is a shōnen

Shonen

The term refers to manga marketed to a male audience aged roughly 10 and up. The Kanji characters literally mean "few" and "year", respectively, where the characters generally mean "comic"...

 manga

Manga

Manga is the Japanese word for "comics" and consists of comics and print cartoons . In the West, the term "manga" has been appropriated to refer specifically to comics created in Japan, or by Japanese authors, in the Japanese language and conforming to the style developed in Japan in the late 19th...

 by Hiroi Oji

Hiroi Oji

, real name , is a manga author. He co-authored Samurai Crusader with Ryoichi Ikegami. He also wrote the Sakura Taisen manga.-Original creations:*Diamond Daydreams*Kuso Kagaku Sekai Gulliver Boy*Madō King Granzort*Madō King Granzort: Bōken-hen...

 and Ryoichi Ikegami

Ryoichi Ikegami

is a manga artist. He was assistant to manga artist Shigeru Mizuki in 1966. In 2001, he won the Shogakukan Manga Award for general manga as the artist of Heat. He became a professor at Osaka University of Arts in 2005...

. The manga has been released in its entirety by Viz Media

VIZ Media

VIZ Media, LLC, headquartered in San Francisco, is an anime, manga, and Japanese entertainment company. It was founded in 1986 as VIZ LLC. In 2005, VIZ LLC and ShoPro Entertainment merged to form the current VIZ Media LLC, which is jointly owned by Japanese publishers Shogakukan and Shueisha, and...

 in the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

.

Plot

The story follows Kumomaru, a Japanese samurai who travels to Europe in during the 1930s and becomes embroiled in a plot to steal the legendary Japanese sword Kusanagi

Kusanagi

is a legendary Japanese sword and one of three Imperial Regalia of Japan. It was originally called but its name was later changed to the more popular Kusanagi-no-Tsurugi .-Legends:...

. While in Europe, Kumomaru befriends Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...

 and Pablo Picasso

Pablo Picasso

Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...

 and attempts to stop Major General Kamishima and his Nazi allies from conquering China.