In a sense, I see Mugen no Juunin: Immortal as a test of how many strikes an anime can have against it and still end up being special.  It’s clear the animation budget is modest, which really matters with a samurai series.  It’s going to run for two cours and try to adapt a manga that ran for almost twenty years.  It comes from a studio in LIDENFILMS that has a mixed track record to say the least (though they have occasionally done good work, like Udon no Kuni no Kiniro Kemari).

Yet somehow, so far at least, this series is indeed special.  I think we have a perfect horses for courses scenario with director Hamasaki Hiroshi, an under-appreciated auteur whose skillset is perfectly suited to get the most out this material (and budget).  The cast is splendid – with two more superb veterans in Kuwashima Houko and Sasaki Nozomu joining it this week.  And Hamasaki is making splendid use of period music (never more so than with this episode).

I’m not saying I wouldn’t love to see what he could do with this show at Wit or Bones with a fat wallet, but as it is what Hamasaki delivers is like an abstract paining.  Necessity can be the mother of invention, and the fact is Hamasaki is a pretty minimalist director to begin with.  He’s also helped by the fact that this is an Amazon series and thus doesn’t have to worry about censorship for TV.  And the fact is that Blade of the Immortal is an immensely violent series (with no small amount of sex either).  Hamasaki isn’t going crazy like a kid with a new toy – even if he has license to be gratuitous he’s still showing admirable restraint.  But that does make the shockingly violent moments that much more shocking.

This week’s story casts Manji against Kuwashima’s Otono-Tachibana Makie, a swordsman of the highest caliber.  As we meet her she’s working as a geisha, but this comes on the heels of a career as a prostitute in Manzen-nakacho (which was one of Edo’s smaller red-light districts).  She’s also an associate of Sasaki’s Anotsu Kagehisa, head of the Itto-ryu.  There’s a complicated relationship between those two that one senses this episode only dips a toe into, but Makie is clearly trying to prove herself to Anotsu – in this instance by taking out Manji for him.

The fight(s) between Manji and Makie are brutal, even as Hamasaki-sensei is reduced to using a lot of still shots to fill the gaps.  He and animation director Ogiso Shingo (a legend in his own right) manage to make this duel compelling in spite of that, and aren’t shy about showing us Manji being literally hacked to pieces by Makie.  It’s fascinating to see Manji, after all this buildup, so thoroughly defeated so early in the series and by a woman at that – and he admits quite willingly that he was serious from the beginning.  Makie is just that good, apparently – though she does let Manji live in the end after Rin (who’s had a rough day of jealousy and vomiting) springs to his defense.

I’m interested to see how many of these one-off stories return later in the narrative.  It certainly seems there’s unfinished business with Makie, who appears to have burned her bridges with Anotsu with her decision, and whose humiliation of Manji seemingly throws down a gauntlet at the feet of his honor as a swordsman.  The theme here is a familiar one – the futility of revenge – and all of the chapters we’ve seen depicted so far are variations on it.  Interestingly it’s a lesson the protagonist seems to have already learned, but one which Rin still resists.  That suggests  that Mugen no Juunin: Immortal is as much or more about her character arc as his.