Centuria Chapter One, 100 Slaves Review: An Intriguing Beginning.

With Tatsuki Fujimoto being such a fantastic mangaka, it is no surprise that many people he has worked with have also done great things.
Tatsuya Endo’s Spy X Family and Yuji Kaku’s Hell’s Paradise are both excellent, for example.
So, when I heard that another assistant of Fujimoto’s, Tohru Kuramori was releasing the first chapter of his new manga, I knew I had to check it out.
The work is called Centuria and is off to a promising start with Chapter One, “100 Slaves.”
The chapter begins by introducing our main character, Julian, who is a slave.
We first see him rebelling against his abusive master, while narrating about the plight of slaves like himself, who have never owned anything.
The chapter then flashes forward to a ship in the middle of the ocean, which is transporting 100 slaves.
Some of the crew are worried about passing through a supposedly cursed area, yet their complaints to the captain are interrupted by the discovery of Julian, who stowed away.
The captain wants to kill him, but the 100 hundred slaves aboard are having none of it, with many offering to split their food.
It is through this that it becomes apparent many of the slaves are sick or elderly.
The first to speak up for Julian is a pregnant woman named Mira, who explains to him that since slaves cannot own anything, many of them value compassion.
Julian returns this compassion by polishing a knife Mira’s deceased husband gave her.
While he does this, Julian explains his backstory, stating that his own mother sold him as a child to a blacksmith who abused him.
Julian learned the craft from him but then escaped when it looked like his master was about to kill him, which we saw at the beginning of the chapter.
As the journey progresses, Julian and Mira grow closer.
Julian has never known the love of a mother, since she sold him, and Mira lost her son when she was enslaved.
And so, a mother and son type bond begins to emerge between the two in a short amount of time, which is a credit to Kuramori because of how natural it feels.
It even gets to the point that Mira suggests that they live together if they are ever liberated.
At this point, I said out loud, “Yep, Mira’s totally dead.”
All of the bonding scenes between her and Julian were practically screaming that she was a goner.
It was just a matter of how.
Sure enough, after the ship gets sucked into the area they were trying to avoid, the captain decides it is time to kill all of the slaves.
The reason most of them are sick and elderly is because the captain wanted to buy them at a low price and then stage an accident.
He would then get a big insurance payout on their lives.
This brutal sacrifice takes an unexpected turn, however, when Julian and Mira are offered a sacrifice of their own.
With all of the slaves dying to save them, this summons a supernatural entity, which says a sacrifice of love must now be given to earn her blessing of great power.
Julian offers to sacrifice himself for Mira to save her unborn child but, seeing her dead son in him, Mira refuses to lose another son.
Using the knife Julian polished for her, Mira performs a C-Section on herself, gruesomely saving the life of her daughter, whom she names Diana.
Trusting Julian with Diana’s life, Mira throws them one last, tragic look before jumping into the ocean.
Satisfied with the sacrifice, the entity now asks a heartbroken Julian what he wishes for.
Remembering what the ship captain said about their lives being worthless, Julian states he wishes for proof that Mira’s life wasn’t a waste.
The entity grants this wish, as dark cracks begin to emerge from Julian’s eyes, and he gains the strength of all one hundred sacrificed slaves.
Kuramori shows this strength in a frightening double page spread of the aftermath, where we see Julian has absolutely slaughtered all of the slave masters on the ship, with some of them even having their jaws ripped off.
However, just as Julian turns back to Diana, he is stabbed from behind by the ship captain.
But rather than dying, Julian heals, with the entity revealing that he has also gained the one hundred lives the slaves lost.
So, he now has 99 lives left.
Julian then kills the captain, before escaping the ship with Diana, while the entity destroys it, before telling Julian that because of his sacrifice, “The sea will no longer bear its fangs at you.”
The entity departs, leaving Julian alone to look down at his new sister, crying and laughing as he does so.
The first chapter of Centuria then finishes with Julian narrating that he has never had anything valuable in his life, until now.
This was a perfect book end to the first chapter, which opened with Julian reflecting on their being nothing valuable in his life.
Overall, this was a promising opening for Centuria.
It gave off a Vinland Saga vibe, but one with fantasy elements.
I assume that the story will follow Julian using his powers to take a stand against slavery, all the while looking out for Diana.
Apart from that, I have no idea where the story will go.
We know virtually nothing about the world, except for that it is set in a world with slavery and that supernatural beings exist.
Kuramori really could take the narrative anywhere at this point and, after this first chapter, I am intrigued to see where it goes.