Blade of the Immortal vol. 30: Vigilance
Only one more volume left.
So what does mangaka Hiroaki Samura choose to do with this penultimate entry in his legendary series? Go balls-out with the action as he has three different battles unfold over the course of this volume. Even though the fighting is pretty much non-stop from beginning to end here, he still manages to work in some compelling character moments and interesting twists amidst all of the bloodletting. It’s a smashing piece of work, even if things get to be just a tad ridiculous in parts.
With that said, in their respective corners are:
Manji (and Rin) vs. Arashino: Our protagonists take on the biggest, burliest, and most well-armored member of the Rokki-Dan — actually, of the entire series to this point. He’s also German, single-minded, and earnest in his demeanor, but it’s those last two that prove to be his undoing. The battle between him and Manji is classic by the series’ standards in the sense that it involves the swordsman displaying a fearsome amount of imagination in his attacks and still managing to get butchered before receiving help from an outside source.
What makes this different than nearly all of the fights he’s been involved with before is that this is the first time Rin has been a truly active participant in them. Yes, she jumped in and saved his ass from being cut up by Makie way back in vol. 3, but she was just a human shield there. Here, Rin gets the goods needed to turn the tide and dives right in with a convincing bit of drama which serves to remind us that she does nothing by half-measures. Even if they’re not quite working in concert, their combined efforts help make this battle memorable.
As does the presence of Arashino himself and his seeming invulnerability. He proves to be an incredibly tough nut to crack, but that just makes it all the more satisfying to see when he does. Even if the means by which it happens involve part of Manji’s body taking on Rob Liefeld-ian proportions. It’s like I said, just a little ridiculous.
Anotsu vs. Habaki: Out of the three, this is the one that has the most relevance to the title’s core themes of the destructive nature of vengeance and the costs involved when the old clashes with the new. It’s not enough that one of these people has to kill the other. They have to do it in a way that lets the other person know that they’ve lost. The bitter enmity these two have for each other is clear in every panel, and most piercing when Anotsu basically trolls the elder swordsman when the time comes for Habaki to wipe away the blood that’s about to run into his eye.
The thing is that while Anotsu has been called a genius time and time again in this series, Habaki is the first person we’ve seen really give him a run for his money in battle. We’ve not seen the former official of the shogunate in many battles, but there was that one time when he and Giichi slaughtered a good portion of the Itto-Ryu at a banquet. Now we see how he was able to do that and walk away without a scratch as he’s a very crafty and wily fighter who can turn even certain defeat into a victory of sorts. The fight (so far) costs both of these men dearly, and I think that it’s only going to get more brutal as things go on.
Makie vs. EVERYONE ELSE: Soooooooo… my money’s on Makie. How about you guys? Aside from that time she first fought Manji, the woman who showed Anotsu the “beauty of the strong” has not only never lost a fight, but won all of them by a pretty significant margin. What tension there is to be had from her battle against three members of the Rokki-Dan and their Hebi-Gumi ninjas comes from the metalogic in this particular setup. She’s the unbeatable fighter, they’re the chumps who have to bring her down. So even though they have the numbers in this battle, the Rokki-Dan are the underdogs in this battle. Yet, they’re also the antagonists in this whole endeavor, and there’s always the chance that Makie’s tuberculosis could make a devastating reappearance in the middle of battle.
There’s a lot of mixed signals here if you’re like me and trying to predict the outcome by genre rules. Fortunately, that just adds to the tension as the momentum of victory shifts between the two parties in this battle. It’s also the most elaborately planned and executed of the three fights in this volume, given the fact that it involves four key participants all fighting at close range. As thrilling as it is to see the fighting unfold, I will confess that it can be hard to follow at times. On more than one occasion I found myself going back over a few panels to see just how Makie had countered the latest assault thrown at her.
All told, what’s here represents some very exciting buildup to the final volume. As big as these fights were, an even bigger one is teased on the final page — between two characters I’d rather not see die, to be honest. Even if Samura manages to top himself with that particular battle, I’d like to see more of the final volume given over to having the characters hash out their differences before they go their separate ways. The battles in this series has been some of the very finest that has ever been put to the page, but it was a clash of ideals that got this series started and I want to see how everyone left standing deals with that in the end. Yes, 2015 has “Age of Ultron” and “The Force Awakens” on deck, but I’d see them both kicked to the following year just to read the final volume of “Blade of the Immortal” right now.
No. I really don’t want to wait until April.