Arm of Kannon 4
Posted: November 23, 2009 Filed under: Arm of Kannon 1 Comment »Masakazu Yamaguchi – Tokyopop – 2004 – 9 volumes
Yeah, this series is still rocking my world. As I said, I think a big part of why I am digging this so much is that it’s making such interesting use of Buddhist mysticism. It goes a little more into left field here, but the main theme of the series comes across in this volume.
Some weird details surface that I chose to mostly disregard, but some may find a bit confusing. Apparently there were a lot of rejects that the temple made over the years when trying to develop soul-less bodies to act as vessels to the Arm of Kannon, and some of the rejects wound up being powerful immortals, which goes towards explaining some of what’s going on here with the Manma and Mao’s bodyguard. We find out that the Arm can attach to and coexist with more than just the soulless bodies, and that there have been other survivors over the years aside from the old monk who’s been narrating the story lately. And we also find out that the unearthly, unduplicated power of a God is to be able to create life where none exist, which gives us the title of the series in Japanese (“Birth”). Make of that what you will, it didn’t make much sense, but it was still pretty awesome.
I think that’s a good summary of the entire series so far, actually. It doesn’t make much sense, but it’s still awesome. At the end of this volume, the old monk and the bodyguard rend time and space with a sword and a super-forbidden sutra. It was great.
Unfortunately, the storyline stops at the end of this volume, and a new one picks up next time. I hope I like it as much as I did this one, but admittedly, I wasn’t sure where the present one was going. As much as I like it, I suspect it would not have sustained itself for much longer had it kept up.
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