Blade of the Immortal

In the Edo period, within Edo Castle, there lived a killer burdened with a hundred lives—Manji. Possessing an infinite lifespan and an indestructible body, Manji vowed to slay one thousand evil men to atone for his sins. Rin, a sixteen-year-old girl whose parents were brutally murdered by Tsurugi, the leader of the Ittoryu-ryu school who believed "only victory is the way of the sword," hired Manji as her bodyguard to eliminate the Ittoryu. The story is set in 1792 during Japan's Edo era. Manji killed his corrupt superior and, while fleeing, accidentally slew his brother-in-law who had come to pursue him. Although Manji wished to lay down his sword, he was relentlessly hunted and inadvertently ruined his sister's life. Manji, a swordsman granted immortality after being implanted with Blood Beetles by the Eight Hundred Nuns, swore to kill one thousand evil men to break the curse of immortality caused by the beetles and atone for his hundred killings. Upon meeting Rin, an orphan bearing a blood feud, he decided to help her seek revenge. Along the way, they encountered the Ittoryu, Rin's enemies; the Muganryu, shogunate spies aiming to exterminate the Ittoryu; and various other factions and individuals. On Rin's journey of vengeance, where right and wrong are indistinct, Manji defeated formidable opponents one after another—for him, achieving the goal of killing a thousand men might merely be a matter of time. However, all swordsmen have hands stained with blood; who possesses good intentions, and who is truly evil? Does Manji have the qualification or ability to judge? Killing is a sin. Killing evil men is also killing. Are there really sins in this world that can be cleansed through murder? Everyone simply swings their sword for their own reasons. For Manji, the tragic vow to kill a thousand men made amidst irretrievable regret may have been nothing more than a reason to keep swinging his blade, a reason to continue living... Perhaps it is not truly a chaotic age—there are no fires of the Warring States period, nor the gales of the Meiji Restoration. The Tokugawa Shogunate peacefully rules everything, looking down upon the disputes among swordsmen and calculating step by step which forces can be manipulated. It appears that everything is under some form of control.