The series revolves around the title character, a female assassin who seeks vengeance against the bandits who murdered her stepfather and older half-brother and raped her mother.

The manga was adapted into a live-action film of the same name starring Meiko Kaji in 1973, which was followed by Lady Snowblood: Love Song of Vengeance in 1974.

Sayo kills Tokuichi, but gets locked up in a women's prison for life; she then seduces multiple men to conceive a child whom she wants to deliver her vengeance on the three remaining bandits.

Months later on a cold snowy night in winter, Sayo gives birth to a baby girl, whom the other women inmates name Oyuki after the snow.

Matsuemon even convinces Oyuki to recruit the writer Miyanara, whom she inspires to publish books about her life to draw out her mother's enemies and who becomes a father figure to her.

[3] Lady Snowblood: Resurrection Chapter (修羅雪姫 復活之章, Shurayuki-hime: Fukkatsu no Shō) was serialized in Weekly Playboy from November 1973 to June 1974.

[4] Lady Snowblood was translated and published in English between 2005–2006 by Dark Horse Comics as a series of four volumes, collected into more-or-less self-contained chapters.

Lady Snowblood and its 1973 adaptation are credited as major sources of inspiration behind Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill: Volume One and Two and its protagonist The Bride (Beatrix Kiddo),[6] as well as the Marvel Comics supervillainess Lady Bullseye (Maki Matsumoto), created by Ed Brubaker, Marko Djurdjevic, and Clay Mann,[7] and voiced by Reiko Aylesworth in the animated series Hit-Monkey.

[10] In November 2021, the stage adaptation of the manga was performed at the CBGK Shibugeki theater in Tokyo, with Yui Imaizumi as the main character.

[12] Character of Setsuka from the SoulCalibur franchise (started as a "Soul Edge" in the first entry of the series) of fighting video games was heavily inspired by Oyuki, both in visuals and her fighting/fencing style.

Some of Setsuka's extra costumes and additional color palettes directly reference and mirror Oyuki's clothes in original Lady Snowblood manga and both movie adaptations.

Tom Rosin from Manga Life considers Lady Snowblood "another cold-blooded revenge drama from the author of Lone Wolf", and says he enjoyed the mix of Western modernization and Japanese traditionalism.