Tyrannosaurus Riex

Is your anime filled with blades and people who are immortal? Then it’s probably Blade of the Immortal! I’m writing this first to get it out of the way, and because I don’t want “OMG Blade of the Immortal!” in the comment section of every preview post this summer. Get it out of your system…NOW!

The Story

At a glance, Blade of the Immortal (BotI) appears to be running itself through the standard hack ‘n’ slash routine. Manji, a ronin (rogue samurai) used to be the badass on the block until the day he got one-upped by an old lady. She lays the smack down on him and he becomes “cursed” with immortality. His only weakness lies in a certain strong poison that I bet not many people know about. After getting tired of…you know, living…Manji vows to amend his wrongs by killing 1,000 evil men. Along the way he meets Asano Rin, a girl out to avenge her murdered parents.

I like the manga art better.

So, in the absence of a real plot we make up some bullcrap excuse for a guy to go around killing people. Ok.

Dig a little deeper than that though, and BotI starts to reveal a few intriguing details. Apparently, Manji is kept alive by “sacred bloodworms” (kessen-chu) that are practically “human” without being human. Wha…? My guess is that physically they are close to humans (DNA and such) while they posses no heart/soul/whatever you want to call it. The worms sacrifice themselves to repair wounds and reattach severed limbs, etc. Yeah, it’s pretty gross.

He’s full of worms!

As an added bonus, there’s a guy named Anotsu Kagehisa who’s running around the country stirring up trouble as the leader of the Itto-ryu. The Itto-ryu is a dojo-in-progress that bases its teachings off of using any technique that wins (be it dirty, underhanded, or just all out cheating). Sounds like my kind of place, ’cause when your balls are on the line and you’ve still got stuff to do, survival kicks in and honor goes out the window. Oh, this Anotsu guy is also the one who killed Asano’s parents.

Watch the trailer! (or CM/PV/Whatever…don’t get technical.)

What’s hot and what’s not.

So I’ll go ahead and say it: I don’t like the style of BotI. It looks weird, and I can’t stop thinking that Manji should have his arm around Pocahontas at some point in the video.

I’m convinced that he’s a Native American.

I also think that the basic premise behind BotI is dumb. Kill 1,000 people to lift the curse of immortality. It’s an excuse to show fight scene after fight scene of gratuitous violence. There will be blood, severed limbs, brain damage, probably some wangs chopped off, etc…and all for what? The sake of one guy being able to die.

All that aside, it’s going to have fight scene after fight scene of gratuitous violence. Which means I’m going to watch it. And probably enjoy it. Unless someone gets their wang chopped off.

The Question

With a concept like the one behind BotI, one would expect my foremost question to be focused on the value of life or watching those around you disappear. However, the question the haunts me every time I think about this anime has an entirely different focus.

The face of evil? Or it’s enemy?

How do you define evil? What makes an evil man? To dig up 1,000 evil souls, I feel like there would have to be times when your judgment would go astray. And aside from all that, at what point does an “evil” man become evil to the point of deserving death?

Notes: Paraphrased summary from the BotI wiki and random stuff I read around the web.