Mugen no Juunin

I will start by saying that, having read the manga, I was very excited when I heard that there was going to be an anime adaptation, and I had high hopes/expectations for it. It is possible that my review will be biased in that regard. That being said, I'll begin my review.

Art: The art was, in my opinion, not bad. The character designs were true to the manga, I didn't notice any particularly huge problems with inappropriate scenery or just general sloppiness. However, this anime was based on a very violent, sword-fight laden manga, but there were few fights scenes ... to get overly excited about. The fight scenes that were shown were brief and unsatisfying. For example, if Manji is fighting someone, the beginning of the fight will be shown, then they'll either switch to another character who is watching the battle or even to someone completed unrelated to the current battle. Then suddenly, oh! there's the end of the battle. It was completely unsatisfying. The gore was toned down tenfold.

Sound: This was by far the worst part of the anime. If you like the opening theme, you'll love the sound. But whoever sings this song, her voice just grinds the gears in my head. And you'll hear her pipe up at the most random and inappropriate times. Sad? You'll hear her. Happy? Sounds the same as sad.

Character: Overall character development, I'd say was average. Despite reading the manga, I didn't leave this show feeling super connected to any of the characters. There was room for improvement, but it really could have been worse too. I noticed a couple moments that were glaringly out of character from the manga, but I tried to give some leeway.

Enjoyment: It was slow. There were times when I could have easily fast-forwarded several parts and not have missed any plot. One would think that by the twelfth episode, the penultimate episode, some sense of suspense would be building, or at least some problem that could feasibly end the series and/or set up a second season. Nooooope. Episode twelve left me with little desire to see the last episode. The slowness combined with the hideously poor sound and mediocre characters left me with little satisfaction at the end of this series.

Overall: If you haven't read the manga, you may enjoy this series. It is my opinion that if you were a fan of the manga, you should avoid this entirely. Seriously, you won't laugh at how bad it is--it'll just make you sad. It made me sad. So very sad.

I should start off by saying that this anime is great. It has involved characters, a solid plot, and wonderful art. But watching this show would be a horrible mistake. The manga surpasses it in every way, and watching Blade of the Immortal will do nothing but spoil the plot.

It's evident that a lot of time and effort was put into doing the manga justice. However, the nuances and subtleties which make Samura's work so great are simply not suited for anime. The mangaka himself was originally against animating Blade of the Immortal. I can't imagine why ... he changed his mind; it was clearly a mistake.

In many ways, this anime felt like a slideshow of the manga with music thrown in at the last minute. As can be expected when over 20 volumes are compressed into 13 episodes, the plotline was rushed, and character development was mostly left out. I'd write more about the high points of the anime (because there are plenty), but frankly, they can all be found in the original.

Though a lot of long-time BotI fans are insulted by this adaptation, personally, I enjoy it. I plan to watch it again before I get the next volume of the manga, as a quick recap of the story. It's nice as a summary, but in no way can it take the place of the original.

Yes, I have only just watched the first episode, I know that normally I would have no right in the least to write a review, but this is a special case. It is special because Blade of the Immortal is by far my favorite manga (sorry Berserk), period. When I first turned a friend onto the manga, he said to me, "Wow, thy could never make this into an anmie." He was right. From the wonderful sketched art (that has not been recreated in the anime) to the believable relationships amid complete madness (which I can already see are going to be screwed by the ... show) this manga truly stands apart. Now, I have to say for any other show, I would say it's very good. Very good art, cool fighting, badass characters, etc. However, these do not stand up in the least to the manga. In fact, I take it as an insult. The wonderful original story that acquaints us with our colorful cast of characters and intermingled relationships is thrown in favor of a super sped up plot to make it all fit in a series. Not acceptable. Second, the music absolutely sucks. An adaptation of such breath taking manga deserves music that chills and thrills and knows how to rock (I'm looking at you Kuroi Sabato). Instead, I'm handed some second rate synthesized crap that belongs in a much lesser plot. Another thing, where's the ultra violence?! The manga is filled with absolutely astonishing, beautiful, and creative violence. Stuff that really makes one cringe. In a good way. Instead the best parts are cut out to make it tv safe. And what's the deal with Manji's attitude? He's not nearly gruff enough. Who chose his voice actor, Who?! I'm telling you, he needs a raspy voice like the great Nakata Jouji. If they had used him I might be able to overlook the other stuff. Well, maybe I will change my mind as I watch on; but I doubt it. Read the manga, please, it's genius, by comparison this is a serious degradation of a work of art.

