10 Year Hiatus

[Walter]

I missed the 10th anniversary, but as of May 21, 2025, it's been 10 years since the last chapter of Vagabond—Chapter 327.

Takehiko Inoue has never officially said he's done. But he's been quite transparent that he's become disconnected from the version of Musashi he created, and he simply doesn't want to continue the work if he's not feeling it's in him.

5 years before the current hiatus began, he was already having something of an identity crisis around continuing to make Vagabond. Here are Inoue's own words on the topic:

I really don’t at all have the urge to work on it right now, but I do know that if I don’t work on it, I’ll be in trouble down the road, and that’s basically what was keeping me going up until I went on hiatus. I don’t think that’s a good way of going about it. My hope is to stay away from Vagabond until all those unnecessary worries and emotions are gone and I’m ready to draw it because I want to draw it. I’m not sure if I’ll be allowed to wait that long, though.

I see this hiatus as sort of a death for myself as an artist, which sounds like a pretty dramatic way to put it, I realize, but there’s so much baggage that I’ve been dragging along for so long, and I know I’ll become a much better artist if I shed all of that. After I return to that state of innocence, the manga I make will be several times better than what I’m capable of now, I’m sure of it. If I prematurely go back to working on it before that, I’ll just end up going through this all over again. I mean, I’d manage to churn out something decent, I suppose, sheerly out of a sense of professional duty– but it probably wouldn’t be anything outstanding. Although, really, the fact that I’m still talking about making it something “outstanding” is itself a sign that I’m still carrying that baggage around. Anyway, I’m not touching Vagabond for now, because I think that’s what I need to be able to eventually produce something that feels right to me.

And a few years before that, in 2008, the Vagabond "LAST" Exhibition debuted in Japan, featuring original art from Inoue depicting the end of Musashi's life and his legacy. In my opinion it was Inoue's way of exorcising some of the negative feelings he had harbored about the character. And I think through the course of creating art for the exhibition, he ended up laying the character to rest.

In his own words (July 2008):

"I thought 'The Last Manga Exhibition' could become an opportunity for me, to turn the 'Musashi' I have depicted his lifetime of killing dozens of people into a positive, despite everything.

What I'm trying to say is—The people that read Vagabond all along. The people that accepted my many twists and turns during these 10 years, and kept following me. I really, really wanted to make them feel good. "I'm glad I kept reading" - I absolutely wanted them to feel that way.

Drawing "shadows" to draw "light." Conflicts and killing people are "shadows." I thought I had to draw that side, or I wouldn't be able to show the "light." I thought that was what I was proceeding towards.

However, even as it was something along the path to my destination, the pictures that depict killing people, although pictures, also had this power to unconsciously hurt people's hearts Un?? thorns were left remaining to the reader and the artist. When I discovered a part of myself that felt, I don't want to show these to people that still have God-like, have open souls like young chldren. I felt this was a certainty.

I'm glad that I was able to draw this story at this time. No, it had to be time this, and it had to be a "Manga draws in space, experienced with one's entire body," or it really couldn't have been possible to get it across.

I now truly feel that I finally had an opportunity to depict "light" itself. When i think so, it all wasn't a mistake. It turns into the exact form I was proceeding too. Even when i depict sorrow, it is no longer sorrow with a destination"

Despite all of that, I'm a hopeful kind of person. And business-wise, Vagabond's popularity is still quite high. I see it regularly mentioned despite being unfinished for so long. So I feel like Inoue'll eventually come back and give it a proper ending. Otherwise, he'd have already closed the door officially. Afterall, him coming back to revisit Slam Dunk through the movie was something I never expected to see him do, because that series was wrapped up nice and neatly. The door for Vagabond continuing is open even wider.

 

[lelouch-was-zero]

I guess. Even If Vagabond remains unfinished, the last chapter was truly magnificent to the character of Musasi and re-contextualizes a lot of themes and messages that the story and Musashi's journey told and how Inoue vision of Musashi.

Although, am not too bothered, Real is prolly my favorite work of his and he's dropping new chapters. So I don't complain


Although, I have ONE big question. DID JOTARO MARRY OTSU?