Many English-language readers are still surprised to hear that Blade of the Immortal has ended in Japan. It has. Yes, indeed, the story of Rin’s quest for revenge and Manji’s time as her bodyguard has come to a conclusion overseas—and I’ve read all the way out to the final page in the final volume! Thanks to our amazing translator Kumar Sivasubramanian, I’ve had translations for the last three volumes on hand for several months now, and of course I’ve read ahead to see where Samura-sensei is taking us. And thanks to our longtime letterer and retouch artist Tomoko Saito, our fourth-to-last volume is on time and on sale soon (possibly as you read this)!
While readers will get several exciting, battle-heavy, limb-flying, head-rolling, action-crammed collections in a row, Hiroaki Samura does end his epic series (thirty-one volumes total in our Dark Horse Manga run!) on a bittersweet note that pulls many story points together tidily and also gives mischievous hints of what could possibly happen to some characters after the final curtain falls. As someone who’s worked on the English-language version of Blade of the Immortal for almost fourteen years, I have to say that I found the ending to this savage series satisfying and haunting—but I’m still a little upset with Samura-sensei.
He carves up my favorite character pretty horribly in volume 31, you see.
But at least my favorite character survives and gets to make an appearance in one of Blade of the Immortal’s final, heart-wrenching sequences . . . even if my favorite Samura creation winds up a shaken, battered shadow of the person he or she was before. And even if he or she is missing, well . . . body parts! Jeez, Samura-sensei!
It was quite an emotional experience for me to turn my tankobon volumes, page by page, with translation scripts in hand, and then experience my favorite character’s final moments in battle. And I hope you will have a delightful time rooting for your favorite Samura swordsman or swordswoman and also find chills and surprises as some of Samura’s longtime favorites meet their doom while others survive.
Will your favorite character survive? Or barely survive, like mine does? Who winds up “turning their swords to plowshares,” and who winds up in pieces, victims of Manji’s final, furious, weapon-filled flurries? Will our two protagonists—the headstrong, troubled Rin and the seemingly aloof, foul-mouthed Manji—even survive to the final pages of Dark Horse Manga’s thirty-one-volume Blade series? Now’s the time to enter the fray, with only four English-language editions left!
With Blade of the Immortal Volume 28: Raining Chaos, the time to start reading again (if you’ve fallen off the palanquin) is definitely here! Desperate Anotsu’s group of Itto-ryu warriors are fleeing, disgraced Edo officer Habaki and his Rokki-dan thugs are in hot pursuit, and the whole story still revolves around themes of revenge and the repercussions of payback—embodied by Rin and her evolution as a character. And of course Manji is the immortal monkey wrench in everyone’s plans, hacking away and getting hacked up in kind. See you amid the bloodbaths! Rin’s journey ends in volume 31, and volume 28 is the beginning of the end for everyone! Blade of the Immortal Volume 28: Raining Chaos is on sale January 22, 2014!
Heba,
—Philip R. Simon
Editor, Blade of the Immortal
