It's not easy being Hattori Hanzo.

If he's not teaching Ieyasu, the young future shogun, how to love, then he's behind the scenes, teaching Ieyasu how not to die in case of a momentary lapse of protection.

If you thought you had a tough job, try taking a pudgy, protected youngster, and making him into the leader who will unite Japan under his single rule.

From the creators of Lone Wolf & Cub comes a series about two young men bound to a nation's potential future at a time when Japan was in transition from a warlike feudal state into an era of bureacracy and infighting.

Story by Kazuo Koike and Art by Goseki Kojima.