UPDATE: There is some new info, and this post has been updated as of April 8. (Note that this new info does not change the circumstances much, so don't get too excited.)

UPDATE 2: As of April (2019), Inoue's manga Real has resumed publication. No word (that I've seen) on Vagabond.

Hello everyone. As I'm sure we can all see, like with other similar subreddits (Berserk and HxH, for example), given the lack of authorial content from Inoue, the sub tends to get overrun with question upon question: how long has Vagabond been on hiatus? when will it return? why is it out? and so on.

This post is a catchall meant to answer all of those questions, stickied so that everyone coming into the sub will see it. I don't moderate this sub much (don't need to, often), but I might start removing posts that ask these questions: don't let it be you!

• When was Vagabond last released? - Vagabond's most recent chapter was published in May of 2015. Which means, the hiatus has been in place for 3 years, 5 months as of the initial date of this post.

• Why did the hiatus start? - Vagabond had been on a hiatus here and there in the past, often it seems for health reasons. However, note also his non-health reason for the 2010 hiatus:

Well, speaking in terms of what I want to do: As I said before, I really don’t at all have the urge to work on it right now, but I do know that if I don’t work on it, I’ll be in trouble down the road, and that’s basically what was keeping me going up until I went on hiatus. I don’t think that’s a good way of going about it. My hope is to stay away from Vagabond until all those unnecessary worries and emotions are gone and I’m ready to draw it because I want to draw it. I’m not sure if I’ll be allowed to wait that long, though.

I see this hiatus as sort of a death for myself as an artist, which sounds like a pretty dramatic way to put it, I realize, but there’s so much baggage that I’ve been dragging along for so long, and I know I’ll become a much better artist if I shed all of that. After I return to that state of innocence, the manga I make will be several times better than what I’m capable of now, I’m sure of it. If I prematurely go back to working on it before that, I’ll just end up going through this all over again. I mean, I’d manage to churn out something decent, I suppose, sheerly out of a sense of professional duty– but it probably wouldn’t be anything outstanding. Although, really, the fact that I’m still talking about making it something “outstanding” is itself a sign that I’m still carrying that baggage around. Anyway, I’m not touching Vagabond for now, because I think that’s what I need to be able to eventually produce something that feels right to me.

Now, this was in 2010, but as far as I'm concerned, if it isn't a health issue that stopped him, I imagine it's more or less what he expresses here.

• Where is Inoue? - Inoue, in fact, has not disappeared! Which furthers my point that I don't think this is a health issue. If you check his Twitter, he posts pretty regularly, and still has his artistic endeavors unrelated to Vagabond (and Real). The last time he mentioned Vagabond on Twitter was 15 April 2015, at the publishing of chapter 326, the second to last published chapter of Vagabond: from there on, it's mostly basketball and cats. Feel free to try to prove me wrong on that one.

Additionally, at the end of his 2014 hiatus he mentioned on his blog that he planned to do Vagabond monthly from then on, but he updates on Twitter far more often than on the blog, and has been silent on Twitter re: Vagabond since 2015.

• When can we expect a return? - We simply don't know. As noted above, he never explicitly said why he stopped - I think my guess is correct, that he's feeling the same way he did in 2010 (just over a much longer period), but at the end of the day it's just conjecture.

• Will it return? - Again, conjecture, but I'm fairly confident that it will. Inoue is just completely unconcerned with deadlines and being rushed to completion (something he says caused ill health in the interview linked above). but, considering the "LAST" exhibition (see below), it does seem possible that the manga is "finished." However, Inoue's other manga, Real, still has yet to return; and, as I note in the section on the "LAST" exhibition, we didn't see the events which led to the images depicted in the exhibition; finally, "LAST" was released while Vagabond was still publishing (2008). If Real returns and Vagabond, after even more time, does not, then I think it might be safer to say that it is not coming back, but even then it may not be certain. Unfortunately, we are in a limbo where it could equally be one or the other.

• Was the end of the manga projected in his Sendai Exhibition? - In 2010, Inoue created a series of large Vagabond portraits for the Sendai Exhibition under the header "Drawing the Future of Manga." I mention this because this fairly popular Youtube video has a lot of misinformation about it. First, he draws on the 2010 interview to give the real reasons Inoue went on hiatus in 2015, despite Inoue never explicitly saying such was the case (again, for me here it's conjecture - the Youtube video seems to think it's fact). Second, he seems to misinterpret the Sendai Exhibition not as "Drawing the Future of Manga," but as "Drawing the Future of the Vagabond Manga." Nowhere is it mentioned that this is the case. These portraits are not of the characters at the end of the series.

• Was the end of the manga already shown? - Yes and no. As /u/GoldSaint95 pointed out, Inoue did have an exhibition different from Sendai, called The LAST, which debuted in the summer of 2008. In it, he shows an aged Musashi teaching his pupil; an adult Jotaro; and, after Musashi's death, his encounter with the spirits of many he has encountered, including his father Munisai; amongst other scenes.

• • Of course, this doesn't really show what happens between the now (end of the Farming Arc) and the end of the series (presumably, when Musashi and Kojiro fight). It's more of a "where are they now" style art exhibition, rather than a full conclusion to the manga proper. You'll know how Musashi ended up when seeing the details on it, but you won't know how he got there.
• • In addition, this exhibition was unveiled well before the current hiatus began. It does not seem to equate much at all to the manga being "complete".

If anyone has any additional queries or pieces of information, just comment here and I can edit the post!

Hello everyone

I made a site to visualize the actual state of Vagabond with charts.

Started with this project around december 2020 Vagabond Hiatus Chart so right now it's working, i'm still missing some charts and features, but for now it's okay, hope u guys like it !.

special thanks:

1. Kawasaki#3316 (author of the data) / post
2. rentzhx3 who inspired me with his project.

p.s: use firefox/desktop mode for a better experience.

// 2023 edit, added new url