It’s had a massive amount of material shoehorned into it’s first six episodes but it’s a testament to how well-directed Mugen no Juunin: Immortal is that it still seems pretty coherent despite that.  Honestly it’s pretty miraculous that one is even able to remember names and faces, given how many have already passed through the narrative, but the fact that these characters are so distinctive makes a world of difference.  I shudder to think what this show would have been like in less capable hands.

Still, there’s a palpable sense this week that we’ve passed into a new stage of the story.  And with events rolling over from week to week, that’s going to raise the difficulty level by an order of magnitude.  It’s easier to manage breakneck pacing when episodes tell stories that stand on their own; when everything has to feed directly into what comes after it and mesh with what’s come before, there’s no margin for error.  I’m still confident because if anyone can do it Hamasaki can, as he’s obviously in his element with Immortal.  But the test for this series has really just begun.

Things are obviously changing in a big way.  The Ittou-ryuu appear to have been chosen by the shogunate as a sort of antidote to the degradation of the samurai class – their leading members are to be farmed out to sword schools across the country to remake them in their image.  So says Habaki Kagimura (Nakata Jouji), who we meet for the first time as he finalizes the arrangement with Anotsu Kagehisa.  Meanwhile someone is trying to wipe out the leading members of the Ittou-ryuu, including our old friend Magatsu Taitou.  He manages to defeat a pair of assassins who ambush him posing as porters, but he tells Kagehisa that he’s not prepared to follow him on this next stage of his journey, his disdain for samurai making such an arrangement untenable for him.

While Rin’s obsession with avenging her parents is certainly understandable, there’s a growing sense here that Kagehisa and the Ittou-ryuu aren’t the real enemy here – that he and they are no worse than any other sword school, just more successful.  And that sense is strengthened with the arrival of Shira (Nara Tooru), one of the assassins targeting the Ittou-Ryuu.  His stated goal is to take out Kagehisa before he leaves for Kaga and his new duties in a week – as such, he approaches Manji as a natural ally with a shared goal.  But if Shira is an ally, perhaps one ought to rethink the nature of the war – and the enemy.

Shira is a real piece of work.  Magatsu is one of his targets; he kills a young prostitute who was in love with him for the sport of it.  He roughs up Rin as soon as he arrives looking for Manji, though things settle down after he makes his proposal for an alliance.  He tells Manji he’s a member of the Mugai-ryuu, obviously a rival sword school (the real one is rather famous and was founded by a man equally renowned as a Zen philosopher) though just why they want to eliminate the Ittou-ryuu isn’t explicitly explained.  Manji appears to see the practical side of the arrangement, as he not only lets Shira stay the night but leaves him alone with Rin the next morning when he goes to pick up his sword from the smithy in town.

There’s a lot of moral ambiguity in Immortal to be certain, but it doesn’t seem to apply to Shira – it’s hard not to see him as a sadist and probably a psychopath.  While this setting is almost a century removed from the Warring States period, it was still a time where allegiances shifted as a matter of convenience.  In that context there’s nothing unusual about what we’re seeing here, but if indeed the central character arc in Immortal is Rin’s, it’s hard to imagine an alliance with Shira isn’t going to have a seismic effect on her personal journey and her sense of self-belief.