Chronin Volume 1: The Knife at Your Back by Alison Wilgus was absolutely amazing. I adore anything set in Japan, especailly Feudal Japan add in a dash of time travel and you've got yourself one hooked reader. I will definitely be reading more from this series very soon.

Thanks Netgalley for the ARC. I tried this but I have no clue what is going on. The premise sounds good, but the art work is terrible. It is hard to differentiate between people because of the overly simple line drawings and it is just boring. There are too many other books out there to catch And hold my attention.

An interesting time travel/historian tale, but some of the art (characters/backgrounds) left something to be desired, even with the manga inspiration.

I think this one sadly just wasn't for me. I didn't really like the plot nor the drawing style. The pace of this graphic novel is slow, maybe too slow for me and the characters felt a little bit blank.

Awesome story about ancient Japan, and time traveling! Stunning art! I loved the story. Just a great story all around!

This started out as a historical Japanese graphic novel that I was completely uninterested in. Then three-quarters of the way through the book, I heard a record scratch in my head as the story went in a direction completely out of left field. I think you're better off not knowing where the story is ultimately headed to fully enjoy it so I suggest not reading the blurb as it spoils everything. The black and white art seems a bit amateurish. To do black and white comics well, they need to be well shaded and this is not. It's just basic line drawings. The last issue intrigued me enough to read volume 2.

Interesting concept - time traveling students trapped in the 19th century Japan due to an incident at their landing site. I will be looking for the full comic to review.

Chronin Volume 1: The Knife at Your Back
by Alison Wilgus
Tor Books

Set in 19th Century Japan set on the cusp of a revolution, teahouse server Hatsu takes an interest in mopey, silent samurai Yoshida, who has been making deliveries for the tea house. Noting it’s a curious work choice for a samurai to indulge in, Hatsu asks him to be her bodyguard on the road as she makes a business trip. He eventually agrees, but while on the road, Yoshida’s ignorance of the most basic Japanese customs leads Hatsu to believe he is not who he says he is.

What follows are unexpected revelations that reframe the story by offering additional vantage points to enter the events portrayed. What’s central, though, is the questioning of how we look at the past, sometimes through a romantic frame, sometimes through a revisionist one. It reiterates the idea that history is something that can be interpreted rather than exist etched in stone, and historians bring bias to their studies.

Wilgus executes the story in a skillful Manga art style and energy in unfolding the drama that works well together in presenting the headier themes, prefacing what is no doubt going to be an exciting Volume 2.

I am a huge fan of Frank Miller’s Ronin. It is one of the graphic stories that had the strongest impact on me while I was reading it. The combination of a plot of a samurai seeking revenge and a desolate future melded to create an incredible story. Seeing another story involving samurai and time travel, I decided to give it a shot.
Mirai Yoshida is a ronin, acting as a bodyguard for Hatsu, a worker at a tea shop who needs to travel across the Japanese countryside in 1864 to deliver an important message. However, Mirai is more than appearances would imply. Hatsu discovers a secret about Mirai that uncovers an entire future world that Mirai is a part of. But with complications from the future and dangers from the present of 1864, how will Mirai and Hatsu survive the upcoming fall of the shogunate?
Chronin is a bit lopsided. The plot took some time to find its feet, with the first half focusing tightly on Mirai and Hatsu before abruptly expanding out and spending the second half focusing on Mirai’s life in the future. The two plots show how they intertwine, but they don’t do so directly. Meanwhile, the art does a functional job of telling the story, yet it doesn’t always do the best job of creating distinct visuals of the faces, making it difficult at times to tell people apart.
This first volume of Chronin is ok, but misses out on a lot of potential. It makes the odd decision to end on a cliffhanger set before the 1864 plotline with Mirai and Hatsu, so readers already know how things will work out big picture. A little more editorial structure and direction could have made this a much more successful work.
Chronin is recommended for readers interested in the end of the shogunate era. It is a fast read, and demonstrates enough potential that it would be worth seeing how future volumes hold up. Consider waiting for reviews of the next volume before diving head first into this series.
NOTE: It is not particularly clear if the publisher provided the entire first volume or only a sizable chunk of it, so take my thoughts with a grain of salt. It might be worth perusing this at the store. If the publishers did only provided a chunk, then its possible that did a disservice to the overall work.
Review will be available at the provided link on 3/28/19

The volume of this new series about the cautions surrounding time travel should not be missed by readers and fans of both graphic novels and manga. Alison Wilgus presents an excellent story in "Chronin: Volume 1: The Knife at Your Back." Anyone who enjoys reading about anything Japanese should read this book.

