The reviews for Blade of the Immortal are part of a bigger plan to bring more manga reviews on Animerated. So, if you have a manga that you want to review and you don’t have a blog for it, just send me an email. As some know, I’m desperate for some collaborators, as I want to extend and make this site better.

Let me say I always find it kind of difficult to review the first volume of a manga series. Usually I get familiar with a manga on the second or third volume.

Written and drawn by Hiroaki Samura, Blade of the Immortal is the winner of Will Eisner Award, Japan Media Arts Festival Award and two British Eagle Awards. The manga is published in USA by Dark Horse Comics, originally in a comics-like monthly format (32 pages, black and white) and beginning with 2007 in tankobon form. Now, this manga has a larger format than the usual one, more like an A5+ if you want. I bought my volume from tfaw.com, with $5.98, a big price reduction from the normal $14.95 on the back cover, but I’ve also put at the end of the article a link to Amazon. Very well made edition, shiny pages and thick cover.

In the beginning of this first volume, a page is trying to inform the reader that the swastika (that the main character is wearing on the back of this coat) is not a Nazi symbol, but a Buddhist one, taken and perverted by Hitler. It is an ancient word meaning welfare. Now that we cleared that, the book also has included a short interview with Hiroaki Samura, and if its shortness doesn’t satisfy you, you can find a more compressive interview HERE.

Epic, exhaustive and violent, Blade of the Immortal is the tale of Manji, a very skillful and troubled ronin, slayer of many people, who has been granted an unwanted gift. He cannot die because his body is filled with the so-called blood worms, who can heal any wound inflicted, thus making him immortal. But to Manji, this is more like a curse than a blessing. Not only that, but his way of life was about to affect his sister in a horrible twisted way that culminated with her death.  Manji wants now to buy back his mortality and possibly redeem himself by slaying one thousand villains, ten for each innocent he has killed.

Manji is a character far from an ideal heroic samurai. He acts recklessly and fights without worry because he know he cannot die.  Yet, he is far from being an evil character. His morals are not black or white, but some shade of grey. Thou he is slipping more and more towards the white side.

‘’After they killed my father, they raped my mother. And when they’d had enough… they took her away with them.’’

Enter the Dragon. Actually, enter Asano Rin, a young girl whose parents have been killed by a band of five master criminals on a mission to destroy every dojo in the country. I like her personality, she is not a woman to be tied and then to cry for help. Not a sheep in any way. After her parents died, she trained herself for two years, carried by her powerful will and desire for revenge. But she is only 16 and fully aware that she cannot succeed in her mission by herself.

The inner recount of her parents death is not something that I can properly describe in words. Samura does it way better through his art. And I am telling you, you will be fascinated by the five criminals, each weird in its own way. But in this volume, we will only find more details about one of them, named Kuroi, which was the one that killed Rin’s father (and possibly mother). Gruesome fellow, this Kuroi San, a true psychopath which belongs in a horror novel, but Samura portrais him so natural that you make no efforts to believe he exists.

When Manji accepts Rin’s offer to help her revenge her parents, he probably sees in her a little of his dead sister, although he may wake up later and see that there except age and look there is no other resemblance.

First, Rin directs her hate towards the man that killed her father, and they set a trap for him.

With Kuroi, Samura created one of the most psychopathic manga characters I have ever seen. I’m not going to spoil the character for you, definitely have to see with your own eyes what surprise Kuroi has for Rin. Under his cape that is. And no its not THAT. Its something you can find at the cemetery. Or cannibal villages.

During the battle between Manji and Kuroi, we can see the full power of the blood worms. They keep Manji alive even when his legs are cut off. No spoiler for the battle, sorry. Just… the legs stuff.

Another thing that will surprise you at this book is the art of Hiroaki Samura, which is rather untypical for manga. Real, powerful and deeply artistic, the art of Blade of the Immortal alternates ink panels with pencil panels, in a combination that grants a stunning read.  The art is never too detailed, never too simple, it avoids the complicate intricate details for a more artistic approach which  combines powerful strokes of pencil  with subtitle shadows. Some panels from inside they look like they were taken straight from Samura’s personal sketchbook. I can only say… WOW! I shall add Hiroaki Samura next to Kentaro Miura on my list of best artists. The more I think off, they both write their own scripts.

The feudal Japan in which the story takes place is not shown like the noble and honorable (thou bloody) samurai society that many manga and anime proudly show. To me, it looks more like the world of Conan, a Japanese Hyborian age where barbarism, murders and loathing are all present. No character is over-romanticized or idealized to be liked or to do always the right things. I cannot judge the story line yet. I need to read more volumes to do that. Yet, looks like Manji and Rin are in for a long trip across the country, for revenge and redemption (read: get rid of the blood worms). I get the feeling that it will be a pretty bloody and twisted story.

This is an easy manga to read, and not because the story is too simple, but because the it flows easy and natural, separating a few times in two narrative lines, resulting an easy and enjoyable read. There is no lack of pace and no king-sized dialogues and because the lettering is big and clear, its a nice going reading experience.

With no doubts I can say that Blade of the Immortal is one of the fundamental works that a manga passionate has to read. See you again for volume two.

Buy this book from Amazon:

Blood of a Thousand (Blade of the Immortal, Book 1) (9781569712399): Hiroaki Samura: Books ISBN: 1569712395 ISBN-13: 9781569712399

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