Review for Blade of The Immortal: Volume 1

Introduction

I don't know why it is that my heart sinks when another unfinished anime turns up for review. Practically all anime lack conclusions, especially when they are based on ongoing manga that have been in publication for years, while said anime adaptation will only have a set number of episodes in one season to tell its story. The likelihood is that the anime creators will have to forget about waiting for the manga creator to fashion an ending, and create one of their own. On a rare occasion it turns out to be a brilliant and worthy finale, but more often than not it will be inferior to the real ending, when, and if it turns up. Sometimes, they will just let the anime tail off, assuming that the viewer will turn to the manga to find out what happens next, or in the usually vain hope that budget, and room in the schedules will appear to allow for a second series. Of course there are the really popular series that just go on, and on, and on, to the point where you wish that they would give it an ending, any ending. Blade of the Immortal is about a man who has to kill 1000 evil people to redeem his own sins. Blade of the Immortal is just 13 episodes long. Even I can work out that arithmetic. Still, despite my perennial sinking heart, I find that I enjoy most anime series, even the ones with lacklustre conclusions. Or as they say, 'it's not the destination, it's the journey'…


Manji was a badass Samurai who gave no quarter, and ruthlessly followed his liege lord's orders in battle, and in enforcing the law. Of course, his liege lord was corrupt and unprincipled, which meant that Manji's victims were mostly innocent men. A reputation of a killer of 100 honest men tends to wear on a man, which is why he wound up killing his master, then committing the sin of not committing ritual suicide in shame, and instead killing the man who tried to arrest him, who just happened to be his brother-in-law. Naturally this drove his sister Machi insane. His reward… a nun placed sacred bloodworms into his body that instantly heal any wound, no matter how grievous. Manji is immortal, with a whole lot of vengeful relatives and friends looking for him. It isn't long before he tires of immortality, and decides that if he kills 1000 evil men, then he will be redeemed, and allowed to die…

The first five episodes of Blade of the Immortal are presented on this disc by MVM.

1. Sinner
When you use a sword as much as Manji does, you'd think that being immortal would be a plus. But immortality weighs heavily upon him, given his reckless and vicious past and the blood on his hands, as well as all those who want him dead, whether it is for revenge, reward, or just reputation. His one reason to live is his sister Machi, who went insane after he murdered her husband. It isn't long before his enemies use her against him. So he tells Yaobikuni, the ancient nun who cursed him with immortality, that if he kills 1000 genuinely evil men, then he will be redeemed and she should remove the bloodworms that keep him alive, allowing him finally to die.


2. Conquest
Rin is a young girl looking for vengeance, and Manji wants evil men to kill. It seems logical that Yaobikuni manoeuvre the two together, but a duplicitous lord has burnt Manji once. He can't trust that Rin is telling the truth about what has happened to her. Besides, there are two sides to every story, and one man's hero is another man's villain. But her tale of a decades old feud for the inheritance of a dojo and the Mutenrichi-Ryu sword style is worthy of further investigation. And her tale of the vagabond group of swordsmen, the Itto-Ryu who murdered her father, and brutalised her mother certainly strikes an emotional chord.

3. Love Song
Rin faces her first target in battle, Kuroi Sabato. The fly in the ointment is that Sabato is in love with Rin, adores her beauty and perfection, in the same way that he loved his wife, and then loved Rin's mother. He'd like to add Rin to his collection, but Manji realises that Rin is no match for Sabato, and warns her away. With good reason too, as Sabato manages to cut Manji down. Seeing Manji apparently dead, Rin thinks her revenge has come to a premature end, and faces the inevitable.


4. Genius
Rin realises that if they are going to face the Itto-Ryu, they'll probably need extra help. That's why she goes to see her father's friend Sori, who is an accomplished artist. Manji reckons that he doesn't need the help, and even if he did, why the effete artist? But when Sori isn't painting, he's a secret policeman for the Shogunate, a position he took when a more isolationist policy was enacted, and the only way to see contraband foreign art was to kill those possessing it in the name of the Shogun. Still, Manji may be right about Sori, for even while he and Rin battle with an Itto-Ryu spy, Sori is more obsessed with finding the right shade of red.

5. Prisoner
It's when Rin is having Manji's array of weapons sharpened that she encounters their next target, or he who ought to be their next target. The sharpener is working on a distinctive foreign sword, and when its owner shows up, Rin recognises Itto-Ryu member Taito Magatsu. The sword used to belong to her father. When she tells Manji, he's willing to take down Magatsu, but Rin has realised that if they keep dealing with the flunkies, they'll never get anywhere, as leader Kagehisa Anotsu will keep on recruiting in the meantime. But seeing as the Itto-Ryu group is gaining respectability, Magatsu has decided that it's time for him to quit.

Picture

Blade of the Immortal gets the by now de rigueur 1.78:1 anamorphic NTSC-PAL transfer, which fortunately is one of the good ones. It's low on compression artefacts, ghosting and judder is minimal, and the anime comes across to good effect. The animation comes from studios BEETRAIN and Production I.G. and if you have seen other BEETRAIN shows like Madlax and Tsubasa, then you should find the quality of the animation familiar, and to a lesser degree the style as well. The character designs are consistent and very pleasing to the eye, tending to more realistic appearances. The world designs are similarly of high quality, while the actual animation is fluid and energetic, with a decent amount of attention paid to the action sequences. My problem is that it's almost too pretty an animation for the subject material. The muted pastel colours, the elegant cleanliness of the animation, and the stylised moments (the killing strokes get a freeze-frame and a wallpaper pattern background for some reason), seem incongruous with the grittiness and the nastiness of the story.

