Review — ‘Usagi Yojimbo’ #26: Crossroads Part II

Stan Sakai (Author, Artist, Cover Artist) | Colorist: Hi-Fi Design

In Usagi Yojimbo #26, Yukichi and Usagi have decided to go after murdering samurai, who are leaving a trail of death behind themselves.

At a crossroad, they both decide to advance each in one direction to try and find them, and, after a certain distance, they agree to go back and help the other in case of need.

Usagi catches up to the samurai and has one of those amazing and cinematic conversations Sakai is so prone to. Since the master-less samurai consider themselves to be watari-kashi, professional escorts, they feel entitled to rob and murder in their wake, because peasants have no value whatsoever. Usagi disagrees and tells them they have no honor.

“Can honor feed me, or clothe me?” says the rogue samurai, and thus seals his fate, but can Usagi defeat six-armed samurai alone?

Meanwhile, Yukichi encounters one of my favorite sinister characters, a man rendered mad by a fever who believes himself to be the “blade of the gods,” imparting self-righteous justice to whomever he feels is evil.

We talked about him previously.

Their conversations about whose law is above the other, the law of the gods or of the people, is very interesting as well.

Luckily, sensing no evil coming from Yukichi, he lets him go… for now!

Usagi Yojimbo #26: Crossroads Part II  is available in February 2022.

AVAILABLE: February 2022
IMPRINT: IDW
PAGE COUNT: 32
COLOR: FC

Featured image by Stan Sakai, all images belong to IDW Comics

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