Samurais, assassins, violence, and exactly the manga I’ve been avoiding for years. It’s not that I don’t like the subject matter, rather, it’s the opposite; I always knew if I started reading it, I would be unable to stop until I read it all. And that’s exactly what happened. For two weeks, the bare minimum of class work was done, and Blade of the Immortal was always open in my computer. And it was almost worth it. Almost, because, you see, the series isn’t complete yet. The story of Rin’s revenge is not complete. And that’s mildly frustrating.
Speaking of mildly frustrating, the main character, Rin is very frustrating when she is first introduced. I understand that she wants to avenge her parents and all, and don’t get me wrong, I would probably do the same thing, but she can’t fight. She only has one attack that only would work once depending on the amount of daggers/kunai/needles she has hidden on her person. For a good long while I couldn’t stand her. And then she broke down, going on about how pathetic she was, and how she knew she was going to die. It added dimension to her character, like she was willing to die if it meant meeting her goal. But then, what would be the point of it all? But she wasn’t completely blinded by her goal; she was willing to let a man of the Itto-ryu live because he was taking care of his son, and she didn’t want the little boy to suffer as she did. As it ends up the man attacks her, and the boy lives on with hate and rage towards Manji. She also meets the leader of the Itto-ryu alone multiple times, and yet she understands that she is incapable of killing him. It saves us a few pointless battles for read through, and it shows that Rin wants to be able to kill him with her own hands in an honorable fight. Though it seems like if that time were to ever occur, she would lose.
Manji is a very interesting fellow. He’s known as the killer of a thousand men (before be became immortal), yet he has a soft side. He only kills “bad” men in order to atone for what happened to his sister, because it was all his fault and he knows it. That is also what ties him to Rin; she looks just like his older sister, and he feels the need to help her. When Rin address him about training to make her stronger, he doesn’t sugar coat the fact that she is pathetic and all the training she had done before was pretty much useless because she wasn’t fighting anyone. Manji though, honestly cares for people. A prime example is when Manji held captive under the palace for immortality experiments. The first man to be made immortal becomes the closet thing to a friend for Manji while they both are imprisoned. But when the man is needlessly sacrificed, Manji becomes enraged. And even as he escapes, he mentions how terrible a thing they did to the first patient. He though shares some of the same moral values as the Itto-ryu despite them being his “enemy”. And ironically enough, the Mugai-Ryu who he teams up with to defeat the Itto-ryu, has less in common with him and his values.
The Mugai-ryu, or the Assassins guild, is a group of very interesting individuals saved from death row. The members range from Hyakurin, who murdered her husband after he killed her 2 children, Shinriji, for theft, to Shira, the extremely sadistic and disgusting nasty fucker. Honestly, the members of the Mugai-ryu aren’t bad people, they just did what they needed to in order to get by. Shira is the exception. He is terrible. I’ve read many comic books, a lot of manga, and manwah, in all different genres ranging from shojo to shounen, yuri to yaoi, hentai to children’s comics. But never have I ever been so revolted by one character as I have been by Shira. And honestly, that’s saying a lot. He severs his victims legs so they can’t run away, then depending on their gender he either slowly kills them, or he cuts them up as he rapes them. I can’t wait until he dies. On the other hand, I really hope Hyakurin and Giichi stay together. He’s very sweet and caring and would function as a good stabilizing feature for Hyakurin after all that has happened to the poor girl.
As I wikipedia’d the sword schools, I landed a page about historical sword schools. And I was noticing that I recognized far too many of the names. I really need to layoff the samurai manga…
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