Usagi Yojimbo: the Dragon Bellow Conspiracy (part 3 of 3)

While Usagi is squaring off against Torame, it's just Shinjen and his men who have to breach the final door to the munitions storage. Where they find Tamakuro himself waiting for them with a line of riflemen.

Not looking good for the Hikijikitties.

Meanwhile, off at the Geishu castle, Noriyuki is trying to fall asleep while worrying over the fate of Tomoe and her squad when he's awoken by...well, his security was bad enough even WITH his master-of-arms at home, so I guess it's no surprise that things would be even worse without her. On the other hand, Noriyuki himself seems to have been practicing hard to pick up the slack. He honestly doesn't have much choice in the matter, given his career as a nobleman thus far.

It's the messenger who Shinjen sent to relay Tomoe's intel, which she faithfully relays. She could have just knocked on the front door and said she had an urgent message, but I guess nekoninja education and training doesn't include "how to be a normal fucking person when you have to."

She lets him know about the situation, including Usagi doing a temporary team-up with Hikiji's own deniable assets without their master's authorization and trying to rescue Tomoe. A similar message is, of course, being sent to Hikiji's castle. There's a chance they might need to fight a conventional battle against Tamakuro soon, and it would probably be best if both of Tamakuro's powerful neighbors came down on him at once. That is all.

I'm not sure why Noriyuki believes any of this, but it doesn't end up mattering to the story's resolution, so okay lol. Also, after she does her wacky ninja exit from the castle, we learn that this messenger also happens to be Shinjen's sister.

I'm not sure why this is being treated as a dramatic reveal. There wasn't any mystery being teased about Shinjen's family, or any reason for us to think that this particular ninja was anyone important (and her being someone important doesn't change or recontextualize anything). Just...Shinjen has a sister, who is also a ninja. Okay, cool I guess?

Like I said, the focus of this story kind of starts to slip after the halfway point. Though the biggest issue as far as that's concerned is still the Gen and Ino subplot.

Now, this lady will definitely be important in future episodes, on account of this one's climax. While Usagi reunites with Tomoe over Torame's corpse, Shinjen and his men get wiped out when they breach the keep where Tamakuro and his riflemen were waiting. The few surviving nekoninjas give the call to retreat, which Usagi, Tomoe, and the others all heed. Before Tamakuro can celebrate his victory though, it turns out that Shinjen's bullet wound wasn't actually as fatal as he made it seem. And, he and his men were shot down inside the weapons storage room.

Hence, there doesn't end up being a need for Noriyuki and Hikiji to send their armies after all. The central keep goes up in an enormous fireball, taking Tamakuro and most his surviving elite loyalists with it. Shinjen ended up redeeming himself for that previous failure, but it didn't do much for his lifespan.

His sister is probably going to be in charge now. Her dramatic reveal still seems misplaced, but I at least understand why the author felt the need to introduce her before the big boom scene.

That just leaves one subplot left to resolve, and....eeeeehhhhhhh.

...

Okay, so. The ending of "Dragon Bellow Conspiracy" also ends up being the resolution to the entire "Blind Swordspig" mini-arc. Which means Ino gets a whole lot of page space devoted to him, to the point that it causes the main story of this title to drag and lose its (previously very tightly managed) momentum. The fact that this story never had anything to do with Ino in the first place and only started to because Usagi stuck his head into what should have been a different episode and said "hey bro wanna be in 'The Dragon Bellow Conspiracy'?" and Ino said "lol okay."

Gennosuke's role in the story is equally out-of-nowhere, but he doesn't take up nearly as much space. Mostly he just provides comic relief for the rest of the story, and also has an important conversation with Usagi at the end that I admit does make his inclusion ultimately worth it.

Really, it's the decision to make this story also be Ino's finale that's the problem here.

So. During the big battle while Shinjen and Co are going for the gunpowder and Usagi is squaring off against Torme, Gen and Ino are fighting side-by-side. Gen is waiting for a chance to stab Ino in the back and get away with it. Ino suspects that this is coming, and is barely tolerating Gen's presence in the meantime. Then, for some reason, when Ino hears a rifleman taking aim at Gen and smells the match-lock being lit, he pushes Gen out of the way and ends up taking the bullet for him.

