Reader's Diary #1448- Makoto Yukimura: Vinland Saga Book One

I can't say that I was expecting to enjoy Makoto Yukimura's Vinland Saga as much as I did with this first book. A Japanese manga set in the Viking days of the North Atlantic would be a novelty, I assumed, but little more.

However, it really had it all: fine story-telling (the use of flashback in this first book is quite well done), compelling characters (each has a mysterious past), and great art (there's a couple of scenes, for instance, with close-ups of hands that have way more detail than I've encountered in manga in a long time). I also quite enjoyed the historical aspect and wound up appreciating the research that Yukimura put in. I found myself at one point following up with Google to explore the Viking/Christianity connection I had either long-forgotten or never learned.

All this and action to boot? I'm not surprised to see that the series won both the Japan Media Arts Awards Grand Prize for Manga and the Kodansha Manga Award.