無限の住人 [Mugen no Jūnin] #14

A striking volume of Hiroaki Samura's celebrated Edo-period action manga, this new-edition printing of Blade of the Immortal Vol. 14 announces itself with a haunting pencil-rendered cover — a young woman in traditional Japanese dress splayed in an off-balance, almost falling pose, her expression caught somewhere between exhaustion and defiance. The bold purple lily blooming across the composition adds a vivid, elegiac contrast to the otherwise monochrome artwork. Samura's draftsmanship is on full display here, and the raw tension in that single figure makes it impossible not to want to turn the page.