Yeah. Not sure why he'd do that. Seems really out of character. He did it, though. Which gives Gen a bit of a moral crisis. Ultimately leading to Gen deciding to let the wounded Ino crawl away from the battle, neither pursuing him nor actively trying to save him. This leads to Ino's (way too long and drawn out for the story it's been made to exist within) resolution, with him being found and nursed back to health by some villagers in a remote town that no one ever visits and no one has heard his name, and Gen telling everyone that he died in order to let the pig have his peace.

Well, the isolated village that took Ino in is being extorted by the bandits that spawn in this particular patch of forest. And, despite his desire to disappear, Ino just immediately fucking tells all the villagers that his name is Ino, leading to the bandits hearing it and putting the name together with the bounty they've heard about. Ino, seriously, how fucking stupid do you have to be? This results in Ino having to help the villagers kill all the bandits. The good news? None of them escape, so no one else will find out. The bad news? Spot gets killed in the battle.

The last artifact of his old life. Still sad though.

Ino stays in the village, to live a peaceful life except for when the mobs respawn. Or, um, until something in town makes him mildly irritated. I haven't seen any evidence that he's gotten his temper under control, which makes him a ticking time bomb, but...eh, maybe the predictable bandit spawns will serve as a healthy outlet for his aggression, I don't know.

More importantly though, what does this have to do with the Dragon Bellow Conspiracy? Aside from stretching out the ending and ruining the pace, I mean?

Like I said. I really can't think of a good reason for Ino's resolution to not be its own story instead of taking up space in a different one. Especially since all it required was for Ino to be wounded and presumed dead somewhere, somehow. Nothing about the circumstances of "Dragon Bellow" made it an especially good or obvious place to set this up, it literally could have happened anywhere and anytime without losing anything.

...

Usagi, for his part, is once again offered a permanent position in Geishu Noriyuki's court. And, once again, he refuses. This time though, his given reason for doing so is slightly different, and he seems to be speaking more slowly and unsurely as he says it.

He never says exactly what he's thinking, but the subsequent scene, in which he meets up with Gennosuke again, gets him close. The latter embarrassed him by vanishing in the night without even giving Noriyuki a "no" answer for the similar offer made to him, which Usagi gives him the appropriate amount of shit for (although Tomoe seemed politely relieved when she found him gone, which is pretty lol). Gen happily admits that he knows he wouldn't be happy serving a lord, and that with his personality he wouldn't last in any master's good graces for long anyway. Usagi's own explanation is lacking, and Gen has an insight here that I think lands close though not quite a hit.

Remember Usagi's first-ever meeting with Gen, before the latter even had a chance to do anything scummy, when Usagi was being all high and mighty about the way of the yojimbo?

Yeah. Well. Here's the thing: Gennosuke has been a better person than Usagi for this entire time.

Gen is a greedy, manipulative, murdering dirtbag...but I don't think there's any amount of money that would get him to crucify someone for the crime of having too unbreakable of a spirit. We know that he wouldn't murder a village's children along with its adults (he'll give up large amounts of money in order to proactively help children, in fact).

Usagi would do those things. We've just seen a version of him who did do those things, or at least tried to. Usagi could hardly believe what he was hearing, when he tried to reason with him. Even though he knew that he would have said the exact same thing. It was only luck that placed him in the service of a relatively inoffensive lord like Mifune.

...

Frankly, the next logical step at this point would be for Usagi to be reminded of some things he saw and/or did in his time as a house samurai, and realize that maybe Daimyo Mifune actually wasn't such a great guy after all.

...

I don't think Usagi is fully aware of this yet, but he's starting to become so. And, consequently, he's starting to change the way he thinks about things. Noriyuki might be a good kid, as noblemen go, but how can you know he won't get worse as he gets older? What might he eventually order Usagi to do, if Usagi were to swear an oath of fealty to him?

