Blade of the Immortal, Vol. 12: Autumn Frost Review

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Blade of the Immortal, Vol. 12: Autumn Frost ReviewThink it would be great to live forever? Manji, a crass ronin of eighteenth century Japan, doesn't agree. Cursed to immortal life for prior misdeeds, he must dispatch a thousand evil men to the judgment of the Buddha in order to die himself. Joining a young girl on her quest for vengeance against the rebellious Itto-Ryu sword school, Manji soon has dire need for his twelve blades as he faces a motley assortment of hardened warriors, psychopaths, philosophers and just plain jokers. The thousand-man requirement is met by the painful stroke of give-and-take; and is told in a fashion that puts most modern epics to shame.
This, the twelfth compilation released overseas, features the return of Blade's most vicious scoundrel, Shira, a cold-eyed killer capable of unspeakable depravities. At the climax of *Heart of Darkness* (BotI vol. 7), Manji cut off Shira's right arm, putting a kink in the assassin's typical routine of butchery, whoring and all-around reprobate-behavior. Upset but unruffled, Shira has decided that an `eye for an eye' is an adequate reparation for the loss of his arm; he intends on taking Manji's right appendage in payment and enlists three dim-witted stooges to help him ambush the lazy immortal. But unbeknownst to Shira's death-lust maneuverings, Manji is traveling with Magatsu Taito - a former top-blade warrior of the rogue Itto-ryo sword school - who has a grudge to settle with the serial-killer. . .
This `love/hate-triangle' is perhaps the most desperate fight of the series so far, as Magatsu and Shira cannot resuscitate themselves a la wound-healing bloodworms. With Manji, one always _knows_ he can survive just about any blow short of having his head chopped off; and after the violence-orgy of *The Gathering*, wherein the ronin's immorality was tested to an almost ridiculous limit, Hiroaki Samura decided to shift the conflict-emphasis to the other, `normal' characters. In *Autumn Frost*, the duel between Magatsu and Shira quickly reaches a dangerous level of piercing-threshold and pain: the tension of the close-quarter combat, coupled with the feverish passions of both hero and antagonist, give the story as a whole a much-needed jolt of unpredictability and potential mortality.
I was initially surprised to find that Dark Horse included two issues after *Autumn Frost's* harrowing conclusion, the one-shots `The Wind and the Heron' and `Petals on the Wind', which detail the growing relationship of Anotsu and Hisoka Shingyoto. In hindsight, though, I can see why, as this profoundly brief romantic interlude offers a telling contrast to the stonehearted feud of the previous storyarc. . . and when I say brief, I mean brief - events are already transpiring to doom the dreams of these star-crossed lovers.
A note on the artwork: Hiroaki Samura's technique can almost be considered the antithesis of mainstream Manga. Instead of the ultra-clean ink-lines and the large eyes/small mouth stereotypes perpetuated in most Japanese comics, Samura favors a sketch-technique to his backgrounds and action sequences, along with [fairly] proportional humanistic characteristics (the ears are a bit large). The detail and craftsmanship are, as always, superb, particularly in the pencil-work and frame-perspective. More importantly, Samura has evolved in his plotting and drafting of combat: no over-reliance of hacked limbs and death-murals here! Instead, the fight-scenes are so visceral and tension-laden that one can almost smell the coppery stench of intermingled blood, dust and sweat; feel the kicks, blows and (multiple) stabbings as our heroes struggle toward their long-awaited culmination. It's a welcome change from *Beasts*' grim assortment of decapitations and limb-loss.
Five stars.Blade of the Immortal, Vol. 12: Autumn Frost OverviewYou'd think that Manji, the immortal swordsman, would have dispatched just about every sinister personality in feudal Japan on his mission to slay a thousand evil men. But instead of thinning out the vicious herd, he's only shaken loose the most vicious and depraved. Now, Manji and his pal Magatsu are on the trail of one of the baddest apples in the barrel, Shira, old enemy of Manji - and a one-handed enemy, courtesy of the immortal's blade. But while Manji and Magatsu are hunting Shira, the crafty killer has hired a pack of hunters of his own, and if he can't kill Manji, he's hoping for the next best thing: to cut Manji to pieces on a daily basis. Streetwise and violent and yet possessed with a dark grace and beauty, Hiroaki Samura's award-winning Blade of the Immortal has taken its rightful place among the finest that graphic fiction has to offer, a stunning tour-de-force of story and art like none other.

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