Visual Summary of Manga 5

Visual Summaries Updated 7.23.Tiger

MANGA 5

MAIN EVENTS: The situation with Renzoo Kawakami is taken care of. Magatsu gets ambushed but manages to survive. Anotsu gets propositioned by a government agent to lead a sword school. Itto-ruy guys are being killed off left and right by some mysterious organization. Magatsu tells Anotsu that he's leaving Itto-ryu. Rin and Manji meet Shira, a completely violent psychopath but who seems to be on their side...

    The manga starts off with Renzoo staring at Manji standing over the body of his dead father. The kid picks up some sort of knife-pike and charges him. Manji gets stabbed and falls to the ground, quite dead (or so Renzoo thinks). Soon after, Renzoo and Rin bury Renzoo's father under a mask-shaped tombstone, and Renzoo starts to plan revenge. Rin says that it's not necissery, because Manji is dead. At first, he doesn't believe her. But then she takes him to an unmarked area and they begin to dig. Soon they find his arm sticking out from under the ground. She tells Renzoo to do what he can from then on, and they hug. In the next scene, we see Manji sitting on a porch. Rin comes up to him and hands him a bundle- his arm that he cut off so that they could fool Renzoo into thinking he was dead. They did it so that he wouldn't spend his life hunting for revenge like Rin is now.
     Next, two carrige-carriers (the old Japanese-style people-carriers) are carrying someone through a town. They shuffle off into the woods. A voice comes out of the carrige: "I can't hear anyone. Are we really still going to Mukoo Island?" The cariiers set down the carrige, and after confirming that the person inside is heading to an Itto-ryu dojo, they pull out two hidden swords (in the carrying-beams) and shove them into the carrige. After a moment of gloating away from the carrige, one of them goes to check on the body inside- and gets run through from a sword flying out of the carrige! The carrige opens and there's Magutsu, a little contorted but otherwise unhurt by the swords. He gets out of the carrige and fights the second carrier. He manages to stab him in the gut. Magatsu says: "It's not a kyusho, but it hurts, doesn't it?" (kyosho literally means "fast-spot"- kind of like a pressure point. But instead of nerves, a kyosho is a place where you die quickly if you get hit (like your heart, etc). Magatsu asks who sent them to kill him. The carrier says "A..ka...gi" and dies. Magatsu's like, "What the hell is Akagi? Hey! ... Whoops, sorry... I guess this is a kyusho after all..."
    Magatsu finally catches up with Anotsu and sees that he's in a meeting with some sort of governement official (Anotsu was talking to him before Magatsu arrived). They talk for a bit, and then Anotsu reveals the big news: "In one month, Itto-ryu starts to work for the government".

From there the story switches to one of Itto-ryu's boys (on the buck of his yukata is the kanji for "dangerous") holding two swords and panting. He's facing a slender, bohemian-looking type with dark glasses and a vicious sickle-looking weapon on a chain. There's two dead, headless guys on the floor. He yells at the bohemian type, "You don't know who you're dealing with! I'm...". But the other fellow answers him- "I know who you are. You're Chogo Morozumi of Itto-ryu." Soon after that, he throws his sickle-weapon (it has a little skull on the handle, and a chain attached to it) and it wraps around the Itto-ryu guy's neck. *YANK*
Next we see a samurai-lloking dude walking down a busy street. He's got a katana and at least six large knives sticking out of his jacket. He comes across a woman (a type of prostitute) being yelled at by her husband. Right before the guy is about to hit her, the samurai guy grabs his wrist. He slaps his face around and then gives him a two-hand uppercut. The guy does a full 36- in the air and falls on his face. The woman thanks the samurai guy, to which he replies, "Wanna sleep with me?" She says that she really wasn't attached to the guy, so she doesn't care, but he just met the samurai, so she doesn't want to. "That's ok," he says, "I was half-kidding anyway", and takes off. The woman calls after him, though: "I'm not in the mood for THAT, but I'd like you to come over for some tea... if that's ok."

    Next we see the samurai guy laying out on the tatami. The geisha-looking girl brings out some tea for him. They talk for a bit, and she pours him some tea. He asks her to drink first. When she asks why, he tells her that it's just a habit of his- one of his best friends was killed by a poisoned drink. She goes ahead and drinks first, and he drinks. "This MUST be poison... it tastes too good!" Soon after they're laughing and talking. Soon, though, he starts looking at his hand.
    "What's wrong?" the woman asks.
    "It's nothing. It's just that my fingers..."
    "Oh, is it starting to work already?"
    To which the samurai starts to sweat, and falls over. He's having major problems getting his body to work. Meanwhile, the girl pulls out a scroll: "You're the second in command of Itto-ryu. Kenei Sumino." She then begins to read off a bunch of personal things about him ('Likes to pick up girls', that sort of thing). "All this is correct, right?" She says that she's going to kill him (she starts to ready a hand-crossbow), and she's going to hit him here (she taps between her eyes) so that it doesn't hurt.
    The samurai gets infuriated, and rises up, weapons drawn. The girl shoots at him, though, hits him in between his eyes, and he dies. She pulls off her hair (a wig) and reveals her blond hair. Yeah, a blond chick in old Edo. Go figure. Actually, I figure that her blond hair (and nasal way of talking/laughing) are Hiroaki Samura's way of getting around the fact that he's not as good at drawing women as he is drawing men (in that all of the women's faces look exactly the same). Anyway, she steps out of the back of the house where she meets her "husband", Shinriji (the guy who was beaten up earlier). He calls her by her real name Nen Hyakurin (Hyakurin's her last name). Soon after, she's throwing up in the bushes. Shinriji asks Hyakurin if she's alright. She says that she's ok, but that she just drank about a liter and a half of salad oil (so that she wouldn't be slowed by her paralysis-poison). Shinjiri is totally surprised: "Holy shit! Man, you're always screwing with your body like that!" "What do you mean, ALWAYS...?"

