Blade of the Immortal
Blade of the Immortal (Japanese: Mugen no Jūnin) is a Japanese manga series created by Hiroaki Samura. It ran in Kodansha’s Monthly Afternoon from June 1993 to December 2012, and was collected in 30 volumes. The story is set in mid-Tokugawa-era Japan and follows Manji, a skilled samurai who is cursed with immortality. To atone for his violent past, he vows to kill 1,000 evil men in order to regain his mortality.
Manji was granted agelessness by an 800-year-old nun named Yaobikuni, who uses Sacred Bloodworms to heal his wounds and help him survive fatal injuries. While the worms keep him alive, they cannot restore large areas of lost tissue. To redeem himself, Manji teams up with Rin Asano, a young girl whose parents were killed by Anotsu Kagehisa, leader of the rogue swordsmen group Ittō-ryū. Anotsu’s faction seeks power through any means, while the mysterious Mugai-ryū acts as a ruthless counterpoint. Although Manji briefly joins Mugai-ryū, he leaves when he learns its members are death-row convicts serving the shogunate. He continues his quest with Rin, clashing with various foes along the way.
Samura has said that Tange Sazen influenced his characters and storytelling, and he aimed to create a new style of manga that emphasizes story over細细 details. Blade of the Immortal began in 1993 and concluded in 2012, with a 30-volume English edition published by Dark Horse Comics. A 15-volume kanzenban edition was released later, and a sequel, Blade of the Immortal – Bakumatsu Arc, ran from 2019 to 2024, collected in 10 volumes.
The English edition of the manga preserves the original right-to-left reading order only in a complex, non-flipped format, as Samura requested. Dark Horse used a cut-and-paste method to rearrange panels for left-to-right reading to better suit Western readers, while trying to keep the artwork intact. This approach can lead to occasional continuity issues, and some sound effects were rewritten in English.
The series has inspired several adaptations and related works. A 2008 anime adaptation by Bee Train aired in Japan and was licensed in North America by Media Blasters. That same year, a novel, Blade of the Immortal: Legend of the Sword Demon, was published in Japan and later released in English by Dark Horse Books. A live-action film adaptation directed by Takashi Miike premiered in 2017, featuring Takuya Kimura as Manji. A second anime adaptation by Liden Films aired from October 2019 to March 2020 on Amazon Prime Video, with 24 episodes and the song Survive of Vision by Kiyoharu as the opening theme; Sentai Filmworks released the home video version.
By 2019, Blade of the Immortal had sold over 7.5 million copies. It won the Excellence Prize at the first Japan Media Arts Festival in 1997 and the Eisner Award in 2000 for Best U.S. Edition of Foreign Material. The series has influenced other creators, including Masashi Kishimoto and Tatsuki Fujimoto. In addition to the main manga, Dark Horse released omnibus editions (three original volumes per omnibus) from 2016 to 2019, with a deluxe re-release starting in 2020.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 08:16 (CET).