What can I say? I loved the book so I hoped the illustrated version would do it justice. I realize that some poetic license is required to modernize some of the themes, but the manga version takes this too far. It almost seems that despite using the same characters, and some key plot anchors, the manga is a completely different story from the book. The over-arching theme in the book was that although Takezo was a murderous, raging beast in his early years, his natural fighting instincts and strength were unmatched. I actually can't remember one fight in the book where he truly loses. The manga has him losing,and living to fight another day, over and over again. Obviously they are setting him up for a vindication arc, but that is so far from the true spirit of the original story it actually ruins the entire manga for me. The original story does have him progressively improve, but the manga is taking cliche themes from other popular "hero" manga of the times and is totally bastardizing a truly epic storyline. This isn't Bleach or Naruto. This story is not supposed to be the tired cliche of hero loses to strong opponent, hero trains, hero ascends to next level, hero triumphs. His metamorphosis, in the original work, is from unrefined butcher, to sword saint. But invincible throughout the entire plot. His weaknesses are Otsu, Gram Hon'iden and Takuan, not every other fighter he meets along his path to glory (like the manga irritatingly portrays). On a scale of 0-10, with 10 being excellent: Artwork, 9. Storyline 4. Honoring the original work zero, an emphatic zero.