Mugen no Juunin

Name: Mugen no Juunin
Type: Television Show
Episodes:  13
Rating: TV-14
Runtime Per Episode: 30 min
Director: Mashimo Koichi
Produced By Production I.G. and others
Year Produced: 2009

Otherwise known as Blade of the Immortal, Mugen no Juunin was originally a manga by the mangaka Samura Hiroaki, who is renown for his art style (kind of sketchy pencil looking drawings, very cool).

The anime follows the quest for revenge by Rin, the only surviving daughter of the Mutenichi-Ryuu dojo, and the last member of her family free.

Her father was murdered by a band of dojo-smashers (a term that I just made up, and since I don't have the patience to figure out the correct term, I'll just explain this one.  Dojo Smashers are people who go around and slaughter members of a dojo or sword style and eventually destroy the dojo or style.  The end.).  Her mother also fell into the hands of these men and was taken away from Rin.

Two years later, Rin is on looking for her mother and for revenge on her father's murderer... only one problem.  She can't beat her opponents by herself.

So she seeks the aid of Manji, a mysterious warrior with... a swastika kimono.
Okay, yeah, I know.  It's not a swastika.
... Well, it is, but it started off as a symbol for any number of things in any number of more Eastern religions before it was adopted by the Nazi party.

Either way, Rin convinces Manji to go on this epic quest with her to hunt down all those who have done her wrong... a time-consuming and dangerous quest to say the least.

That's... a foot, right?

The plot line and the characters were quickly defined within their first appearances, especially since many of the character's weren't alive by the next episode.  The main thing that I noticed about this anime was that there was a lot of indecision.  You'll see what I mean, right around episode 12, things get really confusing because they start to repeat things, but then argue with themselves, then... you get the idea.

I liked the animation style.  I was a fan of Samura Hiroaki after I read Mugen no Juunin, and I remember reading online forums discussing worries about the anime because people were afraid that the art wouldn't be true to Samura Hiroaki's style, but it didn't seem that weird.

Oh, and the reason that I like the animation was mostly for the battle scenes.  They were a lot more... physically possible and accurate than normal samurai-sword slashers.  It was cool to see the hero stumble around a little, and what's more was that the weight seemed to be in the right place.
You may or may not know what I'm talking about, but in a lot of fighting shows, the character's are like... anti-grav, it's kind of epic.

I've done a little bit of martial arts and... you could call it fencing, but you'd probably be wrong.  Even though I'm pretty comfortable with my weight and balance and stuff, I can't do half of the normal shit that fighters pull out in those animes, it's just not humanly possible.  If it is. then please make a video of yourself, post it, and send me the address... and tell me how to do it.

I strongly encourage you to watch the Japanese version only, but if you don't feel like dealing with subtitles, then I suppose the English version wasn't too bad, but in Japanese, it makes a lot more sense.  I mean, you'd laugh your ass off at a white samurai, I know I would.

In my opinion... the music was bad.  I don't care much for wailing, and the songs that were sung in the intro, outro, as well as those songs that geishas play with the shamisen were all like that, so I wasn't having a great time.  I know this isn't technically music, but I also don't get haikus at all.

Even though the anime was decent, I'd still say you should just read the manga.  It's an experience, not to mention freaking long.  The anime doesn't even cover to the end of the first couple of books (roughly, I download mostly, since I'm too cheap to afford the bound books) as it is, but I understand that they will producing a second season, so that's good.  Even though it wasn't the best, I'll be watch it.

Mugen no Juunin Minitheatre

Coming up next!

Ookami to Koushinryou

Alert!

If you don't like spoilers, or still want to watch the show now, you'd better stop reading!

Turns that Rin's mother is already dead, killed by some psychopathic, bald, crinkly-faced old man who's stitched her head to his shoulder along with what I gather was his old wife.  Creepy shit man.  But don't worry, that's probably the most hard-core thing you'll see in the anime, though it depends on your own definition.

Rin and Manji kill him, then they kill another one... and another one.

And that's pretty much how it goes.  They find a couple of opponents that are dangerous, one of which being a woman named Makie.  It doesn't really matter for the anime though, so I'll let you either read the manga... or... not, I don't know.

She was awesome, but more awesome in the manga.  I'll let you watch/read to see if she dies.  Oooooohh!  Cliffhanger!

But never mind that, the more important question here is "Where in the hell is Manji getting all these kimonos from?".  I mean, Manji gets killed on an average of about once an episode... now I don't know about you, but I don't know anyone who'd make clothes like that in bulk.

How in the fuck do you fix that? (Assuming that you can see it)

Fortunately, they kept my all-time favorite character in the anime, though his awesomeness level went down, but not by much.

Original

Not quite as good, but still an awesome line.

But either way, the dude's still awesome.

... I went into this anime expecting something different.  In all honesty, I was expecting it to be the whole manga summarized, but to do that in 13 episodes, on second thought, is impossible.  The anime followed the hunt for the original Ittō-Ryū band (which was actually appeared as a much smaller group than in the manga), while the manga went way beyond that.

It's too much of a pain to try and remember everything, but suffice to say that everyone forms alliances, then screws each other over.  That's pretty vague, right?