The first television season starring Kinnosuke Yorozuya (Nakamura) of Lone Wolf & Cub aka Lone Wolf with Cub pretty closely follows the biography of Ogami Itto & his little boy Daigoro, as it was told in the original manga comic book series. The six feature films of the version starring Tomisaburo Wakayama borrows heavily from but greatly condenses the manga, but there were sufficient episodes planned for television that a more liesurely pacing was possible in order to transpose nearly the whole epic onto the screen.
 Lone Wolf & Cub 1:7: The Guns of Sakai is the story of how the Baby Cart came to be transformed into a veritable machine-gun, with a front that opens to reveal a bank of repeater gun muzzles, in a day when Japan had mostly one-shot guns & muskets. This leading-edge weapon was a fantastic assistance to Itto's predilection for one-against-scores encounters, in particular with great numbers of Yagyu spies.
The gun magistrate of Sakai, Japan's gun capital, sets up our Assassin & child with a contract to assassinate an innovative gunsmith who purportedly is selling guns illegally outside the defined perimeters of the shogunate. In reality the other gunsmiths want him killed before his new designs make their own single-shot weaponry outdated. Their intent is to get hold of his designs to burn them.
The commission is simultaneously a trap so that Yagyu spies can take down Itto. This is no surprise to him. At the moment of the commission he says to the gun magistrate, "You stand to gain whether he dies or whether I die." But as Itto never backs down from the Yagyu, against whom he holds a profound grudge for his slain wife & lost position, he doesn't mind that it's a trap.
When the genius gunsmith realizes the famed 'assassin with child" is after him, he knows that's it, he's dead. Instead of trying to escape or fight back to survive, which would be useless, he appeals to Itto for a few hours time in order to reveal to his apprentices the designs he has kept secret. This advance in firearms has been his life's work, & he is willing to die once he is assured it will be passed on.
Itto agrees, but once the apprentices are in possession of the scrolls showing how to make repeater guns, their own corruption is revealed, as they have been paid to find the scrolls so that they can be destroyed. So Itto promises gunsmith Shichirobei to take the plans for his own use. The gunsmith is aware that in Itto's line of work, & being pursued by the Yagyu, the new kind of weapon will become famous rather than be suppressed.
 So Itto delayed completing his commission to assassinate Shichirobei, & after finally slaying Shichirobei, he must linger longer still while another gunsmith, Totaro, finishes Itto's new weaponry. Laying low to avoid the Yagyu for the time being, he & Daigoro were staying with a half-European concubine of an importer.
Okinu has lost her own child, & loves Daigoro, so puts her life on the line for the boy & his father. She suffers torture with a stoicism as impressive as that of Itto & Daigoro, so no wonder Daigoro reminds her of her own child, he was apt to have been a pretty special kid being born of a brave woman like this.
The tale plays itself out & in the final conflict against the magistrate's gunners & the Yagyu combined, Itto only has to aim the baby cart (with Daigoro still in it), let a trapdoor open to reveal a bank of guns along the bottom front edge of the baby cart, & win the day for the first time without having to draw his sword.
Another element of the series that is strong in this episode is the almost telepathic union between Itto & Daigoro. They can convey fairly complex information to one another with glances, not literally telepathic but a perfect understanding of one another. This symbolizes not only the extreme bond between father & son, but also conveys Daigoro's extraordinary learning curve as a three-year-old who has been educated on the road to hell.
Lone Wolf & Cub 8: The Castle Wall Attack Season 1, Episode 7, 1974, is an especially action-heavy episode, having startling choreography with swords, spears, & chain fighting, the latter a weapon of the Kurokuwa ninjas which do the Lone Wolf, Itto Ogami, severe injury, before he finally cuts them down.
While Itto is recovering from his wounds, Daigoro cares for him, then sets out one morning to try to find something to feed his father. He meets a woman who is visiting her own son's grave, & she for a moment mistakes Daigoro for her son's ghost.
Daigoro sees that the grieving mother has left rice ball offerings on her son's grave. He tries to give her his jacket & points at the riceballs, as he wants to make a trade. She, thinking he must be awfully hungry, gives him the riceballs but refuses to take his jacket.
Itto meanwhile has awakened & is staggering down the road looking for his son, & the young mother soon realizes the rice was unselfishly for the boy's father, not himself. When Itto collapses still very far from healed, this woman takes him & Daigoro into her home.
The Kurokuwa ninjas have never shared the Yagyu ninjas hatred for Itto, but he has accepted an assassination job that put them in his way. When other Kurokuwa ninjas find out who has killed several of their numbers & stopped their mission, they put Itto on their shitlist too.
Ninja of the Yagyu being of samurai lineage do have an understanding of honor, however selfishly framed that understanding may be. But the Kurokuwa ninjas were not derived from the samurai class, & certain things are more easily thinkable to them, such as capturing Daigoro with every intent to kill him in order to avenge themselves against Ogami Itto.
The woman with whom Daigoro & Itto have been staying takes several children, including Daigoro, to a festival event, from whence the Kurokuwa kidnap him, set him upon a pyre, & threaten to burn him alive. Daigoro's unwavering bravery against all threats is unnerving to the spies who hold him captive. But Daigoro has every faith in his father, a faith that will of course prove justified.
copyright © by Paghat the Ratgirl
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