Sound

The usual choice between DD 2.0 English and Japanese, along with optional translated subtitles or a signs only track here. The Japanese track is certainly very attractive, with the cast list looking like a who's who of Japanese voice actors. Given that what I sampled of the English dub sounded very average, it certainly makes the original version easier to choose. But, you know what they say about first impressions? I chose to sample the start of episode 3, where a couple of characters are quoting poetry at each other. It does not sound good in English. The dialogue is clear though, and the show gets some suitably effective music, as well as a couple of quirky theme songs.

Extras

Blade of the Immortal gets a static menu and jacket picture when the disc isn't spinning. On the disc you'll find the textless credits, and trailers for Slayers Revolution and Romeo X Juliet (The Region 1 disc also had sample pages of the Blade of the Immortal manga).

Conclusion

Why do I feel like I'm watching Samurai Deeper Kyo again? I mean, the two shows are nothing alike, aside from the various characters swinging whopping great swords around, and the main character having some supernatural raison d'être. With Kyo it was his multiple personality disorder, with Manji it's his immortality, but the stories are completely different, the animation in Blade of the Immortal is infinitely superior. Well let's face it, it has animation. The production values in all areas are higher, the writing is better, sharper, and more emphasis has been given to character development in just one episode than Samurai Deeper Kyo managed in its entire run. But I find that I have the same emotional disconnect with Blade of Immortal that I had with Kyo. I find the story pretty uninteresting, and I just don't care about any of the characters. The heroes are unremarkable, while the villains for the most part are forgettable.


The bottom line is that Blade of the Immortal is just too pretty for its own good. Comparisons are made in the blurb to shows like Berserk and Samurai Champloo, but the latter outdoes it in terms of quirky charm and individual style, while the former beats it hands down in terms of gritty brutality, and sheer blood, guts and nastiness. Blade of the Immortal is more about elegance, about looking beautiful. So the fight sequences, well animated though they may be, are more about the aesthetics than they are about making you squirm in empathy. Even when Rin's mother is being brutalised, the focus of the scene is on looking as pretty as possible. All of the characters, whichever side they may be on, look fantastic and are designed with artistic satisfaction in mind. Even the most grotesque of the villains here, Kuroi Sabato, with his literal attachments to his victims, looks far too pretty. When I think of some of the imagination that goes into character design in shows like Basilisk, Blade of the Immortal comes off sorely lacking.


Even then, it's not so much the visual as it is the writing side of the characters that disappoints. I may have said that Blade of the Immortal surpasses Samurai Deeper Kyo when it comes to character development, but then again so does a breezeblock. I just wasn't hooked by any of the characters in Blade of the Immortal, although some of that may be down to the storytelling style, which has a rather fragmented narrative, with seemingly unrelated bits of story eventually coming together as the episodes progress. It's the most fundamental of stories though, that of revenge, with a young girl named Rin looking to avenge her slaughtered family upon those who committed the crime. Rin is a pleasant enough protagonist, young but motivated, and with unexpected reserves of steel, despite her inexperience. Manji on the other hand just doesn't impress as an antihero. For a mass murderer, he's far too good-natured a fellow. The opening episode introduces the repentant immortal quite effectively. His torment comes across well, his crimes are clear to see, and it also becomes apparent that the one thing keeping him grounded, attached to his humanity as it were, is his sister Machi. Except that it isn't. Machi being taken from him somehow leaves him a little more mellow and light-hearted. His grumpiness and badass nature seems more of an affectation thereafter, rather than an integral part of his personality, and when Rin comes to him for his help, he assumes something of a laid-back mentor role. I'm no longer buying the 'seeking death through redemption' motive.


It's a similar story with the villains. The Itto-Ryu led by Kagehisa Anotsu are trying to gain respectability for their school of swordplay, by reaping their way through the existing schools. The Mutenrichi-Ryu is head of their list, not least because of a feud between the current family running the dojo, the Asano, and the Anotsu, which began decades previously. So when the Itto-Ryu attack, they do so without quarter, and with a measured brutality, that leaves Rin's father murdered, her mother raped, and Rin forced to witness it all. Despite BEETRAIN's focus on making it look as pretty as possible, this episode is pretty chilling. Thereafter though, the villains start being developed. Suddenly they get sympathetic backgrounds that may be an attempt to make them more human, give the story a bit of realism, but in essence they just get watered down. It isn't so bad for Kuroi Sabato. You can't generate much sympathy for a man who wears the heads of his victims on his shoulders. But as mentioned earlier, the reveal and the story behind it should have been far more grotesque. I recall a similar scene in Texhnolyze that actually managed to turn my stomach. Here I am just taken with the prettiness of the character design.


By the time we get to Taito Magatsu though, I find myself forgetting which is the villain and which is the hero. Magatsu took Rin's father's sword, but when we encounter him again, he's waking from a nightmare where his kid sister is murdered, an act that has left him hating samurai ever since. It turns out that he spends his evenings in the arms of a prostitute named Ren, but she's someone he never takes advantage of. He's practically a good guy; it's the same sort of introduction that Riggs got in Lethal Weapon.


I may be harshly critical of Blade of the Immortal, but I have to admit that my expectations were high, especially as immortals have been a recurrent theme in anime, one that I usually find very appealing. I guess so soon after Rin: Daughters of Mnemosyne, and also with Baccano imminent that it would be asking a lot for another quality story. While BEETRAIN may have scrimped on the visceral brutality and gore, and the characters may be thin and lack impact, there's no denying that Blade of the Immortal is a gorgeous looking, and well-animated show. That will have to be enough for now, but it's down to the next two volumes to actually deliver on the story, to lift it up from the mundane.