Vinland Saga

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Revenge, compassion, humanity, love. Pointy weapons making minced meat of people.

Vinland Saga almost has nothing in common with Makoto Yukimura's previous much praised work, Planetes, except for his passion for technical realism. He grounds his work with research, yet at the same time leaving it open for creative exploration. It’s not dry and lifeless, and at the same time it’s not completely in the realm of fantasy. Vinland saga walks the thin line well. Razor blood soaked thin.

This manga is brutal. More brutal than Berserk, Vagabond or anything of that ilk. Not to slight those manga, but one ... is a fantasy and the other is an adaptation of a romanticising novel. This manga is brutal because Vinland Saga's atrocities are reality-based and certainly not romanticised, whereas other manga usually are more fantastical or divided clearly between good and bad, right and wrong, black and white, or simply 'here is the protagonist, just root for him'. Not so in Yukimura's love letter to old fashioned beheadings, as Vinland is about Vikings.

Vikings pillage villages, they rape and plunder. There is no mercy and no survivors if they can help it. There is no such thing as a Viking displaying the positive nouns mentioned in the first sentence of the review. If Vikings arrive in your village, you will be killed or if you’re extremely lucky sold onto slavery, no matter if you’re young, old, man, woman or child. Based in reality and unflinching, our youthful protagonist, Thorfinn, is a passive-observer to atrocity and active-partaker to violence when it’s in his best interest, to further his goal. Revenge for his father.

Yukimura gets Thorfinn's flashback out of the way early in the story, and it’s a good decision as the boy is so fresh-faced, so loveable and innocent; his love for his father so pure, that to suddenly cut from the flashback back to the present and all the while leaving an essential gap in-between; the question that’s on the reader's mind for most of the manga is: how the hell did that young boy end up like this?

The flashback provides us with the motivation, the reasoning, but doesn’t reveal the details, the important montage of scenes showing a boy growing up and losing his humanity in the process; we don’t see it seep out of him gradually, which would be fascinating and make for great drama. As of this review, we have yet to see this transition from normal child to adult killer, but I have no doubt Yukimura will provide us with more glimpses of what that boy went through to get to where he is when the story begins.

Thorfinn is a jaded efficient killer. Silent and moody, he rarely speaks and when he does he is blunt and to the point. He watches the world burn and die around him without blinking because he is already burnt and dead inside. He can walk past a woman getting beaten and raped without a care in the world; this is the protagonist we're meant to root for. Yukimura doesn’t go all out and have Thorfinn inflict misery on innocents, which would make the manga even more interesting, but would also alienate a large percentage of readers too. As it is, as mentioned earlier, Yukimura walks that thin line with skill.

What Vinland Saga is more about than anything else is revenge. It is one of the best ideas to base a story around. Not the 'man on a mission' revenge, but the exploration of the concept, the idea of it all. Yukimura occasionally takes a break from the main story to focus on the concept via random characters, most humorously with a Christian priest who attempts to teach some Vikings about the concept of 'love' which they just don’t get. This side-plot not only explores revenge and forgiveness, but dovetails into Thorfinn's own predicament neatly, forcing him to reflect on what he's doing with his life.

The main story follows Thorfinn’s target who he sticks to like glue, always ready to challenge him to a duel to the death, his only requirement for completing his revenge. The brunt of all this rage and inexplicable adherence to honour, is an ambitious man seemingly lacking any of it himself, Askeladd seeks to rise in power through convoluted means and avoids becoming a cliché or a bore. His design is almost amiable at times, with a laid back expression on his cunning face belying his actual ruthful nature to achieve his goals. In short, he is not a one-note villain; he is many faceted like a few characters in the manga. Yukimura flips in and out of actual history through this man’s arc, giving the reader cliffs notes on the politics of the time.

The art, to be blunt like an axe disintegrating your face, is fantastic. There is a leap in quality from the first volume to the second, and it is maintained consistently throughout thanks to Yukimura and his budding assistants. There are plenty of memorable action sequences that are staged perfectly; lots of scope and perspective, and the composition is visceral. The violence is in your face and disgusting. Knife and sword thrusts are at times awkwardly landing into skin; fingers are thrust knuckle-deep into eye sockets. It all makes you squirm but you love it because you're reading it in the safety of your own 21st century home.