-Moritsune

Blade of the Immortal. By first glance at the title, you'd think that the show would be pretty cool, but unfortunately after 1 episode you would be immensely disappointed.

Blade of the Immortal follows the story of a guy named Manji. Manji is a samurai who is known to have killed over 100 men and lived to tell the tale. To put it simply, he's immortal. In the beginning, a girl named Rin hires Manji as her bodyguard as she travels to get revenge on the people who killed her family. The overall basis of the story isn't all that bad, but everything else makes it ... worse.

Animation - When trying to stay positive, the animation isn't all that bad. I've seen worse. However, most of it looks the same (shows/villages) and overall creates a rather boring show.

Sound - Terrible. The sound is usually out of place and otherwise just bad. The OP and ED themes are horrible as well IMO. Most of the time there really isn't a lot of background music worth paying attention to other than some weird music that is played when something dramatic happens.

Character - 7 episodes into it and we know little on our main characters. We know obvious traits they possess, but some more background would be nice. There hasn't been many other recurring characters worth mentioning or even paying attention to anyway.

Enjoyment - I was looking forward to this since I saw the manga was so highly praised, but the anime version is a big disappointment. Overall, don't waste your time and just check out the manga if you wanna check out this series. I'm sure the manga is better because there aren't many things that could be worse than this anime as a whole.

Ive watched 6 of the episodes so far and i can tell you that this is a must see anime. If you like anime like Rurouni kenshin then this will be your new obsession. Its got fighting, blood, great story, great music, its got it all. The main character Manji is so intriguing with his story of redemption. Very similar to rurouni kenshin in my opinion but its way better. I love during the fight scenes this really good but weird to some music comes on it really intensifies the fights.Seriously if you were hesitate to watch this one, dont be you will not regret ... giving this brand new anime a chance.

I absolutly love the opening song, lots seem to think that its weird and i guess its all according to preference but whatever. This is something i would recommend to older viewers just because of the amounts of blood that is spilled in this anime. Not as much as in other anime i have seen but still just enough to make younger viewers squeamish.

I give this anime 10/10 on all aspects

Stroy:

About anime:

Violence!
Violent is not definite for the kids, but for an older audience.
Nicely developed historical drama, but the theme unfortunately I have to say that I saw in anime called Samurai Champloo. This anime is quite cold, and similarities with the Samurai Champloo (revenge) again has no similarity in the drawing, the main characters and the coarse of this anime.

The main character is a serious violator who is not good, even do some people may call it good because helped one girl and she seeks revenge.
For this young girl, he shows little of its goodness that is left in him.
But what is ... the goodness for a one person if he slay so much people that he don't remember the number.
The main character, you will surely love.
But it certainly is not a good person. I say, because you can see that his katana became the hand that catches flies around, there is no feeling for human life. He lost it because he killed too many people.

He became immortal!
His punishment is that he can not die.
I did not read the manga, but he developed the story more. Because I do not believe that such a person as he is to have a peaceful night. He has hell on earth because he can't not die, but his sins haunt him.

ART:

Drawing is very nice!
Artistic as well as an introduction to the anime.

Sound:

OST 10 for home collection.

Character:

There details characters, but not those I expected. Many are detailed supporting roles as the main role was left with an empty memory, and to regret his murdered sister.

Enjoyment:

One of the best anime that I watched. 10

Final is 10.
If you love anime certainly do not miss this, it is very good.

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kiss from mokunica22
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I will say that this is based on one episode, however it is my firm belief that the first episode should be the absolute best of the series next to the final. If the first episode can't hold you, than a series has problems, and this was the case.

If you have read a certain amount of my other reviews by now, you will know that I am a huge BEE TRAIN fan, but I wasn't too excited over their acquiring of a new anime of this nature. I was expecting already from the start a bloody mesh of pointless violence and ... gore. Well being the fan that I am, I decided to go ahead and give it a try, and it was a pretty big mistake. I've never read BOTI so I have no idea what the story is really like but I can tell this was probably one of the worst adaptions I had ever seen.