It's better to avoid the possibility of being put in that situation. It's better to be a disreputable rogue like Gen than it is to work a job in which "just following orders" is, in fact, considered an airtight defence.

The final scene of "Dragon Bellow" has Noriyuki being paid an unusual visit by Hebi to talk over the new status quo and make sure neither Noriyuki nor Hikiji are primed to screw each other over for at least the immediate future. In particular, Hebi wants to remind Noriyuki that no one has ever been able to prove a connection between Lord Hikiji and the outlaw organization known as the Neko Ninja Clan, and that presenting the ninjas' own words as evidence is unlikely to convince anyone. To which Noriyuki's response is basically "yeah, I know, don't worry about that, also fuck you." Really, there's not much else for him to even say.

I feel like Hebi is aware of the absurdity of his visit. And that he kind of feels like a clown even having to come here and say these empty words. But, well. He has his orders. How he feels about them doesn't matter. What he'd rather be doing than this, if anything, also doesn't matter. Too bad for him. Too bad for Noriyuki. Too bad for everyone except Hikiji.

The end.


I'm not sure where the name "Dragon Bellow" comes from. There's one part, while Usagi is unconscious and being rescued by Shinjen, where he dreams about a draconic personification of the war Tamakuro wants to start, but I'm not sure where his imagination is getting that from.

That's not the symbolism typically associated with dragons in Japanese art and folklore of this era, I don't think. And there's nothing besides this one dream of Usagi's to connect the conspiracy to dragons, bellowing or otherwise. Maybe if Tamakuro had a heraldic thing going on with dragons it would make more sense, but as it is I really don't get it.

Really, the whole villainous plot itself was kind of half baked, not just its name. The strength of this story was in how it made Usagi confront what it truly means to be a samurai and - although just in a small way for the time being - start to reject it. In the "Samurai" story, he was told that following the rules too scrupulously was a bad thing, and it seemed like nonsense to him. Now he might be wondering if the "bending with the wind' approach might not even be going far enough in the other direction.

The version of Bushido he was raised with is basically the epitome of "the law protects some without binding them, and binds others without protecting them." It has an even more insidious component in how it interacts with the cultural importance of honor, and - less explicitly, but no less importantly - of patriarchal male pride. The samurai is convinced that the law and the self are one and the same; that adherence to bushido is one's masculinity. Thus ensuring that the will of the tyrants is enforced not only from above, but also from the sides, from below, and from within.

I wonder if Usagi will ever think back on that warthog he killed in "Samurai" with regret. I hope so.

Anyway, that was the powerful core of the story that worked for me. The surprise of Shinjen ending up being an ally rather than an enemy and then dying before he could ever be an enemy again was also a pretty clever subversion, after the way he was introduced in "Shogun's Gift." And, of course, getting to see Tomoe again is always nice. Especially when the story gives her a chance to do something cool despite being a strictly second-rate combatant next to Usagi and Gen and their like, which in this case it did twice. First when she had a simple but very clever spying plan that only failed because of a freak coincidence with the neko-ninkas, and second with this amusingly devious ploy she used while giving Tamakuro's men the runaround:

Classic. And it even involves tapping into her primordial feline instincts.~

That said, there was also a heck of a lot of clumsiness in "Dragon Bellow." The perceived need for this to be a mega-crossover that features all the recurring characters is mostly to blame for this. I also think that having the villain be Literally Who was a lesser contributing factor. If we'd had at least a look or two at Daimyo Tamakuro and gotten a hint or two about the kind of plotting he might be engaged in, then this story wouldn't have to do so much of its own heavy lifting, and there could have been opportunities to involve Gen and Ino in the story more naturally. I do think it was good to have another lord besides Hikiji be the villain - both to have a baddy that the heroes can permanently defeat, and as a reminder that Hikiji can't possibly be the only greedy opportunist trying to upset the new status quo - but that other lord should have had some kind of existence in the comic prior to this.

Overall, a strong central thesis with some flimsy and ill-conceived buttresses. Could have been better, but its core is easily good enough to work despite the story's minor issues.