ukon" offers the fourth story in the last pair of volumes telling of one of the Yagyu grass seeing the sign of the wolf fire and heeding the call to come to Edo. Unlike the characters of the previous tales, Nindo Ukon has some other business to take care of first before he heeds his master's call.

(129) "Struggle in the Dark" resumes the conflict of wills between the master poisoner Abe-No-Kaii and his captive guest, Retsudo Yagyu. By now we know that the grass have started to arrive in Edo and Retsudo uses them to great advantage to force the deadly little game between him and Kaii into its final stage. Throughout these books Koike and Kojima have done their best to replicate the customs and beliefs of this period, and in this story something we learned long ago becomes Retsudo's trump card. In a scene with great meaning for what is to come in this volume, the head of the depleted Yagyu clan offers Kaii some strange advice.

(130) "Song of the Spirit" finally returns us to Ogami Itto, who leaves Daigoro to watch over the two swords standing in the ground and boldly enters Edo to ask a favor of Taruya Toemon, the Machi-Doshiyori who runs the city's greatest festival. Lone Wolf wants permission to use the festival to enter the great castle of Edo. But why?

(131) "Great Reversals" finds Ogami Itto walking the floors of Edo castle in search of Retsudo Yaygu while Kaii tries to face death on his own terms and proves himself to be the great coward we have always known him to be.

(132) "Scarlet Summer, Silver Fall" tells the tale of how Abe-No-Kaii met his fate having been ordered by the Shogun to commit seppuku. This is the right to kill oneself with honor to atone for failure, a right allowed only to the samurai class. Kaii is not really a samurai, but he is expected to act like one. But the poisoner has some surprises left.

Thus ends the largest sub-plot in this manga epic. Now the only impediment remaining to the final act of the death struggle between Ogami Itto and Retsudo Yagyu are the Yagyu grass.

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