Sarutobi Sasuke

A beloved figure from Japanese literature is transformed into a playful, shape-shifting trickster in this humorous manga by a leading creator of the genre. In the early 1960s, Shigeru Sugiura reworked the traditional ninja character into a lively, chaotic protagonist. The manga features Sarutobi navigating a surreal world filled with cowboys, aliens, spaceships, sailing vessels, celebrity appearances, mushroom clouds, and detectives armed with squirt guns. The work is a revised version of the original 1954 magazine series and forms the basis of the 2024 English edition published by New York Review Books.