What has Takehiko Inoue done while Vagabond is on hiatus?
He has not been idle. He has been everywhere except back at Musashi's desk.
The hiatus invites an unfair picture, of an artist stalled. The record shows something else: Real, his wheelchair basketball serial, has continued in Weekly Young Jump; the Vagabond art career rolled on through exhibitions and catalogues; and in 2022 Inoue stepped behind a camera for the first time and directed The First Slam Dunk, which became one of the highest-grossing Japanese films ever made.
Read generously, the decade looks like an artist circling: gathering the craft, and the distance, that finishing Vagabond will require. Read plainly, it is simply the documented list below. Either way, "on hiatus" describes one manga. It has never described its author.
THE OTHER WORK
1999 to todayReal (1999-)
Inoue's wheelchair basketball manga, serialized in Weekly Young Jump since 1999, runs parallel to Vagabond's whole life: the sports artist never actually left sports, he split it in two, the sword and the wheel.
The LAST exhibition (2008)
The museum show, and its catalogues, belong to the Vagabond years: the manga's art career proceeding even as its chapter schedule slowed.
The First Slam Dunk (2022)
Inoue wrote and directed the animated film of his first masterpiece, released December 3, 2022. It won the Japan Academy Prize for Animation of the Year and grossed some $279 million worldwide, his largest audience ever, gathered while Vagabond slept.
The Definitive moment (2025)
English publishing's Vagabond revival, the large-trim Definitive hardcovers from January 2025, was prepared and released entirely within the hiatus: the books keep moving even when the chapters do not.