Yamada Yuuki is an ordinary college student with an extraordinary hobby: the classical martial art of Kukishin-ryu.
Until one fateful day when a demon rips through the fabric of space-time, abducts everyone in his dojo, and transports them to another world.
To return home, Yamada and his friends must join forces with other displaced humans to conquer the dungeon that runs through the heart of the world. Standing in their way are endless hordes of bloodthirsty monsters and countless traps. Armed only with steel, faith and guts, they must battle their way through the winding catacombs to confront the demon waiting at the bottom floor.
Yamada was once a student. Now he must become a samurai.
OK, first thing to say here; this, the above, go ahead and read it again, I’ll wait. That elevator pitch copy is tight.
Take notes kids, that’s how it’s done. Like a miniskirt; long enough to cover the necessities, short enough to be interesting. The cover itself isn’t as strong; a little dark and muddy, and the font choice is meh. But it gets the idea across. Samurai - check. Demon -check. Darkest Dungeon - check. So that’s the pitch, what about inside?
Well, we begin with a quote, one that I’ve heard before, but never had the attribution until now. Let it be knowen, I am a thematic quotes enjoyer. I appreciate it when authors share the ideas that drive them. Give me moah quotes. Throw ‘em in at the start of chapters as thematic headers, that’s what I do.
“Engage in combat fully determined to die and you will be alive; wish to survive in the battle and you will surely meet death.” Uesugi Kenshin
Well, that goes hard right outta the gate. Uesugi Kenshin was a daimyō (feudal clan leader, think duke or other tenant-in-chief, who holds directly from the crown) who was born as Nagao Kagetora of the Nagao clan, and after adoption into the Uesugi clan, ruled Echigo Province in the Sengoku Jidai (warring states period). He was one of the most powerful warlords and clan leaders of an era of near constant internecine warfare, seriously, they called him the ‘Dragon of Echigo’. He was known for high skill at arms, martial prowess, battlefield leadership, and civil administration all at once.
A veritable Renaissance man of warfare. He was a contemporary of the great Oda Nobunaga, the iconoclastic and ambitious warlord who would complete the overthrow of the old ineffectual Ashikaga dynasty of Shoguns (military dictators and de-facto regents for the religiously and ritually formal and de-jure Emperors) and pave the way for the reunification of Japan and the end of the Sengoku Jidai. And what’s more, Uesugi Kenshin defeated Oda’s armies in battle. Had he not died of cancer shortly after this, he could’a been a contender. Machiavelli would be panting. Here, he would have said, is a Prince!
Anyway, history lessons aside, this is fairly common type of aphorism of warrior classes East and West; to be concerned about keeping your life in battle will preoccupy your mind and distract you at a critical moment when you need to be fully present in your body and reacting in pure stimulus-response, ‘no mind’. But the quote sure gets the blood boiling doesn’t it? Good.
Then we are introduced to Yamada Yuuki our viewpoint character and the titular kamikaze. We start in the middle of a free play sparring session at martial arts dojo, going say 80%, and Yamada isn’t having that great a time of it, but that is to be expected, he’s kinda the junior guy in the room. The point is going hard for the entire time and not quitting. If you’ve never practised a combative art, that’s much easier said than done. Got two boys that are annoying mommy and and fighting incessantly? Give ‘em boxing gloves and head-gear and tell ‘em to go for five minutes straight.
They’ll be hating life in two and ready to calm the heck down. The art in question is called Kukishin-ryu, and is described as basically Japanese HEMA. Unlike the pure sport-fencing of kendo, or the formalised meditative kata of most schools of kenjutsu, this school attempts to preserve the historical combative aspects, training with both formalised kata with bokuto for technique mastery and free-play with shinai for stimulus-response training, but also retaining the grappling and other close combatives that are usually shunted off into judo or jutsu, as well as several other weapon arts (spear, halberd, dagger, etc) and preserving the techniques unique to armoured fighting (as ze Germans would say ‘harnischfechten’). And while the name was new to me, I am pleased to learn it is an extant school of the martial arts, in that really old school, by way of familial descent of traditio, literally, things handed on. Good on ya Japan.
Yamada is getting hit and hit and hit and then he has an epiphany and learns about baiting an attack you are ready for to setup an opening for your own attack. Which is one of the things you’re supposed to be working out how to actually do in free play (among other do or die things like ‘how to control distance and measure and timing’). But getting into the mind-space where you can multi-task and combine the required stimulus-response ‘no-mind’ with planning one or more steps ahead in the fight at the same time, well, some people never manage it. Some fighters are just bigger, stronger, and faster than their opponents and don’t need to. All is fair in love and war.
Anywho, Yamada works out his plan, baits the attack and land his riposte combo, disarming his opponent, well, in his mind. Shinai don’t actually cut people. I’m not saying no one has never done free play with sharps, but it’s rare and ballsy and ain’t no studio that carries insurance going to let you do it neither.
So that was good training and just as Sensei is dismissing class, a wild demon appears, I guess no one had a poke-ball ready. So demon-kun takes the entire class for a field trip to a hell.
