Blade of the Immortal, vols. 4-5 (Hiroaki Samura)

[chomiji]

Rin has decided that she needs to beef up her martial arts skills so that she can be less of a liability to her bodyguard Manji in their quest to avenge her parents' death and have his curse removed. However, no matter how hard she trains, she doesn't seem to be getting any better, and she's getting despondent. Then a chance encounter causes her to begin doubting the wisdom and ethics of her entire quest. Her ambivalence leads her to make a very dangerous choice in handling the next Itto-Ryu swordsman she encounters, and Manji has his hands full trying to rescue her.

I should once again note that this isn't a series for the squeamish. In addition to a lot of general bloodshed during a fight scene, there's another flashback, in more detail this time, to the deaths of Rin's parents. Samura is a very talented storyteller, which makes this scene extremely unpleasant. His artwork remains stellar.

Blade of the Immortal, vols. 4-5 (review)

Samura also proves, once again, that he knows teenaged girls. Rin's despair over her lack of skill in the martial arts, plus the existential doubts aroused by her bizarre encounter with Anotsu Kagehisa, are very plausible. It's hard to see a girl of this age, so much like any other teen, in these excruciating circumstances: the decisions she makes are entirely understandable, given her age, but the consequences are, of course, appalling in this high-stakes game. Anotsu's reaction to her is also intriguing - he's a very interesting villain - but his extreme coolness doesn't make me feel that I need to waste any sympathy on him.

Araya, the maskmaker, is a genuine artist and a truly horrifying person - a real psychopath. I'm not sure yet whether I feel that his affection for his son was realistic, given his complete lack of empathy for anyone else. Once again, Manji's earthy decency and deadpan humor are what saves this from becoming a medieval Japanese version of American Psycho (no, I didn't read that - the excerpt that Newsweek had in its review haunted my unguarded thoughts for literally years afterward, and that was quite enough). When Araya unexpectedly discovers Manji holding the unconscious Rin - her face beautifully but bizarrely decorated by Araya, using blood as paint - and Manji comments, quite calmly, "It's beautiful work. You got weird taste, but I like it. Not bad," it was just what I needed to cut my freak-out at the direction the story was taking. Manji knows that there are all kinds of people in the world, some horribly twisted, but there's nothing supernatural about any of it. And he's made his decision: to be part of what counteracts those people. As he explains when Araya asks him why he's a swordsman, "If it was just my problem, I could grit my teeth and bear it. But sons, friends, parents, brothers ... once they get mixed up in it, I can't keep my blade sheathed."

I find myself wondering what was going through Araya's head when he asked Rin to kill him, after Manji mortally wounded him. Did he feel at last, now that his own life was leaking away, that she deserved the chance to take her vengeance? Or was he enjoying a final grim joke, knowing that she wouldn't be able to do it, and taking satisfaction in watching her struggle with the dilemma?

Manji and Rin's ghoulish but effective subterfuge to prevent Araya's son Renzo from taking vengeance was wonderful, and the fact that Manji was willing to go through it ... ai yi yi ... !

There's a lot of unpleasantness here ... not just Araya's murderous wackiness, past and present, but also the scene with the samurai who threatens to kill Renzo early on, and then takes pleasure in humiliating Rin when she intercedes (and I think she probably shouldn't have been quite so quick to reveal who she was, either, but again, she's very young). I feel that it does a lot to reinforce our view of Manji's basic decency as a human being. Magatsu's actions during the flashback gave me a similar feeling.