Blade of the Immortal Vol. 7: Heart of Darkness

[pmpknface]

So..... I wonder where Samura came up with the title for this volume, huh? :rolleyes:

Ok, yeah - the cover to this collection is awesome, the art was fantastic, and all of that good stuff. Now - how friggin' sick was THAT! Shira is without a doubt one of the sickest characters I've ever seen in any medium. The sheer joy and amusment on his face when he was SAWING of that asassin's arm is just nutty. It kinda makes the "dog scene" pale in comparison at this point, huh? I mean, we pretty much knew he wasn't a angel after seeing what he did to O-ren, but after watching him actually go through with (most of) it you realize that you're disgusted and STILL can't wait to sEe what happens next. Just amazing stuff. Funny though, Manji doesn't get to finish him off.... :rolleyes:

Ok, I had to get that out of my system.

There were a TON of other cool moments in this volume where body parts weren't flying. Watching Hyakurin mess around with Rin about smoking was hysterical! But then we catch another side of Hyakurin's personality when we see her experience what can only be described as "night terrors." TheN there is her cryptic advice, "Never fall in love with a samauri..."

Magatsu is in this one for only a few pages, but I'm glad we still keep tabs on him. He is one character that doesn't show up as often and I always have issues remembering his name.

Watching Rin talk to the housekeeper of the inn was also quite entertaining! As an outside character, the housekeeper provided a great deal of information about the society of the era and painted a good picture of the average person and their beliefs as opposed to those of a kenshi.

Political intrigue, extreme violence, swordfights, sex, a detective-like investigation by some ronin... what else more do you want?!?!?!? :D This was a great chapter, and it kicks into high gear after this!

Now there's plenty left to talk about, so let's hear it! :)

I'm warning you, there are a handful of scenes in the upcoming volumes (and I'm not saying which ones) that are on par with this kind of brutality. Don't say I didn't warn ya!

[Madame Manga]

Yes, it's good to see Rin interacting with other females for once! We get a little broader idea of the world we're in by visiting Naito Shinjuku--which of course is now well within modern Tokyo and filled with high-rises. At the time of BOTI, Shinjuku was an outpost near the Edo border and a little Wild West in feeling with lots of traveler's inns and brothels; it was closed down by the government at one point after a samurai brawl and only reopened some years later.

Yeah, that's Shira. *shudder* I almost stopped buying the book here, but I was glad I forged on. When Manji finally makes good use of that sickle on a chain, you want to cheer!

The whole arc of Rin's observation of Shira and her final realization that his sort of strength is something she doesn't want really interests me, and says a lot about her character. She's trying so hard to be tough, and like most adolescents, it's difficult for her to see when she's going too far. Hyakurin's needling her about Manji strikes home: "If you're always being protected by a tough guy, you'll never be tough yourself." That eventually leads to some extreme actions on Rin's part, since she wants so much to prove herself.

A couple of interesting details I noticed about the visit to the Mugai-ryu hideout: Manji leaves his katana at the door, which is absolutely required when you're visiting someone, but he retains his wakizashi. That was all right unless you were visiting trusted friends, which the Mugai-ryu certainly aren't. If you did bring your short sword indoors, you were supposed to put it down on your right side when you sat. That makes it harder to draw quickly. But Manji puts his wakizashi to his left, which would have been a clear signal to everyone in the room! (Of course he's got many more weapons than his daisho swords, but they don't know that.) Another argument for NOT flipping manga.

Rin kneels on the floor like a well-bred girl, while Hyakurin sits crosslegged like a man, despite her mini-kimono. Yeah...OK. Her outfit still bugs me in its unreality. Later she wears ordinary kimono more often.

One of my favorite scenes is the ear-cleaning. :) First Manji's pissed off, then he realizes Rin truly needs an "ear" from him! He doesn't often qualify as a sensitive guy, but when he lies down and puts his head on her lap so she can do a little social grooming, it's downright adorable. No wonder Shira breaks it up with a sarcastic comment, and then tries to get Rin's goat by telling her Manji is off with a whore. It's obvious to everyone in the Mugai-ryu just how attached Rin and Manji are to each other, though they may misinterpret the nature of the relationship.

Shira mentions Yamato-Takeru; he's a Japanese legendary hero, and one of his exploits involves dressing up as a woman to infiltrate a bandit's camp and kill the leader.

