Lady Snow Blood

My latest read - a manga about a female master assassin who is for hire at 1000 yen (at a time when 150kg of rice was 6 yen and the monthly salary of a school principal was 13 yen). Just take your salary and multiply 1000 times to get the picture..

You would think, one job and she can shake leg for the rest of her life. But then she is not doing this for money (wow, don't we wish not to have to work for the money). I guess her jobs are like for practice to sharpen her skills towards a larger goal - to revenge the unfair deaths of her family. Her mother conceived her just for this purpose. The chapters cover cases of her assignments and how she strategised to meet the victim and carried our her task. The drawings are raw and ruthless, in typical japanese horror style.

The story is authored by the same Kazuo Koike who did Lone Wolf and Cub. Hmm.. I think I enjoy Lone Wolf and Cub more but then maybe I am prejudging too early, since this is only Vol 1. Maybe the idea of a assassin with Samurai training is more romantic. The manga shop in Orchard Cineleisure sells these english translated manga much cheaper than other bookstores like Kinokuniy, for those of you into these sort of literature too.