Well, I agree with people saying Oh I should have loved this but for some reason I didn't. I like brutal fights, slice of life and general badasses, but I can't love Vagabond. Yes it might be too slow, and the author just had to keep implying that the story will be like an epic too. I found myself asking: will anything remotely resembling a plot twist take up a volume by itself? If an entire chapter or two, I can't remember, were spent building up tension for and fighting simple small fries, what will the arc for the big boss look like? Well yes those pages were also introducing our characters, but it doesn't justify so many one-two pages spreads.
For the length of the pages I read which might have numbered close 200, I noticed that Inoue didn't set out to impress. His style of slice of life might have resembled a little too nearly the period life, which could have worked, had it not been a century since then. We tend to prize realism with regard to the current period and appreciate its criticism of society, but this series of a man's struggles plainly wasn't interesting enough to hold attention, much less cause controversy.
In fact, I was basically unmoved by anything except the occasional instances of great artwork. Oh look, they're survivors of war! They're sympathetic thieves! Even though their circumstances inspire, their personalities are far too removed from me to be able to give a damn. Add that to the simple plot (but not simplistic, to be fair), ugly women littering the panels, and Vagabond proves to be a frustrating read. Of course, this is apparently a case of Your Mileage May Vary.