[Augie De Blieck Jr.]

Thanks for the historical context, Madame Manga. None of that is stuff I would have picked up on otherwise. It's interesting to hear how well researched some of the samurai tales I read are. I don't know enough about Japanese history, and usually wind up just assuming they're all internally consistant universes, and that's it. Hearing about actual place names, people, and customs makes it a little more fascinating.

I just finished reading this volume tonight. I'll likely have more to say later, but I need to say this:

BOTI is surprising me in the way it's structured. I should know better and see this all coming by now, but Samura-san fooled me. What started off as a series of little vignettes of sword-wielding fools getting into fights, has slowly evolved into a mythology all its own that's larger than just the core pair of characters. There's a supporting cast here, recurring characters and motifs, and a storyline beyond the basic "I must kill 1,000 people to save myself."

I almost want to go back now and re-read the first six volumes to see where they all came from. At the very least, I want to re-open DREAMSONG.

-Augie

[De Carabas]

OK. Better late than nothing, right? Oh. Well, too bad. I'm posting anyway. Not alot that hasn't already been posted, but I wanted to make a token appearance.

Shira is sicksicksicksicksicksicksicksicksick! And people accused Meltzer of being misogynistic. Manji lobing his hand off was very cathartic. He's the type of character that must have Samura questioning what kind of person he is to think of this stuff.

Like Jamie, I really liked the quiet moment between Manji and Rin, and Rin's conversation with the maid.

I found this volume to really frustrating because I knew it was a trap. It had all the earmarks of a mole hunt and it had me screaming at the book.

I'm really loving this series for the reasons Augie posted. It is becoming a very complex and crowded world. I had fears and hesitations concerning this being an enemy-a-book type series. A different flunky of Anotsu each time. I seriously underestimated this book and I couldn't be happier.

EM

[pmpknface]

OK. Better late than nothing, right? Oh. Well, too bad. I'm posting anyway. Not alot that hasn't already been posted, but I wanted to make a token appearance.

It's NEVER too late! :)

I found this volume to really frustrating because I knew it was a trap. It had all the earmarks of a mole hunt and it had me screaming at the book.

EM

I love that! "You know when you're really getting into a book when..."

[Sabrina_Fried]

I'm not dead! Just very very busy at work (where I do most of my surfing these days)

So better late than never:

I don't think I've really talked much about Samura's art in these reviews, but art wise, I think this arc was really a turning point for him. the first few arcs, when he was refining the style he was going to use for this comic felt a little crowded at times. He was simply putting so much detail into the pages that they actually became hard to follow. It's why I often had to go back to my "American Sized" singles during the climactic spreads. In Heart of Darkness, we still get the exquisite detail of costume and setting and blood and such, but somehow it doesn't feel as crowded. The characters move like I would expect a real person too, which I think is a key asset in good manga. Lets not forget that despite all the "big eyes small mouth" stuff, most good manga artists were trained in life drawing at one point or another in their careers. Their distortions of human physique work because they understand how to draw human physique properley and then distort it for some artistic meaning.

Storywise, well HoD is not really my favourite arc, but it does serve well as a bridge to the next few arcs where Manji and Rin set off to chase Anotsu. If you think Shira is sick now..just wait...bwahaha! (wait, didn't I say that for the last arc too?) And yeah, the fact that you could smell the trap coming half a book away had me screaming too! I love books like that :)

I think this is just about the point in BOI (so far) where either Samura and/or Manji himself start to forget about the kessen-chu and his vow to kill 1000 evil men before he dies. And yet reading it the second time around it's not so annoying as it was originally. Manji's desire to protect Rin and help her vindicate her parents is slowly replacing his somewhat simple wish to die. It's not that he is putting his oath aside, it's that he is trying to accomplish it and do something good for someone else at the same time. Well, at least good in a culture and time where such acts of revenge were considered socially acceptable. Another good point: Samura, at least I think so, has not been afraid to make his characters products of the time they lived in. It always annoys me when I am reading a historical fiction (prose or illustrated) and the main protagonist is essentially a contemporary person wearing the clothes and such of a historical time period. In such books, it's like the author is afraid to admit that cultures do change over time. Just let the character tell their own story! You just make sure we can read what they are telling us!

Sabrina