So the violence is remarkably gross and blunt, sometimes gratuitous to please the crowd, but mostly it’s just disgusting. The gore-hounds reading this will love it for that, but everyone else will feel repulsed, but in a good way because this is a story set amid war and conflict in the 11th century. What do you expect, bloodless elbows into the ribs?

The story travels around Europe, from Denmark to the UK to Wales to Iceland, we watch the invasion of England affect different players to the drama and pull them in towards each other through interesting means. There are sieges, manhunts, duels, chases, explosive action, edge of your seat tension, backstabs and unexpected partnerships, Vinland Saga has it all and is addictive reading while educating you along the way with its detailed depictions of an old way of life, from clothes, weaponry to customs and traditions.

Yukimura yet again uses the manga form to bring readers something a little different, a little more reflective of life outside of the pages. Vinland Saga is a dirty mirror of a past raged by a war not remarkable for its reasons or details, but for the ancient race that battled passionately in it. Vikings. Seriously, don’t mess with them.

I really wanted to give this Manga a 10.
It starts out very well, with a plot hook that makes you want to know what happens onward. The reason I can't possibly give this manga more than 6 is because of the characters. Almost all the main characters are so incredibly Japanese. It hurts seeing a character that is portrayed as a Norse warrior do things, and think things, that fits for a Japanese peasant.

One comment in particular stuck with me. And this isn't a big spoiler as it comes up very quickly and is often repeated.
"A true warrior don't need a sword".
How do I ... start elaborating on this? What on earth does such a Japanese mentality have to do in a manga about vikings? And the worst of all, is the pacifistic attitude portrayed. It doesn't fit into the setting at all...

I went into this, not expecting it to be historically correct at all. But the blatant disrespect it shows towards the culture of the time, and the force-feeding of Japanese culture into a Manga about Norse people is just too much.
When starting reading this manga the expectations were very high, because it started out very well. The way it develops is frankly an insult to old Norse culture, while it oddly enough glorifies the church? That one really took me off guard.

Really wanted to like this manga, but I can't advice it if you want something that actually represent Viking culture at all. The pacifistic attitude is way over the top stupid.

"Idealistic, but not realistic" that is the core problem of Vinland Saga.

It is nothing more than an overrated manga that presents itself as a realistic, and historical take on pacifism, and the Norse setting only to fail horribly.

Characters:

-Thorfinn, the main character is nothing more than wasted potential. He starts off as a person who is fueled by revenge towards Askeladd, the mercenary who killed his father, Thors.

Not once during this period does Thorfinn ever ask himself the question of "who is the person that hired Askeladd to kill my father?" As a result Thorfinn wastes a decade of his life for ... nothing, and to make it even worse he ends up crying over Askeladd when he dies. After Askeladds passing, the prologue ends, and Thorfinn is enslaved. During this period of time, he reflects on himself and laments over the amount of people he killed in pursuit of Askeladd, and swears to live a life of peace to atone for this.

While this sounds promising and full of potential, you must understand that potential by definition is not being used, and this is where Thorfinns character begins to crack.

-Thors, is a legendary jomsviking who after having an epiphany on the nature of violence, exiles himself on the outskirts of society, and lives the remainder of his life as a pacifist. He is the one who is responsible for placing the seeds of pacifism in Thorfinn with his words “You have no enemies”.

"You have no enemies”.

The story tries to present this ideology as realistic, but if you truly have no enemies, why did Thors defend himself against the mercenaries who attacked his loved ones? Why does Thorfinn defend himself from characters like Snake, Garmr, and so on?

The reality is that YOU DO HAVE ENEMIES, and the only reason why Thorfinn and Thors are only able to be pacifists is because they have the strength and force to back it up.

The author never addresses the fact that Thors/Thorfinn have superhuman levels of strength, and their philosophy isn't applicable to regular people. In some cases it is necessary to use self defense, and take the lives of others because we don’t have the luxury of letting them live another day.

