labingi

For the past couple of years, birthday present money from my parents has gone toward funding some sort of life necessity. This year, however, that wasn't the case and I actually got a couple of birthday presents in the form of manga, Blade of the Immortal vol. 26 and House of Five Leaves vol. 8.

They're a marvelous contrast to each other: the back cover of House of Five Leaves features a fat cat; the front page of Blade of the Immortal features a starving dog, and that sums up the difference really. Here are my quick impressions:

Blade of the Immortal 26
Series summary: a young woman, Rin, seeks revenge on the group of swordsmen who killed her parents in 18th-century Japan. To that end, she hires a bodyguard, Manji, who is has been infected by mysterious "worms" that make him nigh impossible to kill.

This is one of those volumes that is mostly an extended battle scene, but it's a reasonably interesting one and the end segment brings to a head an important moral plot thread that has been winding along since the early volumes. Overall, it's a good volume but lacks the plot and character development of the best.

Spoilers follow: Shira is dead. Thank. God. It came about ten volumes too late and his death speech was a rather contrived mush of life-wisdom-but-maybe-all-bullshit, but his final battle was well-realized, mostly from Magatsu's point of view with interesting martial thought process.

Shira, the great sadist of the series, is a very boring character. His great use in the story, for me, came early when he was still a member of the assassination squad, the Mugai-ryuu. For his basically conscientious companions, he posed the interesting moral problem of how to address the necessity of working with someone you know to be both evil and dangerous. This created some good tension for Hyakurin and Giichi. But Shira's subsequent career as "immortal" monster who kept coming back from what should be death--while it provided some good foiling to titular immortal, Manji--got tiresome. Like the other characters, I'm glad he's gone.

The emotional challenge in this volume comes from Rin's showdown with Renzo, wherein she confesses that she is responsible for killing his father (though she kindly leaves out the part where his father was presumably about to rape and murder her and also the part where he did rape and murder her mother). This was a great moment of moral and physical courage for Rin, who invites Renzo's revenge if he chooses to take it. It reminds us why she's the protagonist (which she is). And it's a lesson in life's ambiguities for Renzo, who has long been fond of Rin.

House of Five Leaves 8
Series summary: A timid samurai, Masanosuke, gets taken in as a member of a gang of kidnappers, led by Yaichi, and discovers he quite likes them (in 18th-century Japan).

This is the final volume of House of Five Leaves, and I must confess it's the only one I've read, the rest of my knowledge deriving from the anime. However, I wanted to see how the manga ended, and I was not disappointed. Though different from the anime's ending, this conclusion feels thematically and emotionally similar. It's a happy ending--very happy really, but understated and earned enough to make me root for the characters and their continued well being.

Spoilers follow: Masa emerges as the hero in this volume, giving up his identity as a samurai in exchange for Yaichi's freedom from prison. This is a very reasonable choice for Masa, who--good swordsman though he is--has never been a good samurai and will almost certainly be happier as a day laborer or whatever he ends up doing. This does, however, mean that he's permanently severed from his family. This fits well with the "family" theme of the series generally. Yaichi, too, many years before, was severed from a samurai family and through much pain, mistakes, and false starts, built another one with his band of kidnappers. Much to Yaichi's surprise, this family does not break in the end. Indeed, all five, Masa tells him, will go together into exile from Edo and start a new life. The implication seems to be that it won't be a life of kidnapping, but this point remains a little ambiguous.

My only complaint is that Yaichi, who is one of the top two major characters, has almost no personality in this volume. He goes through the whole book with almost the same expression of dazed dejection, even when Masa comes to get him in the end. I just wish we'd seen more range, particularly in the end where, for Yaichi, everything suddenly changes.