As always I being with the writing, Hiroyuki Kawasaki the writer of such shows as Sakura Wars, Tsubasa Chronicle, and Captain Tylor was the screenwriter and he sucked. Big time. The writing in the first episode alone was all over the place and sloppily thrown together it makes even his Tsubasa fillers look like Oscar worthy screenwriting. I was lost 90% of the time, I had no idea who anyone was and ultimately why they existed. The loony sister Machi running around was a nice touch but in the context it made no sense. I had to be told as to why she acted the way she did. There was very little time spent on character development and absolutely no exposition given and no motive for any of the characters.

Equally terrible was Koichi Mashimo's direction. Mashimo who is the one to usually take his time went into high-speed on this. As a result the episode suffered greatly. I've always admired Koichi Mashimo for taking time and making all the elements come together, he is at his worst when he is in hyper-speed mode. His visuals are delpalated and dreary and his execution of the music cues is equally bad.

The visuals were very a-typical for this kind of show. Overly dark overly shadowed and dyed in black ink. It's a major departure for BEE TRAIN's usual colorful atmosphere and eye-catching style. It's like watching Boogiepop where you want to scream, turn on the lights! And of course the action was very typical with the usual blood flowing like a fountain routine. Just once I would like to see an Anime character bleed normally. The character designs are nice though, if that's any consolation.

When it comes to music Ko Otani has in the past made some pretty amazing music scores. Shadow of the Colossus being one of them, but in this case the music is terrible. The score is mediocre and the opening themes are terrible. The background and theme song vocalist sounds like a screeching cat it's like listening to Ali Project only 10 times worse.

From the first episode alone you can tell Blade of the Immortal is going to be a complete and absolute failure. And from watching various clips of different episodes, it doesn't look to get any better. Highly unsual for me to write a review on the base of one episode, but what is there to say, don't waste your time with Blade, I would even recommend Avenger over this.

Story, 3/10: The story suffers from poor pacing, there are times when the show will cut to a random event or random people and never explain what's going on.
on top of that the story takes a long time in the beginning to get moving, only to rush to a disappointing end. A character out for revenge joins with another that's immortal because of a curse/spell, nothing new there.

Art, 5/10: The art, for me at least, was average. The main characters and villains were the most notable nothing else really caught my eye, my biggest gripe would be battle scenes....apparently they've decided to not ... really show them.

Sound, 4/10: The music wasn't anything special either, there is pretty much only one song that use throughout the show regardless of tone, and it gets annoying.

Character, 2/10: There is little to no development for characters in this show, I never really cared for any of them. This is probably the thing that angered me the most, my favorite part of Anime/Movies/TV Shows and etc.
is well developed characters.

Enjoyment, 2/10: I had to force my self to find something to enjoy, the only thing I did was what little fight scenes there were.

Overall, 3/10: The lack of story and character development, the mediocre and average sound, this anime made me tear some of my hair out.
Now I haven't read the manga but, it seems to me the only reason this anime exists is to get you to read the source material which is terrible, why would you try to cram so much into so little, instead of trying to fit maybe a small portion, and making itreally good? Oh well, thankfully I never have to watch this again.

Here’s another adaptation that missed the mark. Animation and sound are pretty standard with nothing particularly interesting to remember them for. This kills everything the manga was going for, meaning the rough pen artwork is gone and so is most of the gore. Turning that to a typical anime artstyle just kills the artistry. It’s like taking the Watchmen and changing them into Super Friends.

Beyond that, this series is not even good as a standard action series. The main character is immortal and can never die no matter how many times he gets stabbed, clubbed or thrown into a huge blender. It doesn’t really matter ... how strong his opponent is or what technique he is using. The protagonist just stands still and gets hit without caring and waits for the adversary to leave an opening so he can kill him. Basically, he can’t lose while they can, and that makes all the fights boring.

The protagonist is not even cool like Alucard from Hellsing or Dark Shneider of Bastard!! He leaves you with no real impression. Neither do his random enemies and allies. The story is a generic revenge quest you have seen a billion times already, made up of stand alone missions. Plus, it ends without concluding anything.

