5 out of 5

Taking that #5 from the indicia… now I’m sad I don’t own #s 1 – 4.

For the price of a (nowadays) regular book – 3.99 – you get 34 pages of solid Usagi.  Readers of the title will know the reliable quality Sakai brings to the book; this color special – culling some DHP entries from the last few years – has the luck to showcase Stan’s different ‘sides’ of his Ronin rabbit, from the samurai code battle of honor in ‘Saya,’ to the humorous 2-pager ‘Cut the Plum,’ to the mystic adventure ‘Buntori,’ and then the more whimsical ‘The Artist’ that closes the collection.  …Although you actually also get a Senso preview (an Usagi title that started soon after this special) AND a letters page, so clearly, DH loves its Sakai fans.

Although the best thing to hand a new reader is a trade, since you get a better sense of Usagi at longer paces, seeing how little vignettes build a portrait of his travels, this collection still works as a pretty great sampler due to the mixed tone mentioned above.  And for a collector, this is exactly what we want – a handy one-stop for odds and ends we may or may not have buried in various other books.