The sacrifice from this joke of a character gets even worse later on as his death was entirely preventable when it is shown that he had the reactions, speed, and strength to knock out superhumans like Thorkell before the latter could even react.


The author also never address characters like Askeladd and Thorkell who more or less lived a happy life on their terms despite all the bloodshed they engaged in.

- Canute, the prince is set up as the foil to Thorfinn where the former wants to create a utopia through bloodshed and the latter wants to create one through peace. Master vs Slave morality.

While this character sounds good on paper, he:

●barely has any interaction or screen time with Thorfinn in the later arcs, and it this point in serialization it would be too late for him to show up

●His development is incredibly rushed and makes no sense as he started off as an incompetent teen who couldn't do anything until he listened to a rant by a drunk priest and had his adoptive father die which made him into a hyper competent leader? This all took place less than 1 month in the story, and it claims it's realistic, what a joke.

STORY:

-While the prologue may have been passable, the Ketil Farm Arc is when the story begins to fall apart. During this arc we are introduced to Ketil, who is the master of the plantation Thorfinn belongs to as well as Arneis and Einar who are slaves as well as Thorfinns friends.

Behind her smile, Arneis lost her original family, unborn child, and spent the last years of her life having her dignity taken away through being raped and abused on Ketil's plantation, she ends up dying because Ketil killed her in a fit of rage.

This event leads to Einar attempting to kill Ketil, but Thorfinn intervenes and then preaches about the cycle of revenge, and pacifism so essentially Thorfinn lets Ketil get away with raping, extortion, and all of the terrible things hes done, and Arneis is left without justice .

-The story gets a bit better in the Baltic Sea War arc, and goes back to being garbage in Vinland Expedition. During the former, Thorfinn is able to get through without killing people by having the strength to back it up, and with political connections. This arc is much more enjoyable than the previous farm arc, and it seems like the author is growing only to fall off in the next arc.

-During the expedition to the Vinland colony, Thorfinn gets into an conflict with Ivar who argues that they must bring weapons to the colony since they are going to uncharted territory, and thus need a means to protect themselves or it is all for nought. While Ivar struggles to articulate his ideas, he still ends up making a case grounded in logic unlike Thorfinn who straight up admits he has no actual response or argument for Ivar...

THIS IS MORE THAN A HUNDRED CHAPTERS IN, all this preaching about pacifism, and self reflection only for Thorfinn to have this little self awareness or ability to defend his ideas.

At this point Thorfinn should understand the rest of the settlers are just regular people, not superhuman, and need a means to defend themselves in this certain time…

SETTING:


The author fails to realize that while Norse society was violent (most of western civilization was at that time) they also had means of regulating violence through honor culture, and institutions such as the man-price or weregild where you would have to pay money for doing someone wrongfully.

He also fails to recognize that the general attitude of the Norse and their culture is what allowed them to thrive in such an environment, being a mercenary was a legitimate career path in these societies, and Thorfinn does not offer any meaningful alternative to this culture.

What the author could have done is explore the differences between Norse Society, and the Christian civilizations since the historical Thorfinn was Christian (alongside his wife is as well) and their views regarding how society should be run.

This is a massive missed opportunity since the Norse would gradually accept Christianity, and Thorfinn even travelled to Constantinople which was a civilization not only important to Christians, but the Norse as well.

BUT NO…. instead the author offscreens this travel which could have been used as a moment of self reflection, and bring more food to the table.

Like I said earlier, he could have had a master vs slave morality dynamic, and explore both cultures' views towards peace, and violence but the author does not have the nuance or skill to do this.


THEMES:
while the author is big on self introspection, he continuously proves in his writing that he has NONE.

the motto "You have no enemies" is completely unrealistic given the nature of the world the story depicts, and Thorfinn despite being all about self introspection doesn't have the self awareness to realize his philosophy is only possible because he has the power to back up, and the second you swap him for a character like Gudrid or Einar who are just a regular person, the story crumbles apart.

A horrible story, 0/10. Just watch Vikings, read the actual Norse Sagas or the New Testament instead.