Review: "Blade of the Immortal, Volume 1"

[x_los]

- Blade’s protagonist was a samurai who came to realise his lord was a corrupt asshole and killed him for it. Somehow this involved killing 100 people, and he later refers to these people as Good Guys, despite the Lord in question’s involvement in economic oppression? Via talking to people about this, I think he killed people doing basically his old job, and that he tells the nun who blood gu’d him he considers these men ‘good’, despite who they worked for and the overall tendency of that work, due to their loyalty and general ‘jobsworth’ness.

The lord’s guards committed suicide due to their failure to protect their employer. One of the guard’s sons married the protagonist’s sister. He tried to take revenge on his brother in law/the protagonist for his father’s death, and was himself killed in the process. This drove his wife, the protagonist’s sister, mad.

- In the opening sequence a ronin gangster disguised as a priest also tried to kill the protagonist and was killed himself. This incites this now-dead gangster’s brother (or just martial brother?) to come after the protagonist, and kill his sister in the process.

What exactly was the false priest after the protagonist for? Did he just want to kill the protagonist because the protagonist had a badass reputation? For the clout? I found this somewhat unclear.

- I really feel all this could have come up earlier in the sister’s marriage. ‘You know how your dad committed suicide to apologise for being a bad guard? Well the bloke that did the guy he was guarding in was my brother. Just be aware of that, if he visits and it comes up.’ Sure it's an awkward subject. I respect that. But what's more awkward, is decapitation.

- I find Seven Seas’ glossaries both inadequate to their purpose and patronising, with the vibe of a Discover Kids! Title. In contrast, the way Dark Horse handles their significant translated comics series doesn’t irk me.



I like that they made a concerted choice about the story’s uneven registers and gave us a word of explanation about that decision, so it this doesn’t just look like sloppy translation.

In terms of the content of this particular note, I’m not sure you can just write off swastikas’ capacity to bear any modern ideological content in post WWII Japan due to their historical significance in the given era. Sure it’s a Tiffany Problem, but it’s the author’s modern choice and reader-reception that matter here, rather than pure historical reality. I don’t find this particular usage offensive, but as a pre-emptive effort to ward off criticism, I find the logic of Dark Horse’s contention flawed.

- A friend was surprised that they considered the flipping panel order at all given that for years, Anglophone manga readers have simply been asked to accept back to front, right to left reading. I believe Dark Horse is essentially stuck doing this because it’s how they started:

As a quite general-public-facing comic, it’s probably slightly better for Dark Horse to reorganise panels where they can, unless it’s going fuck the layout. It is, however, a lot of work. In an ideal world I suppose I do still prefer localised orientation, but as a cost saving measure I’d far rather sacrifice that than something like translation quality. After all, you can cue people to physically read in a non-standard way.

- Chu has almost got to come from the same conceptual place as blood gu, right?

- The way the protagonist’s body knits back together when he’s injured is truly gross, and thus very effective.

- This comic does a great job of using the jump between panels to move in time. We focus on the scar across the protagonist’s face in the present, then jump back to when it was fresh. Some pages ater this shift, we see a panel where a drop of blood slides down the protagonist’s face onto the ground. In the subsequent panel, it simply sits there. Then, in a third panel, a finger touches the splash. A fourth shows a guard tracking the protagonist, bringing his hand up to examine the still-tacky blood on it.

- The main guy we're Venging on in Blade of the Immortal looks so femme when he’s introduced that it took me a good while to realise he wasn’t supposed to be a female character.
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- The head-shoulders guy was super-duper fucked. ‘Oh, you think this kind of courtly guy might be sort of ok? Well you’re wrong, these incel bitches are the worst ones every time.’

Anyway, he’s dead now.



- This very nearly lands, but doesn’t quite. I’m not sure whether that’s on the writer or the translator.