Blade of the Immortal - 08
Short Synopsis: The Ittou-Ryuu now starts sending women after Manji.
Highlights: This show can both be funny and romantic if it wants to.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10 (Excellent)
Quite a unique episode for Blade of the Immortal. Manji and Rin are purposefully kept in the background, in order to focus on some of the other characters: Kagehisa Anotsu and a new one: Makie Otono-Tachibana. There was a lot of dialogue between them, but if I picked up things correctly, the two of them have a crush on each other, but aren’t in an official relationship. Makie is a Geisha who seems to work for the Ittou-Ryuu in order to make money, but I’m not sure about her exact role yet, or who it was that ordered her to go and take care of Manji. In any case, it seems that in this episode, Makie finally managed to cut whatever ties she had with the Ittou-Ryuu, or vice versa. I think that Kagehisa just tried to love her because of her combat skills.
The fact that this episode focused on different characters also had another very nice result: there was a bit of time left to flesh out Manji and Rin. Really, Manji is getting ruder with every episode, and especially their banter about Manji’s sexual escapades was pretty funny, and how Rin tried to take that too seriously. It was a bit awkward to see that from a fourteen year-old girl, but then again: Rin didn’t exactly grow up normally, having witnessed her mother being raped and all.
I also loved the directing-style of this episode. the animation is still not really impressive, but especially in this episode, the creators really made u for it with some very nice poses and visual imagery. It works especially well with the already excellent sound of this series.