    Next, Anotsu is talking to the government agent again. The general jist of their arrangement is this: Anotsu and his boys should basically be tried and killed for rampaging around and killing people at their own whim. But the government will let that all slide if Anotsu and Itto-ryu help the government. The government is worried about the current state of samurais in Japan. 300 years ago they were really tough and fearsome fighters, but these days there's been peace, so the samurais have all gone soft. The government wants to toughen up its armies to make them formidable again, and they want to give Anotsu a dojo where he can train Japanese government soldiers in their style. Of course, if Anotsu refuses, Itto-ryu will be hunted down by the government. So Anotsu agrees. Outside the meeting he runs into Magatsu. Magatsu asks if there will be any hard feelings if he leaves Itto-ryu. He says that he doesn't want to be a part of anything involving samurai. And with that, Magatsu leaves Itto-ryu.
    Next, he and his girlfriend Oren (I guess the closest thing to "girlfriend" that Magatsu has, a prostitute at the place that Itto-ryu guys frequent) are talking. She's upset that he's going to leave and not come back to see her, since he's not a part of Itto-ryu anymore.
    At the end of this particular episode, Hyakurin is talking to someone with a sun emblazened on the back of his yukata. She issues a command for him to go after someone (the foreshadowing pretty much says loud and clear that it's Magatsu).

    Next episode we see Magatsu and Oren still talking. She holds him and begins crying, so he knows how much he means to her. Maybe he's in love as well? In any case, he has to leave, but before he goes, he tells her that he'll stop in every now and then- Oren gets all happy and excited.
Soon after, she gets called on by a new customer.
    Next we see a prostitute standing near an alley. A big guy (with the sun-yukata) comes up to her and tells her that things went kind of bad- he tells her (Hyakurin in disguise, that is) that Magatsu left before he arrived. She pulls his jacket up and sees that they're blood on his yukata- he obviously just killed someone. But upon questioning Shira (that is what she calls him), he tells her to mind her own business- He does things his own way. By the way, the kanji for Shira is "dead body" followed by "good". Kind of sets the stage for his personality.
    And who did he kill? In the next page we see poor Oren, face bloody, tear-filled, and obviously quite shocked, with her hands staked together behind her head. She's obviously been violated gruesomely. She struggles to get up for a while, and manages to pull her hands free of the knife before she rolls on her side and dies.

Rin and Manji are talking. "I'm going to try to kill Anotsu," Rin says. "I've decided". Manji looks at her for a second before laughing- "You've decided now, have you? What have we been doing up until this point, huh?" It turns out that Rin has been wrestling with the idea of killing Anotsu for a while (after all that they've been through recently) and reconfimed her intentions of killing Anotsu. So she and Manji head off to practice a little more- it leaves Rin flat on her back with a torn shoe and a lot of bruises.

Soon after, Manji heads off for a bit while Rin gets things set up for dinner. Rin comes back from gathering firewood, and instead of Manji, she runs right into Shira. He grabs her and gives her the eye. "Hn? But I heard that his sister was dead... Who are you?" She asks him the same question, to which he responds by throwing her off to the side. "You got quite a little mouth there, punk... Now where's this Manji?"
    "Right behind you, asshole!" is Manji's reply.

    In the next episode they're all gathered around a fire eating, well... what looks like corn. Shira's been sent to find Manji but doesn't know anything about Rin. He wants to bring him to meet Hyakurin, so they can talk about Itto-ryu. Later, when Manji and Rin are laying down (Shira is outside), he tells her not to worry about him. Manji doesn't trust him, even if they do have the same goals. Rin says that the look in his eyes isnt quite... right.
    The next day, Rin wakes up to find that Manji is gone. She had also recently taken to liking a dog- the dog's gone, too. Shira says that Manji went off to sharpen his swords. Rin practices a little with her swrod by herself- doing things like hitting branches as they fall from a tree (to see how many times she can hit it). Shira laughs at her and tells her that she has to become stronger. He tells her that she needs to eat some meat- he starts cooking for her.

