Blade of the Immortal – 05



Short Synopsis: Next up: the swordsman who walks around with Rin’s parents’ sword.
Highlights: This series quite possibly has the fastest-paced start of any Bee-Train series so far.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5/10
Ah, screw the manga that this series ruined. I might end up reading it as soon as the series is over, but for now I’m really enjoying this series, manga or no manga. You can really see that Bee-Train is trying out something new, and it working out really well so far. It’s amazing to think how much has already happened in this series, especially since in your average Bee-Train series, the first ten episodes are spent fleshing out the characters instead. The past five episodes, though, have kept pushing the storyline forward.

What I really liked about this episode is that everything just happens with minimal exposition and yet it works. This series knows what it is, and is built around its action-sequences. And okay, so the action-sequences themselves are rather dull, everything around them rocks.

The guy from this episode, Magatsu, is one who thinks he’s special because a samurai killed his sister in the past, up to the point where it almost sounds like he’s proud of it. He never really learned to let go of the horrible experience, to the result that it continues to haunt him even though it happened decades ago.

As it turns out, a major theme in this series is acting out of impulses. Rin was already guilty of this, but in this episode Manji also shows that he can be quite the impulsive bastard, and go running off without notifying anyone. This episode also shows that the Ittou-Ryuu have more enemies than just Asano Rin. This could become interesting.

And I’ve also been wondering: why do the eye-catch and the ED show the characters in a modern setting? Could the creators be planning to set the second half of this series in modern times? Did this happen in the manga as well?

5 thoughts on “Blade of the Immortal – 05

  1. No, nothing like that happened in the manga. I hope they don’t do anything like that in the anime because there’s absolutely no reason to. There’s so much material to work with already, it’s not necessary.

    What I do think the ED & eyecatch reference is the fact that manga is very anachronistic. The character designs and more particularly in the way different characters talk — some speak ultra-formal; others talk like they walked off a street corner from a very bad part of town. For what is essentially a chanbara series, it has a very modern sensibility to it.

  2. “it almost sounds like he?™s proud of it.”

    …really? I don’t think that’s a right interpretation. He hates Samurais because his sister was killed by them. And therfore he doesn’t call himself a samurai and leaves Ittou-Ryuu.

    I don’t think he was ever proud of it…

  3. LA: I’m not sure. It rather striked me like the guy was bragging about his dead sister when he talked about it. In the way of “oh, I’m special because my sister’s dead”. This indeed isn’t really pride, though.

  4. Why would Magatsu call himself a samurai in the first place? He comes from the peasant class. It’s not just that a samurai killed his sister. It’s the fact that any samurai could kill any peasant’s little sister and get away with it without any repercussions at all. It’s left him very, very bitter and resentful towards the samurai caste. (Actually, this is a major theme in the manga. Not just with Magatsu but with other characters as well.)

    Granted, I don’t know how the anime presented it because I’m still waiting for subs.

  5. >You can really see that Bee-Train is trying out something new, and it working out really well so far

    Hahaha, no, it’s not working well so far. It’s really terrible and embarrasing to watch this. Not only because they destroyed one of the finest manga ever, but also because it’s a crappy generic piece of garbage by itself, just like the studio that’s making it.

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