After the introduction, the story goes on to follow a samurai who doesn't behave like a samurai. Given the era and the circumstances, Minoru Yoshida manages to blend into Edo, Japan in 1864. When he is approached by a local woman to be a bodyguard during a brief journey, he accepts not realizing that all of his secrets will be revealed.

Readers will enjoy the blend of the two art styles, Eastern and Western, the author uses throughout this series. While this type of story has been told before, the gender bending and the culture of the time eras are what drive the narrative more than the cliched "stuck in the past with no way to get home" storyline readers have gotten used to. Yet, readers will enjoy this book because it's the first in a series, and they will crave the next volume.

Alison Wilgus provides a different narrative in this historical fiction comic, but there will be just as much emphasis on the culture and the events of the past as there will be on the characters we meet throughout the narrative. If the story doesn't capture your attention, then the artwork will. I hope the author sticks with the way she tells the story because I'm already looking forward to the next one, and I don't want to be disappointed.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Between my adoration of Japanese anime, non-Western historical fiction, and all things sci-fi, the premise of an action-packed time travel story with samurai (Yay!) had me from the get-go. Unfortunately things fizzled out fast and never recovered for me. The art fell short for me as other mangas I've read have been much more fleshed out whereas this almost seemed more like a flat storyboard draft. At times it was even difficult to tell which character I was looking at, which is an issue in manga considering the absence of dialogue tags.

This difficulty led to me never really connecting with the two main characters and their plights, much less the secondary characters. I've never read a manga where I've had so much difficulty with the artwork itself, even a small bit of shading would have lended some much needed clarity and depth.

There would be a moment here and there of, 'oh that's kinda neat' but it was never enough for me to become interested in full. Maybe the excerpt wasn't long enough for me to become more invested because the beginning was much slower than the end but even the end of the preview wasn't enough for me to consider reading the novel in full when it's released.

This excerpt unfortunately did not make me want to go out and pick up the book to finish it. It lacked depth and I found the art hard to follow at times.

I don’t read many graphic novels, but I’m glad I took a chance on Chronin Volume 1: The Knife at Your Back. In my opinion, this is best read without knowing anything beforehand about the plot. You’ll get all of the surprises and more than one audible “what” that way. Otherwise, read on!

There are surprises at every turn as you travel through early Japan alongside a mopey protagonist who doesn’t have any real life skills. Her story starts to unravel quickly as she attempts to live up to the Samurai way, and that’s when the HUGE revelations start happening. Hidden identities, false personas, and time travel are all on the agenda. I didn’t see the twists coming, and that made it all the more interesting. I groaned when the preview ended and I’ll be desperate to get my hands on the full novel come February 19th.

The art style followed a simpler style, focusing on black and white shading and an almost grungy outline within the panels. The full panels are impressive to say the least. Paired with an interesting story filled with twists and turns, it looks to be a great read.

The preview of Chronin is slightly too short to reveal how the story will evolve, which is kind of a shame. It's set in two time periods, in the 2040s (USA) and the Edo period (Japan). Students have the possibility to time travel for their studies and visit Edo for short periods of time. Mirai disguises herself as male, since she thinks it helps her. Problems occur as she is suddenly stuck in the late 1800s in Japan, but she's not alone there. The plot surely seems interesting, but perhaps the beginning is too confusing as it starts in Edo when the time elapse has already happened. Then we get torn to the "real" present time and roll from there to the start, which isn't the suavest solution. We don't get to know the characters well enough to care and everything happens all too fast. This is a bummer, since the setting is awesome and the potential is there.

The art bugs me, since it's surely pseudo manga, but there's no shading whatsoever and the comic feels flat. The characters have long faces and the surfaces are stale and impassive in every way, and that doesn't really work if you do fight scenes and whatnot. The art looks as if it's not done yet and weirdly enough I've witnessed this before with other pseudo mangas. I'd say it's mostly the lack of shading, but also the lack of movement and flow when drawing. Still, this beginning seems interesting and as I only get the glimpse here, I'm not sure whether this gets better or not.

This graphic novel didn't connect well with me. The art wasn't my style, the story was interesting in some parts but not others, I didn't connect with the characters at all, and the ending left off on a cliff hanger so abrupt that I am too put off to read the sequel.

What just happened? You know I hate cliffhangers - and since this is a duology, I should have realized there was a major <b><i>to be continued</i></b>.

I’ll just have to wait until the next issue to find out what happens.