Shira starts giving Rin a lecture about meat. Normally people don't eat meat. First of all, it's very expensive. Secondly, it's just not in the culture to eat meat. However, when people get sick, eating meat is a very popular remedy. Shira says that it doesn't matter what kind of a person you are, but when you're sick you gotta eat meat. So they start chewing on some pork-kabobs.
    Rin starts to ask Shira about himself:
    "Aside from trees, what do you normally practice on?"
    "People."
    Shira tells her that he's been killing people since he was 16 for money. Good people, bad people, weak people and strong people. Every time he fights, he gets stronger. And that's his philosophy (and also what he's trying to teach Rin). Rin believes in Shira, but she doesn't believe in his methods (killing for money, killing good people, etc). "You ever been in the back of a meat shop?" he asks her. "The stuff you see back there you wont forget for half a year." He goes on to say that then, after a while, you get used to it. You know what you're eating when you eat meat, but it tastes good, so there's no point in refusing. I guess this is an analogy to how Shira became desensitized to about every human feeling. Even though she doesn't believe in Shira's reasoning, she tells him that she'll eat meat and go for muscle, because she wants to be as strong as him.
    "Good. Then I guess you'll be fine with this, too." He kicks at something that's been under his foot- the head of Rin's dog. "It doesn't matter how fuckin' good roast pork tastes- I can't even begin to afford the stuff! Ha ha ha ha! Hey- HEY! Don't puke it up!" Rin starts spitting out dog-meat. "Yeah... THIS is a girl, alright..."

END of Manga 5 MANGA 6
MAIN EVENTS: Manji and Rin meet Hyakurin and the Mugai-ryu clan. Magatsu finds out about Oren, and gets a lead on who killed her (Shira). Mugai-ryu gets info from their spy in Itto-ryu that Anotsu ordered 3 copies of his ID (that people need, like a passport, when they want to leave Edo), and 3 women's kimonos (for disguise). Manji meets some yahoo in the street claiming to be Anotsu (but Manji doesn't know since he's never seen him before), and gets attacked by him (not much of a fight. Manji wins). Shira and Rin go off hunting after someone in a kimono carrying what looks like Anotsu's weapon. Later, they discover that they were misled, and Shira goes psycho. Hyakurin catches up with another of the Anotsu look-alikes, only to discover that she's been fooled, too. Shira kills and mutilates a lot of people before Rin herself says "enough" and tells him to stop. Shira is about to strike at her with her own sword when Manji comes in and saves the day. Shira escapes sans right hand. Mugairyu's head-chopping dude (Gi-ichi) confronts one of Itto-ryu's men, and questions him by putting his girlfriend neck in his sickle-thing. But he lets her go because the Itto-ryu guy was cowardly (read smart) and told him when he needed to know- where Anotsu is going.

More detailed summary to follow later...

MANGA 7 MAIN EVENTS: Rin runs away to face Anotsu by herself. She finds out that she and Manji are wanted by the government for murder. Manji goes after Rin. Rin meets some townspeople who will help her across the Edo border. Manji meets 3 Itto-ryu guys who want to stick sharp objects into him.

Hyakurin and Manji are eating back at the Mugairyu hideout. Hyakurin asks where Shira is. Manji says nothing. "Oh, I see....", is all Hyakurin says.
Rin is rocovering from the fight with Shira. Manji comes in and they talk. Rin is worried that they're losing time since it's taking her time to recover. That night, Rin heads off on her own to follow Anotsu. On her way out of the town she bumps into the Mugairyu head-cutter. He's coming back from some mission or other, carrying a large, wet, dripping bag in one hand and his weapon on the other. She tries to think of something to say, but he just flat out tells her- Anotsu is heading towards a certain sword school in Kaga prefecture. He tells her to be careful (the way he talks is really cool- really polite and gentleman-like, maybe later I'll bring in some examples), and goes on his way.
On the outskirts of town, she notices a bunch of people giving her funny looks. A little kid runs up to her, and then runs away from her. She's confused until she finds a signpost on the edge of town. A picture of her and Manji- both wanted by the prefectual government for murder.
    In the next episode, Rin's in disguise- a cloak and shawl (sort of like the clothes that Makie wears). She comes to a house and begs the woman working inside to let her in. She tells the woman a little about what happened to her. Later, she's introduced to the woman's husband, puts out all her money, and begs them for their help- she needs the woman's ID to get from one prefecture to another (she can't go as is- she's wanted).
    Finally, we come back to Manji. Hyakurin is upset that Rin ran off by herself so she tells Manji where Anotsu is. They give manji a new yukata (he needs new clothes because the police are looking for someone wearing a yukata with the manji design on the back). They tell him that he needs a new ID to get from one prefecture to another. So Manji sets off to kill some Itto-ryu punk on his way back from another prefecture and take his license.
    Only problem is, he runs into three Itto-ryu guys. They recognize Manji, and he spends the rest of the manga (like 3 or more whole episodes) in a giant fight with them in the forests on the outskirts of Edo. He gets a French pike-looking thing stuck into his hand, and his arm gets yanked to a tree and pinned there. He cuts off his own hand and goes running off. After that, his time in the forest just doesn't go well- he sets a trap or two and kills two of the Itto-ryu guys, but he loses the rest of that arm (I wonder if he'll get it back- it's not certain now), he gets two half-meter long needle-like weapons buried in the back of his skull. At the end of the manga he faces off with the last of the Itto-ryu guys. It doesn't look good for Manji.

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