Blade of the Immortal

I came to this because the manga was a big inspiration for the video game Sekiro. I thought the whole series was wonderful. There were a lot of characters, and I did get the feeling that some story lines would have made more sense if I'd read the manga. Which I might now do.

I loved the main characters and felt real concern for them. A lot of emotion was conveyed with very little dialogue and minimal animations. I found that very impressive. The violence was impeccable. And very graphic.

I imagine I will watch this again at some point.

Thematically, the series(the manga, to be precise) is more like something that must have inspired some long running Shounen. It also feels like a straightforward version of Samurai Champloo.

The storyline and the characters are interesting, no doubt about that but be more careful because only few things are explained through dialogues, most of the events are subtly unfolded through the Graphics(those included mostly gory things). So, if you have a short attention span, there are chances that you will get bored easily. Having said that I wish I had got to see some more explanations of the Bloodworms or why they were so perfect and suitable only for the Manji's and probably Shira's body. The characters, even though, each of them are very well written and totally fit the storyline, I thought could've easily had either multiple or entirely different purposes but almost each character is surprisingly very loyal, something not so Edo-like.

The soundtracks are skippable and while the animation is inconsistent, it seems it hardly matters when they reveal things through flashy Graphics. Moreover, the cinematography felt tricky as well. While the characters have conversation, the camera many a times points at the surroundings.

It is probably one of the best anime I have seen in recent times but it seems lot depends on the preferences because it felt so different compared to the other shows I have watched. I don't know how many people would prefer this type. Perhaps I would say 'don't expect much.'

Beautiful, inspiring and true to the historical era it depicts, it is obvious why Amazon picked this absolute gem up from Linden Films. Blade of the immortal goes to wonderfully dark places brings to light the frailty of human nature, while awing you with the humorous brutality of it's main character and the slight young woman for whom he fights. Disturbing and violent in the best of ways, the story will keep you coming back for more. Appreciable by those anime enthusiasts and new comers, do not miss this wonderful series!

Rich, complex storyline with violence matching AOT, Blade of the Immortal does not immediately draw you in from episode 1. Stick with it, however and there are moments of anime magic.

Violence (of all types) is extreme and not for the faint hearted. Another good thing is the a good number of secondary characters whose story line develop over the season.

My main criticisms are:

• No effort to explain the background, context etc. of what we are watching, the timeline and history of the era.
• Fight sequences seemed very artificial in the beginning, even for anime. It was almost like the each fight was cut short to show the viewer the start and the end. This did improve over time.
• Too many side characters will little or no introduction to help understand how they fit into the story.
• The protagonist is too powerful and quite a few of the initial fights were very predictable / boring. This did improve in the end.

It took me a month to finish this series due to pure brutality of the scenes. But overall the story triumphs the nasty little things in it. Interesting story. Good character development. Good ending.