19th century Japan and your poppa gives you a choice: become a samurai or a ninja. And then: you must remove a magical bracelet from the evil Lord Touma. The only trouble is breaking into his heavily guarded castle and finding him - without getting caught!
Samurai vs Ninja is Jason Shiga’s fourth choose your own adventure-style comic, where you jump around the pages of the book based on your own decisions - and it’s about two books too many. The novelty was fine for a couple of books but beyond that, the format’s lost its sheen - especially if the story isn’t that great either.
Shiga has mastered the format though. The book “works” brilliantly on a technical level and I liked that he’s even added in a mechanic that makes you feel like you’re using items your character carries. If you feel like you’re stuck and looping a particular section, remember that your ninja lockpick, when facing a lock, adds +7 to your destination page and +30 when using your samurai sword. The fact that there are no hints and that you have to remember this is especially clever in making you feel you have more agency, like in a real game.
Certain sections though - exploring the castle - can feel quite tedious given the sheer number of choices and doubling back you have to do to get anywhere. I “played” the story twice, to experience both Samurai and Ninja storylines, and felt very bored when it got to this section of the book each time. That said, it really does feel like you’re playing one of those old 2D point and click games (Discworld, Monkey Island, Day of the Tentacle, Sam and Max) in book form, which is an impressive feat.
Technical wizardry aside, the story is unengaging and little about this adventure/game/comic stood out or interested me. I appreciated details like the framing of the story within a story was similar to classic Japanese films like Rashomon and Harakiri, which I’m sure was intentional given the subject matter, but noticing this didn’t make it any more compelling to read.
Meanwhile is really the only book of this style of Shiga’s that’s worth bothering with - the others he did later aren’t as brilliant, especially the forgettable Samurai vs Ninja. As a fan of this creator, I’m hoping this is the last of this type of book Shiga makes as I really want to read more of his traditionally-structured narrative comics instead of his gamier ones.
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