TL;DR: A passable and forgettable series. Not even the aesthetics of the manga managed to keep me interested for long. The gore was fun and even that fell short when the all mighty protagonist who has no special features could never die.

Blade of the immortal is a short 13 episode anime about an immortal samurai who because of past evil deeds must kill 100 evil men to free himself of this curse. So he meets this girl, and the two form a sort of friendship/partnership as he helps kill these evil men for her. The art is pretty decent though it feels right for the anime. You get a whole kind of classic feel from it. It takes place during samurai times japan so i suppose anywhere before 1868. The story really is simple, but it has elements of good and evil and a story that ... is entertaining enough to keep your interest. It's pretty dark and serious, bloody and gory it's the perfect anime for a guy. All it needs is boobs and i think i would give it a 8. But alas, i think it is a 7/10. Still good, and i think its worth checking out. You certainty wont be disappointed.

This show so far has been a vast disappointment. For a swordsman he rather sucks. I mean, heck, if he wasn't immortal, he'd die in every episode because they always beat him! This makes him a lackluster character and makes all his commentary seem foolishly arrogant and without substance to back it up.

It's a good show so far to kill time, but I really wanted more from such a gritty anime. Having him lose a limb every episode and splashing blood gore and the severed limb about isn't very dramatic when you know he's just gonna stick it back on ... ... poof, he's back to normal.

The show fails to show why he'd want to die because the MC's character is so shallow. He's punished to immortality for being the cause of his sister's death and therefore must kill 100 evil men? What? Really? He doesn't appear that remorseful and I imagine after not dying he'd just go back to his fishing shack and drink all day. I guess that presumes a fundamental logic that the anime is lacking.

Don't get me wrong, it's still an okay watch, but just not what I think it could have been.

For start I got to say that Ive only seen the first episode so far, so take this as a review of the first episode.

Iv heared a lot of good about this anime so i thought Il check it out and it really looked promising at least at the beginning, there was a lot of blood with erotic elements in it. You cant go wrong with that or can you? If blade of the immortal proves something then that, that everything is possible.

The story takes place in feudal japan i got to say a i like that era a lot and normally also animes ... based on it. Right from the beginning the viewer is taken through numberous scenes and since not everyone knows the manga its kind of hard to tell which character is shown right now or when in the timeline does the happening take place. Furthermore The main character i believe he was called Menji is kind of a clone of the Batousai the manslayer character from Rurounin kenshin only that this guy wont give up the killing even though he also regrets it.

Instead he tryes to redeem himself with more killings, well ... lets say ok on that one. But there is more, he is immortal lol, its kind of hard to identify myself with a guy who cant be killed at all. So when finally a mortal protagonist appears, which is a cute girl by the way, we find out that she lost her mind and that Menji is protecting her now. How sweet. Too bad that in a couple of scenes later she will be slaughtered right in front of Menji and even though he is so fast that the enemy cant even see hes movements and he stood just a couple of meters away from all that a he was not able to save her. It was just one of those moments when i had to roll my eyes and say to my self: How pathetic!.

So thats all I wanted to say about the first episode of the show, maybe Il check out the rest of them, or Il rather watch as the grass grows.

Overall this is a pretty sad series. I don't mean sad emotionally, I mean it's pathetic. There isn't any real saving grace about it, it's not even an average action series because the actions scenes were pretty lame. It won't thrill you, but it won't kill you either. The story offers no real resolution, you're just cut off in the middle wondering what should have happened next. The music can be grating at times and ruin moments while you're watching, so that's a killer. The animation and art style is simply generic, it's typical of this type of series. If there were more action scenes ... this could have been a decent hack 'em up, but this was just an introduction to the actual story and progression of the manga. So there really isn't much to go on. I'd say skip it, go read the manga or do something else.

The anime is good but we only get to see 13 episodes of this anime from a massive manga series that is around 30 volumes. It is essentially just the prologue of the story and doesn't get into the story, it just sets the premise for it. I don't recommend this series because from what I hear the Manga is amazing (And it does look amazing!) but the anime is only the first 6 volumes and the 7th volume is where an awesome villain is introduced and where the story really picks up. For me, I buy manga, not read it online and if I'm ... new to a series I want to read it from the start and I thought "Hey, I'll watch the anime then collect the manga" but the first 6 volumes (the anime) weren't really that exciting and I don't want to buy them just to get into the story. If you're thinking of really getting into Blade of the Immortal I definitely recommend reading the manga and avoiding the anime all together because as an anime series goes it wasn't THAT good so go and read the manga, I plan to.

