Blade of the Immortal – Episode 1
July 14, 2008
Blade of the Immortal (無限の住人, Mugen-no-Jūnin) is an anime based on a prize winning ongoing manga (1994-current) by Hiroaki Samura. The plot follows Manji, a skilled samurai who has been cursed with immortality for his sins. To earn his atonement he has to slay 1000 evil people. Manji meets a girl Asano Rin and promises to help her avenge her parents. The manga deals with consequences of immortality and meaning of death and life.
I have not read all manga, but I did enjoy the first few pages. The penciled work looks quite detailed and well composed.
The anime looks… different.
Trailer
Opening
Now, before I tell you what I think about the episode, I have to cover two important issues.
People, just don’t do this! If you fight for justice and find yourself stained with some blood of evil, you can’t do much about it, but wipe it away. However, touching blood for no reason is just stupid. Some of the bloodborne pathogens that you might acquire are: hepatitis B virus (HBV), hepatitis C virus (HCV), and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that can lead to acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS).
Yes, this is swastika. While it is often associated with Nazism, it is a very ancient symbol denoting good luck.
As for the first episode… I liked the trailer music, but the song was just terrible!!! The song was overshadowing the conversation and was very poorly implemented. While the plot does follow manga quite closely, it looks like the transition didn’t go very well… Perhaps, it was the timing of the show. We witness many events in the first episode, and it feels rushed. The same can be said about manga, but reading manga is very different from watching anime because you can control the flow by turning pages, while anime keeps throwing things at you (you can pause the film of course, but that often breaks the continuity).
First episode is expected to be a bit sudden (if it follows the manga) since it’s kinda like a FMA intro… character introduction (and purpose), background, and action thrown all together at once. It won’t get “good” til they try to get her dad’s sword back (give or take… 5 episodes)
I can’t recall the first episode of FMA now
Ah, I hope the sword retrieval will go well. We’ll see in a few weeks
the first episode sucked ass, it doesnt matter if its a intro, have u read the first chapter of the manga? the first episode is made entirely of the first chapter of the manga, they switched around everything, first of all they made manji look like a wuss and they took away his wolverine’ish arrogance which suits him and had him showin fear, if the mans immortal and he knows it what is he afraid of -.-”, and its not gonna take 5 episodes for the sword retrieval in the preview it shows it as the next episode cuz thats when rin meets the freaky guy with the head fetish, also hyakurin isnt in the first chapter, so this anime looks like a flop to me
Indeed, the first episodes had some flaws, but I’ll wait a little before dismissing the show entirely.
yes, i agreed. the trailer song would make a better op song and the soundtracks are horrible. soooo crazy. but, i wasn’t surprised that the anime turn out to look different. i mean it always happen like that. visual never look good as pics. lol. according to manga that is.
but i am impressed that Rin turned out to look kind of pretty. as for Manji, i didn’t like his voice. it’s kind of odd sounding for his character.
If they make up an ending for it that’s as good as the ending the writers made up for FMA I’ll be happy. But I suspect they haven’t nailed Manji’s voice yet let alone anything else; he’s too jaded compared to his manga counterpart, who was fully aware of how screwed up his life/past/body was but was more sarcastic about it and less emo. It’s not until he meets Rin that we’ll know for sure though, and I was watching a pretty bad translation, so I’ll shut up.
I just hope the Sid-Vicious-crossed-with-Kakashi-from-Naruto dude has someone good voicing him; His name escapes me but he was a cool character in the manga..
Also, please someone hire the animators from Champloo on an emergency assignment, the fights are a bit disappointing.. Although the way they got around not showing the people getting sliced in half while still making it dark and stylised was quite creative. I hope his anime gets good!
Why does Machi have to die she’s so sexy I whant her to have anime kids oxoxox
Yes, it is very sad