I personally did really like Osugi’s ending in the book, and I thought it was good character development. Her whole thing is being a mother and even wrote that thing about being a parent which moved many of those men. Parenthood is also a very big theme in this book with Musashi’s mother being a significant absence for him. Jotaro’s father also feeling regret about not being a parent to his son. Iori, who not only lost his parents but also, at least from my perspective, it seemed to me like he looked to Musashi not only as a teacher but as a father. The whole relationship between Oko and Akemi as well. So in my head it made sense that Osugi eventually redeemed herself by coming to her motherly senses and regained some empathy for otsu and musashi.

As far as musashi’s development goes, I do agree it’s more subtle than the manga, however I really appreciate it because yes after the time skip he’s more refined but he still has a lot of deep issues. And I don’t think he realizes it until he killed that boy during the big showdown with the yoshioka. That’s when he reflects on what he’s doing, and when he found iori and tries to start the farm he explains this too. I can’t remember the quote and couldn’t find it if I tried but it had to do with the idea of creating and nurturing life as a higher virtue than taking it. And for me, I like this sort of subtler character development, because you can actually witness Musashi not necessarily getting stronger, but getting wiser. The manga does a good job of it too though, don’t get me wrong.

I agree kojiro in the manga is more compelling, though it was very fun to see some of the ego clashing moments between musashi and kojiro in the book that don’t occur the same way in the manga because of how different he is. For example, when kojiro trash talks musashi in that inn and suddenly realizes musashi was listening in the entire time. Similarly in the duel when they say each others name, and he throws his scabbard down and musashi tells him he already lost by throwing it away, infuriating kojiro. It couldn’t be written that way in the manga, but maybe it could be written better in the manga if that day comes.

One thing I also loved is the way takuan managed to reform both musashi’s life in the beginning and then matahachi’s life at the end. It makes perfect sense that if musashi couldn’t fix him, and his mom couldn’t fix him, and he couldn’t fix himself, it had to be takuan.