I'll start this by saying: I have not read the manga for this series. I'm sure that's fleshed out more than this show but going off the show itself? I don't think it's for me.

The art was fine for the most part, good animation with most of the fights, decent dub, but the fact the show ends before the story is completed really kinda made me throw up my hands. The pacing felt really slow at times and with the lack of a real conclusion, I'm left thinking I wasted what time I sunk into the show (while also grateful it wasn't longer).

Even after ... looking up more info on it and seeing a more complete adaptation was going to be made, I still think I'll pass on it unless it's highly recommended to me. I remember seeing this series was considered a great samurai series so that's why I watched it. I don't think it's awful, I just feel it didn't do anything for me personally. So, watch only if you're really into samurai anything (or just wait for the new one to come out).

Focusing on Manji and Rin's quest to slay members of a group of master swordsmen called the Itto-ryu out of atonement and revenge respectively, Blade of the Immortal attempts to explore the moral ramifications faced with killing and the ramifications of not being able to die, the latter being the case for Manji as his body is infested with a plague of bloodworms that grant him immortality. However for 13 episodes, the scope of this title's story is a bit too grand for only 13 episodes.

To make things short and sweet, Blade of the Immortal's manga source material offers up a good deal of fleshing ... out with the various members of the Itto-ryu that Manji and Rin cross paths with to explore what purpose they have for their lives and the anime only covers much of the first arc to said series which is only about 20 of the 206 chapters that make it up. The anime structures each encounter in one to two episodes leading to some rather mixed results with how well the stories with each Itto-ryu encounter comes across. The majority of the first half episodes are not too well executed in their storytelling as their self-contained narrative prevents much connection that viewers can make to the characters, feels too much like a typical revenge story and Manji mostly getting by through exploiting his immortality for the element of surprise for each foe he slays. Also, the final two episodes don't add anything to the story as the anime adds on more hints of events yet t come, Rin still committed to revenge and the series ending inconclusively just as events are about to escalate in the series.

In spite of its significant flaws, the anime does have its bright spots. The middle arcs of the series offer better story developments as Manji finds himself challenged by another immortal in the form of Eiku, Makie being conflicted over her role with the Itto-ryu and Araya trying to conceal his past from his family while forcing Rin to confront the flaws to her desires of revenge. Plus, the series is a beautiful one to see visually with gorgeous scenic shots, lifelike character designs and great sword fight choreography with Manji's encounters with the various Itto-ryu members.

Still in spite of these minor praises, Sword of the Immortal still carries major issues stemming from its adaptation only being a small part of a larger series and it shows with the majority of the series not providing much fleshing out of our two leads, early episodes feeling a bit underwhelming in their developments and two final ones mostly being a tease for things to come later in the series. If you want to get the best out of seeing the series, I'm more inclined to recommend checking out the manga adaptation of the series over this one.

Blade Of The Immortal, this anime althought short is interesting, gory, action packed, but sad in a way, as a samuarai has had to live for such a long time as he was cursed with immportality. But, eventually he finds a glimmer of hope in a young girl, determined to help her with her revenge, in turn making his own wish come true that he truly desires, in which he would be free of his this torturous fate he suffers from, that is "endless time". This man bares deep scars that won't heal, as a reminder of endless battles from his past and in his ... future as well, he both fights and encourages the young girl he's helping to both move forward with her revenge and continue on with her family's legacy. I don't think this anime ends like this, the last episode seems to be the beginning of something much bigger.

the most poor adaptation which is, the worst of enliven which is, the opening is whole program. animation is very poor, the chara is ridiculous, flat narration, yes I detest this enliven and however I continue to look at it but I find nothing of definitely this poor man majin even (which is obliged to kill his adversaries in the back) the worst swordsman is who is it is void! veils my very personal opinion I recommend it to nobody, kurozuka am much better (I know this has got nothing to do but I wanted to write it....