Blade of the Immortal Vol 20: Demon Lair
Hmm…I thought Vol 20 was supposed to wrap up this arc. Or is that just the Japanese editions?
This has been an interesting arc for Rin. The thing about Rin is that she’s never going to be conventionally “badass.” Blade of the Immortal isn’t the kind of series where you go off in a cave/on a mountaintop/under a waterfall with a master for two weeks and come out five levels stronger, and it isn’t the kind of series where you’re born an amazingly awesome fighter. Unless you’re Makie. In which case, being naturally, amazingly gifted makes your life hell. Not to mention a bit on the whiny emo side. But unless you’re Makie, you have to fight and train and sweat and bleed for years to get good. And if you start out years behind everyone else, then you have to do something to compensate and catch up. If you’re Hyakurin, you do this with poisons, a distance weapon, and a lot of confidence. If you’re Rin, you do this by being smarter (and often crazier) than the person you’re fighting.
Rin without Manji (or, for that matter, Anotsu) is a very different creature than Rin with Manji. She is, very simply, better. In complete honesty, I think she’s just a sixteen-year-old girl (or is she seventeen now?) who knows that vengeance quests and a life on the run aren’t what she’s supposed to be doing, and who was raised with the expectation of having someone to take care of her. But we’ve seen Rin on her own before, and we’ve seen Rin having to take care of someone while being hunted (if largely against her will) but now we have Rin on her own (or at least, without her relative support system) having to be the leader, having to be the planner, and having to figure out how to save someone. And it’s very intersting to see the length she’ll go to to accomplish her goals, especially when almost anyone would label her crazy for it. Actually, people we’d normally label crazy do call her crazy.
But seriously, her cargo was gunpowder? And she’d figured out how to use her darts as flaming projectile weapons?
Doa asks if getting whipped a hundred times made Rin smarter. I think she meant to say “crazier.” Unless it’s normal for people to apologize and get flustered because they’re accidentally cutting off their hostage’s airways.
Personally, I think Masked Itto Ryu Guy Whose Name I’ve Forgotten bailed on her and Doa before she got ideas about how to use him. Actually, I’m pretty curious about what he’s up to. (Some people know. Spoil me and die.) I also like that he’s apparently on the forgetful side.
I have to say, I’ve never been into Manji/Rin as a potentially romantic pairing (though I have no objections to the series going there, if that’s what Samura’s eventual intention is) but I’m pretty sure their reunion made fans of the pairing happy. Made everyone happy, for that matter. I love how the reason he didn’t respond until after she’d taken Burando down was that he couldn’t believe that she’d changed that much while he was in prison. And then he was torn between being impressed that she made it through the entire prison with only one other girl to help her, and sighing because she didn’t have a plan beyond getting to him.
And did anyone else really enjoy the gender reversal of the girl fighting her way through a prison to rescue someone, and the guy using a poisoned hairpin to take someone down? Though I can’t help but think that, if it’s been in Manji’s body for that long, there’s the risk of Habaki getting more than just poison in the deal.
I’m not sure what it says about me or the series that I just assumed Isaku would still be alive and apparently immortal. I mean, let’s face it, unless you’re Rin’s parents, a random villain (and only sometimes) or Magatsu or Anotsu care about you (unless you’re Makie), you don’t seem to stay dead in this series. I did like his and Doa’s backstories a lot, too, and that they’re both of mixes heritage. But now I want to know how she ended up with the tattoo that she does have. And I am amused by her casual description of how the two of them basically took down the entire jail.
I also loved Hyakurin’s two cameos, and can’t help but wonder if Giichi looks so surly because she took his sake away, is out doing things while pregnant, or if he’s thinking “But now Manji and I might have to actually talk.”