The Madison Mega Marathon Goodreads Group January 2019 was to choose a book by it’s cover…so I thought I might pick up this comic from Netgalley, because the cover looked really cool - old and new; ancient samurai in the digital age?

This was interesting, if a bit hard to follow. The art wasn’t bad - but it wasn’t my favorite either. But it was good enough and interesting enough to want to find out how it ends.

<i>Thanks to NetGalley and Tor Books for a copy in return for an honest review.</i>

I said to myself that premise is kind of interesting, I like time-travel stories, but as I started reading, I already knew this is not going to be okay. Art is just not nice at all, no, the proportions are weird and faces are.. I just, can't. I had no idea who is who, characters were plain, not funny, boring, not interesting, even Kristen Stewart has more facial expressions than all of the characters had in this together. This seemed to be like any other story a child in pre-school could write and draw.. I'm so, sooo disappointed, that cover and description looked so promising..

It’s no secret I love manga, but what may be less known is my propensity for the Meji Era. The crash of modernity and tradition provides a fascinating backdrop to any story (and tends to speak to my history major heart). Surprising no one, I immediately downloaded an e-arc of Chronin Volume 1: The Knife at Your Back by Alison Wiglus as soon as I saw the cover art.

Chronin is a new series by graphic novelist Alison Wiglus. The main character is Mirai Yoshida, a young woman in college in 2042, New York City. She is one of an elite team using a time travel machine to go back in time and study the period, making maps of the areas, recording lost information, etc. The past is dangerous, though, and after an attack by rebel samurai Miria is stranded in 1864 Japan, her friends dead. In order to survive, Mirai disguises herself as a samurai and winds up as a bodyguard to Hatsu, a waitress, on her travels.

It’s from Mirai’s point of view which we see the story. The majority takes place in 1864 Japan. Certain sections are flashbacks showing Mirai’s past and how they became stranded in the late Edo Era. These flashbacks were perfectly placed, neither occurring too often nor breaking the flow of the story.

This was so much fun. It joins time travel and. The era the story takes place in is one that is exciting – when modernity ran headlong into a previously secluded Japan, the end of civil war, and the displacement of many people whose trades were no longer viable. Mirai’s original home is one that’s also interesting – a future not too distant from our own where time travel is new, untested, and used fill in gaps in historic records.

Mirai is somewhat unlike the usual time traveler lost in a different place and time. She is quite confident in her knowledge of the time and place she finds herself. There is no learning about the century and the country through some initial fumbles, something I’ve seen in other time travel stories. Instead, we learn about the time period through the beautiful scenes of Mirai and Hatsu on their travels. While Mirai might be confident in her scheme to keep her head down and stay alive in the past, she is not without her own troubles, something which becomes more apparent as the story goes on.

The art in this graphic novel is somewhat unique. Despite being drawn in a more western comic style, it is portrayed entirely in black and white, much more similar to manga. This fits the story being told extremely well. Panels are allowed to stand on their own, with some pages having no dialogue at all.

Chronin Vol. 1: The Knife at Your Back by Alison Wiglus is a fun graphic novel with a beautiful, unique art style. I am absolutely going to continue with this series.

This amalgam containing elements of Victor Victoria and the recently cancelled “Timeless” television show offers a visual rendering reminiscent of Modern Japan: A Very Short Introduction by Christopher Goto-Jones. The sharp edges and soft shadings in gray scale appeal to the eye and support the spare dialogue, which punctuates the action in panels with the look of gorgeous woodcuts.

Yoshida and Hatsu’s journey in 1864 Japan resonates with present-day conflicts between social classes, Eastern and Western nations, and limiting expectations based on gender.

Volume 1 ends on a juicy cliffhanger.

actual rating: 2.5

I think this might just be a case of a series having a really slow start, because it definitely got more interesting towards the end of the volume, but overall I just don't feel like there's enough information presented here to really make me want to read more. The layout is kind of manga style, with only a few panels on each page and everything in black and white. There are also several pages with absolutely no dialogue so it definitely makes for a very slow pace story-wise.

The art is not necessarily bad, but the proportions do seem a bit weird to me and also it's very cartoony. I'm not wild about black and white art, but if you are going to go that route I feel like you really need to nail it with the shading and also make very distinct character designs because you aren't going to be able to tell people apart by things like hair / clothing color.

The premise is interesting and honestly should be right up my alley - I also was absolutely obsessed with manga like Rurouni Kenshin and Samurai Deeper Kyo as a teenager - but this first volume leaves a lot to be desired. At this point I don't plan to continue the series, but I wouldn't say it was out of the question if I was in the right mood at some point in the future.