I decided to read this after reading Sarah Horrock's review of Der Wergelder, where she writes:

"I think one of the disjunctions in Samura’s work, is that at times Blade of the Immortal was a thin veneer over the monstrous abyss lurking in the back of Samura’s predilictions as an artist–and the extent to which he is removed from that darkness is the degree to which his work loses its beauty. My hope going forward with Der Wergelder is that it moves closer to Brute Love and Bradherley’s Coach..."

Of course, going by some of the reviews here, it seems apparently no one realized that Samura was, firstly, a pre-dominantly erotic artist, and, secondly, a pre-dominantly erotic artist of Sadism. Anyway this serves as a reminder that, before you even read anything, go research what the Mangaka normally does first. You don't want to be wandering into any of Shintaro Kago's other works, by accident, after reading Paranoia Street, for example.

Anyway I'm inclined to agree with Sarah Horrock's here, in that Samura's style is a beautiful style, and half of the Beauty comes from the disjunct between cruelty and the lingering quality of the Art. The result you get is this strange mix of Anne of the Green Gables (which, Samura himself writes in the post-notes, that he was inspired by, the fucker), a Prisoner of War rape-drama, a series of brutally depressing vignettes, Germanic culture, and figments of transient beauty and humanity among scores and scores of suffering.

Within these vignettes, you get several points of view, each fleshing out the whole scope of the setting even further. You have the view of the orphans, the view of the guards, the view of the prisoners, the view of the members of Bradherley's Troupe etc... Very missing though is the POV of the aristocrats themselves, whose motives create an inhuman void that pushes much of the cruelty forward, although some moments do underline what they could have been feeling at the time.

It has always been my predilection to view the best type of artist as one who can come down from an observer's point of view, weaving together events in an anti-judgmental way. There's an interesting quote about Macbeth from the TV comedy Stings and Arrows, where a character mentions that what is terrifying and cursed about Macbeth is that Macbeth, as a play, is not a work that commentates on Evil, but a work that portrays Evil, and in that regard, Samura himself sits coldly away from the events of the narrative. The scenes he draws are eroticized, but unfeeling beyond any measure, and this is a plus, because he doesn't shy away. In opposition, an artist like Shintaro Kago blatantly makes fun of all the Sadistic impulses he has to create zany brutally slapstick comedy.

And, the result, is that Art like this is frequently misconstrued to serve moralistic purposes. People forget that the depiction and narrative is separate from the plot. The plot itself is cruel and unsavory, but the depiction, and the structure of the events and how the story is told, weaves itself around in a completely different way. Human Brutality is supplanted with Human Nature, and that, is the core difference between an Act of Evil, and a Portrayal of Evil.