Lord John Whorfin : [shouting into a radio microphone] BANZAI! I'LL-A SEE YOU IN-A HELL!
Yeah, I said ‘a’ hell. It’s the demon’s very own little playground, his ‘parallel world’. And to get out, the people he has chosen must conquer the dungeon at the centre of it all. Does that sound familiar? Well it should, the title of the first section (the whole book appears to be ‘chapter one’) is ‘isekai’. Yep, it’s another portal fantasy. But like the other portal fantasies I have enjoyed, and reviewed here, it doesn’t paint by the numbers. Compared to say, Gun Magus, Kamikaze, is relatively constrained with the fantastical. We don’t even see the dungeon or a monster until about half way through. Because the people who have summoned our heroes as reinforcements ain’t dumb-dumbs, they’re not going to throw green-as-grass cherry chubs into this meat grinder, that would just make meat, dead meat.
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So the first half of the book is an extended bootcamp bildungsroman, wherein peace-time martial-arts hobbyists are transformed into professional warriors. There’s no firearms here, but the, call them Dungeon Army, have the resources of a reasonable sized medieval town to draw on, and a population drawn from across time and space, so that the necessary skills are available, so that the three main divisions; Chinese, Japanese, and European can each arm and armour up and train in their own distinctive styles, as well as the particulars of clearing the dungeon. Which actually gets more training time than skill at arms, as the dungeon itself is a more of a threat than the monsters, but more on that later. Such that by graduation day, Yamada Yuuki can rightly call himself samurai and wear the daisho without pretence or assumption.
So post training montage, and our hero enters the dungeon with his team, and they go to work. Mapping, tapping, checking for traps, checking for hidden doors, listening at doors, disarming dead falls, cutting trip wires, and yes, fighting the wandering monsters. It really is that kind of dungeon, bring your ten foot poles and your sand bags for filling in pit traps. Huh, never thought of that one, I’m stealing that.
Of course once the fighting is joined we learn why those gifted by Kami-kun with the special skill title ‘kamikaze’ rarely live long. Which I suppose I should mention in more detail. See our titular kamikaze isn’t planning on flying an warplane into the deck of a carrier or attacking the beached ships of Mongol invaders, he, like every new transportee who accepts the blessing of the entity only known by inference as a force that is opposed to the demon, and referred to by the Japanese as Kami-kun (and who the Christians call God and presumably the Chinese call Heaven) and touches the skill sphere (yeah, I know, just roll with it) receives a special skill title.
Yamada’s buddy Hiroshi rolls ‘knight’ which has buffs for friendlies and debuffs for evil, so basically ‘paladin’. Yamada’s best-girl Katsura Miduki (by the way, the Romance sub-plot is well handled, earnest, cute, and endearing, d’awww!) rolls ‘priestess’ so basically ‘cleric, but Oriental Adventures,’ which makes sense because she actually is a miko IRL. While Our Hero gets ‘kamikaze’ which amounts to ‘berserker’ complete with an enrage attack. The only problem is keeping himself in check and not going out in a blaze of glory doing something stupid and epic and manly (which is pretty much the definition of hero btw).
But control it he does, and by the time we reach the conclusion of this first volume, which came entirely too quickly I should add, this is an either an extremely quick reading story or I was just that enthralled. I literally consumed this work in one sitting, and now I’m left wanting more, so I guess that’s the review right there. But in the final fight of the story, the confrontation with the floor guardian of the fourth floor, our hero discovers that if he uses ‘kamikaze’ while Hiroshi uses his ‘knight’… well golly-gee I can’t give everything away can I?
And that’s my review. This book is hot and slick and fast. This book is a new set of PTs, it’s high-speed and low drag. This book is a race-gun slinging lead, clearing a pistol course in record time, a v8 firing on all cylinders and throwing fire out the straight pipe exhaust. Oh yeah, did I mention that the Lord Commander of the Dungeon Army is William effing Marshall? WILLIAM THE MARSHALL! Literally called the ‘best knight that ever lived’ in his own lifetime! Bruh, Kit Sun Cheah just got a loyal reader for that. Word.
It's the nature of time That the old ways must give in It's the nature of time That the new ways comes in sin When the new meets the old It always ends the ancient ways And as history told The old ways go out in a blaze
Encircled by a vulture The end of ancient culture The dawn of destiny draws near
Imperial force defied, facing 500 samurai Surrounded and outnumbered 60 to one, the sword face the gun Bushido dignified It's the last stand of the samurai Surrounded and outnumbered
As a new age begins The way of the warrior comes to an end As a new age begins The ways of the old must apprehend It's the nature of time That the old ways must give in It's the nature of time That the new ways comes in sin
An offer of surrender Saigo ignore contender The dawn of destiny is here
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![Dungeon Samurai Vol.1: Kamikaze (An Anti-LitRPG Dungeon Crawl) by [Kit Sun Cheah]](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F251b0968-7509-48df-a0a2-46dad1a7f830_333x500.jpeg "Dungeon Samurai Vol.1: Kamikaze (An Anti-LitRPG Dungeon Crawl) by [Kit Sun Cheah]")
