And here we are, the end of Bond!
Truthfully this has been something of a mixed series for me. Being the Saito fan that I am I have on the one had very much enjoyed what you might call the proto-Golgo elements (the shootouts, the dumb retorts etc.).
Yet on the other I must admit to having found a good chunk of that actual story rather weak. Outside of his gun skills Bond is fairly incompetent, and survives much more on account of his opponents' mistakes than any real ability of his own. And, while this might be something you can chalk up more to the original work, I also find it hard to really defend a lot of the plot lines which are often quite meandering and pointless; if we take the final volume for instance Scaramanga, the supposed villain, is only present for about 20 pages total, while lots of it is dedicated to random stuff like Bond's showdown with the three trainees.
If nothing else it was at least a nice historical piece, and more Saito stuff is always a good thing in and of itself.
Thanks as always go to my editor, Nady, and to elemhunter for scanning all four volumes. If you enjoyed the series you can purchase the reprints on places like Amazon (no digital versions alas).
At some point in the future I'd like to get onto more Saito stuff, for now I should probably be catching up with all the stuff I've been slacking on recently...
Oh and here's this week's Azarak.
And this week's Youkai.
