General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Blade of the Immortal (無限の住人-IMMORTAL-)

Blade of the Immortal (無限の住人-IMMORTAL-, Mugen no Junin: Immortal) is a 2019 Japanese original net animation (ONA) series that adapts Hiroaki Samura's samurai manga Mugen no Junin in full. Produced by Liden Films and directed by Hiroshi Hamasaki, it ran for 24 episodes on Amazon Prime Video from October 10, 2019 to March 26, 2020, and was later broadcast on Japanese television.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Format	ONA, 24 episodes of about 24 minutes, Fall 2019 season, rated R-17+ for violence and profanity¹
Run	Streamed weekly on Amazon Prime Video from October 10, 2019; final episode March 26, 2020; TV broadcast on TOKYO MX and MBS from April 7, 2020¹^•³
Source	Hiroaki Samura's manga Mugen no Junin, serialized in Kodansha's Monthly Afternoon from June 1993 to December 2012, collected in 30 volumes⁴
Studio and director	Liden Films; director Hiroshi Hamasaki; series composition Makoto Fukami; music Eiko Ishibashi⁵
Main cast	Kenjiro Tsuda as Manji, Ayane Sakura as Rin Asano, Nozomu Sasaki as Kagehisa Anotsu⁶
Adaptation history	Second anime adaptation, after a 13-episode TV series by BeeTrain in 2008; a live-action film by Takashi Miike followed in April 2017⁴
Recognition	Recommended work, Animation Division, 24th Japan Media Arts Festival⁷

Spoilers

Premise

The story is set in an Edo-period Japan in which samurai still exist. Manji, a ronin known as the "hundred-man slayer," cannot die: the nun Yobikuni cursed him with immortality as punishment for his ruthless deeds, and his body carries bloodworms that heal his wounds. The only way to lift the curse is to slay 1,000 evil men, so he wanders Japan killing the wicked while weary of his ageless life.⁸

His path crosses with Rin Asano, a teenage girl whose parents were killed by the Ittō-ryū, a school of swordsmen led by Kagehisa Anotsu. Rin hires Manji as a bodyguard for her journey of revenge. He initially refuses, but seeing in her a reminder of his dead sister, he agrees to help her.⁹ As the two travel, they find that the shogunate's forces can be as cruel as the swordsmen they hunt.¹⁰

The source manga

Hiroaki Samura debuted as a manga artist with Mugen no Junin, which won the Afternoon Four Seasons Award grand prize in 1993 before beginning serialization in Monthly Afternoon that June. The series ran for nearly twenty years, ending with its final chapter on December 25, 2012, and was collected in 30 tankōbon volumes published from September 1994 to February 2013.⁴^•¹¹ The manga won the Excellence Prize in the Manga Division of the first Japan Media Arts Festival in 1997, and cumulative circulation passed 5.8 million copies according to the anime's official site, with one source reporting 7.5 million by December 2016.¹¹^•⁹

In English, Dark Horse Comics published the series as a monthly comic that ran for 131 issues from June 1996 to November 2007, then moved to a trade-only collection format of 31 volumes. The English title Blade of the Immortal was suggested by the original translator and editor Toren Smith of Studio Proteus during negotiations between Kodansha and Dark Horse.¹² The Japanese title literally means "inhabitant of infinity."

An official sequel manga, Mugen no Junin ~Bakumatsu no Sho~ (Blade of the Immortal: Bakumatsu Arc), was serialized in Afternoon.¹³

Production

The 2019 series was announced in May 2019 as a "complete anime adaptation" of the entire manga, a deliberate contrast with the earlier 13-episode TV anime by BeeTrain, directed by Koichi Mashimo, which had aired in 2008 while the manga was still running.⁴ Amazon produced and distributed the new version as an exclusive on Prime Video, with the first two episodes released worldwide simultaneously on October 10, 2019.¹⁰^•¹³

The staff list credits Hiroshi Hamasaki, known for Steins;Gate, as director, Makoto Fukami for series composition, Shingo Ogiso for character design, and Eiko Ishibashi for music, with animation by Liden Films, the studio behind The Heroic Legend of Arslan.¹⁴^•⁵ The opening theme, "Survive of Vision," was performed by Kiyoharu.¹⁵ The Japan Media Arts Festival citation praised the series for rendering visceral sword combat, in which blades clash and flesh is torn, through meticulously calculated drawing and cinematography.⁷

Reception and comparison with other adaptations

The 24-episode format compressed roughly 30 volumes of manga, and pacing became the series' main point of criticism. Reviewers noted that the violence arrives in short, sharp bursts that do not linger, while the adaptation dwells on sexual violence that the manga treats less regularly, and that some members of the Ittō-ryū and their shogunate counterparts receive far less development than in the source; one reviewer judged that twelve more episodes would have made the series close to perfect.¹⁰

The series holds a 7.5/10 rating on IMDb from about 1,800 users, and a 7.0 score on TheAnimeList.¹⁶^•¹ A contemporary review called it "an anime of very few faults" that continues the legacy of titles such as Ninja Scroll and Basilisk.¹⁷

The franchise's other screen adaptation, Takashi Miike's live-action film released in April 2017, starred Takuya Kimura as Manji and Hana Sugisaki as Rin. It earned an 87% Tomatometer score on Rotten Tomatoes from 98 reviews, with critics highlighting Miike's "balletic violence," but it grossed only $149,200 in the United States and $7,162,617 worldwide against a 2 hour 31 minute runtime.¹⁸ The 2019 anime, by covering the full story, stands as the only screen version to reach the manga's ending.³

Streaming availability

As of late 2026, the anime streams on Prime Video in 89 countries, Netflix in 22 countries (not including the United States), and the Hidive Amazon Channel in 6 countries. In the United States it is available on Prime Video, Kanopy, and the Hidive Amazon Channel.¹⁹^•²⁰

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026