If last week was everything that’s right about Mugen no Juunin: Immortal, this week was everything that’s wrong with it.  Not the worst examples by any stretch, but the  trip wires were all there.  Too much happening in too little time, confusing callbacks to barely-revealed characters, an excess of gore so relentless it loses all impact and becomes almost comic.  This series can be so much more, and Hamasaki Hiroshi is wasted on an episode like this one.  But with the amount of material being shoehorned into two cours, I guess weeks like this are the price of admission.

Honestly, reflecting on this episode all I really take away is a bunch of heads getting chopped off.  The battle between the Ittou-ryuu and the Rokki is obviously the focus of the final arc, but we just don’t know these characters well enough for their deaths to feel really meaningful, especially when they come in such rapid succession.  Abayama is obviously a very important character in this story, but he’s only popped up a couple of times.  Giichi and Hyakurin are more of a presence, but if we’re supposed to feel some sympathy for the Ittou-ryuu (and I think we are) Giichi and a pregnant Hyakurin fighting them is hardly conducive to that.

The bottom line – as with last week, the Ittou-ryuu are slowly being wiped out.  It seems pretty likely that’s how everything is going to end, with Kagehisa being the last domino to fall.  Theoretically that’s what Rin has wanted all along, but she’s obviously not going to take any satisfaction from it at this point.  Immortal is obviously not about heroes and villains – there are plenty of bad people in the Ittou-ryuu even now (like the boy who tried to rape Hyakurin), and there certainly were when they destroyed Rin’s family.  The tragedy, I suppose, is in the inevitability of their demise.

Ironic, surely, that Manji seemingly ends up fighting on the side of the Ittou-ryuu in the end, but that seems to be where we’re headed.  Magatsu is still around, and Makie of course – thanks to Manji’s intervention.  And when the opponent facing them is Habaki – who’s just massacred every boat crew in the harbor in an effort to forestall Kagehisa’s possible escape – and his Rokki, it’s hard not to feel a rooting interest for the Ittou-ryuu whether we’re supposed to or not.

As meaningless as this all seems, I do feel like Samura is using this story as a stand-in for the end of the samurai age generally (though that wouldn’t formally come for some 150 years after these events are taking place).  The Ittou-ryuu are everything that’s right and wrong about Bushido – pride, independence, bravery, cruelty, stubbornness.  They contain all that was admirable and all that was reprehensible about the samurai within their ranks, and Habaki and his ilk are, in the end, indeed “dogs of the shogun”.  In that sense Immortal is rather subtle and nuanced – much more so than most manga which adopt the samurai as their canvas.  It’s just a shame that canvas is sometimes so drenched in blood that it’s hard to see anything else.