As silly as it sounds, I originally became interested in Blade of the Immortal due to it being
mentioned in passing during a video in my Japanese Prints class this semester;
it was discussing the level of influence manga has on Japan’s pop culture, and
used Blade of the Immortal as one of
its examples (in this instance, they were using one of the characters – I
believe Manji – in order to advertise hair
care products, of all things). Blade of the Immortal is, as far as I
can tell, a seinen manga, aimed at an
older male audience, unlike shonen,
which is typically aimed at preteens/younger teen boys and makes up a good
portion of the manga I grew up reading.
Although I’ve also read a number of seinen
series in recent years, Blade of the
Immortal still possesses a few surprising qualities I’ve not yet seen in
the genre, nor in the rest of manga itself.
One of the most striking things about this particular
manga is its stylization. There is a
specific feel many manga series take on (i.e. large eyes, impossible
hairstyles colors, etc.) that Blade
has managed to avoid in its entirety, and does so through spectacular artwork. Samura’s realistic rendering of the
characters and environment make the series easy on the eyes, despite sometimes
reading through pages and pages of gore and flying limbs. Not quite as heavily inked as titles like Berserk
or Hellsing,
Samura’s line work is highly refined and deliberate, and definitely worth
studying for those interested in good, rendered line work; then again, the
manga-ka often eschews inking entirely, opting to draw panels out purely in
pencil with often pleasing results (especially some of the mandala-esque splash
pages). My only complaints about the
latter technique is that sometimes the values aren’t quite as pronounced as I’d
like, which can make details tough to make out (or sometimes they may be sketchier
looking than I usually prefer), or having one inked panel in the middle of
a bunch of penciled panels can look odd - but they’re minor complaints.
The characters, too, are a little unusual, not quite
fitting into the typical roles I’ve grown used to reading samurai manga. For instance, in Rurouni Kenshin, one of the primary female protagonists owns a dojo
she took over from her father, and has trained in swordsmanship all her life
(albeit “nonlethal” swordsmanship); however, as soon as the male protagonist,
the eponymous Kenshin, arrives, what unseen abilities she may have had as a
swordswoman become moot, instead delegating her to the role of damsel in
distress, awestruck by the male protagonist’s abilities. This isn’t quite the case with Blade of the Immortal’s female
protagonist, Rin; while she loses her family, and consequently her father’s
dojo, with only two years of training following their deaths, she manages to
wound several of the antagonists, despite the odds (and one of them an immortal
like Manji). While she doesn’t defeat their
enemeis outright, and will occasionally get kidnapped due to her own naivety
(being 16), Rin still manages to avoid becoming just a device to show off how
much more powerful characters like members of the Itto-ryu and Manji are than
the “average joe.”
Manji,
too, is a unique protagonist for several reasons: even with his ability to
survive any wound, or his known ability as a swordsman, he still has difficulty
in battle and would have died several times over if he didn’t have his healing
abilities, which makes me question exactly how good Manji really is. Or if it’s meant to show exactly how powerful his opponents are, I find it
far subtler than the approach most manga take, which typically means forcing
another character to make outside commentary about the combatants.
Blade of the Immortal is not quite the series I expected, wonderfully
so; although I’ve only read a little past the first published volume by Dark
Horse, I’d love to sit down and read it online some time. The content, although gruesome, somehow doesn’t
seem as unsettling as it should thanks to Samura’s artwork, and I’d love to see
where he takes the story.
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| Now now, boys, symmetrical violence never solved anything. |
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