Rating: 
Summary: An interesting story line, but no action.
Review: There aren't really any action scenes worth talking about in this novel. Rin does a few things, but she doesn't actually "fight". There is a story about this guy and his masks, but that isn't fully developed until the next volume.This isn't a great place to start for your first volume. It mostly just develops story, but the story is important. Start somewhere else though. Get DREAMSONG if you can't fight a good seller for BLOOD OF A THOUSAND. Those who already own the previous volumes of BOTI could skip this book and the next possibly. It develops Rin some, but I skipped it for a while and was fine.
Rating:
Summary: An interesting story line, but no action.
Review: There aren't really any action scenes worth talking about in this novel. Rin does a few things, but she doesn't actually "fight". There is a story about this guy and his masks, but that isn't fully developed until the next volume. This isn't a great place to start for your first volume. It mostly just develops story, but the story is important. Start somewhere else though. Get DREAMSONG if you can't fight a good seller for BLOOD OF A THOUSAND. Those who already own the previous volumes of BOTI could skip this book and the next possibly. It develops Rin some, but I skipped it for a while and was fine.
Rating: 
Summary: a must-get
Review: this is one of the best comics i've ever read. it's about manji's job as a bodyguard for rin, who confronts Anotsu Kagehisa, who killed rin's father. she attemps to kill him, but does she really even stand a chance?this book was explosive and had a mix of action and explaining of the story for people who did not read any other of the Blade of the immortal series.
Rating:
Summary: Review of Volume 1
Review: This volume and its sequel capture events from issues 19 through 28 of the manga comic books, and represents events in the earlier phases of the adventures of Rin and Manji. It contains two stories, "Rin's Bane," and the first part of "On Silent Wings." Both of these are strong stories that trace Rin's growth from a young girl hell-bent on vengeance for the murder of her parents into a woman who is beginning to understand the real price of retaliations. In "Rin's Bane," the young swordswoman, smarting from an argument with Manji over her fighting skills heads off into the woods to wash her hair. There she finds herself face to face with Kagehisa Anotsu, the leader of the Itto-Ryu swordsmen. Anotsu brushes aside her skills, and she is forced to face some very unpleasant truths about her beliefs. The lessons of this encounter haunt Rin in the next story, "On Silent Wings." Manji and Rin are at a local fair when the immortal swordsman suddenly finds that a local mask maker is another Itto-Ryu. In a parallel encounter, Rin risks her own life to prevent a haughty samurai from killing a young child. Manji barely avoids a public battle, and Rin is shocked to recognize the artist as the killer who defiled her mother. As events proceed inexorably towards the second volume's part of the story, we sense the internal tensions in Rin and her swordsman as they confront the possible outcomes of their actions. Hiroaki Samura's tale again touches on complex moral issues rather than simply dishing out a violent samurai melodrama. The grim horror that counterpoints the lighter exchanges between Samura's main encounters provides the basis for much thought and consideration. One of the surprises in this series has been the quality of the translation, which manages to carry through the whole range of the dialog. Yet Japanese is preserved where it is part if the detailed and carefully composed artwork. This extremely high level of artistic integrity grows on the reader. "Blade of the Immortal" is much more a genuine graphic novel than it is a simple manga.
Rating:
Summary: Brutal, powerful and beautiful
Review: This volume of Blade of the Immortal is certainly more brutal than any of its predecessors: we see the depth of suffering endured by Rin's mother and the cruelty of the Itto-Ryu. The real beauty of this volume, aside from the incredible art (I've never seen pencil work to match Hiroaki Samura's), is the dilemma at the heart of the story: Rin has just saved (in On Silent Wings I) the son of one of the men who raped and murdered her mother, and who set her down the road toward vengeance she's walked from the first volume. Does she want revenge now, only to send the boy she saved along that same road? Blade of the Immortal is never easy: not for the characters, who don't face the simplified, stylized problems of most comic books, and not for the reader, who is not shielded from the brutality of the world in which those characters live. Your stomach may turn (mine did), but Blade of the Immortal is not exploitative; the violence is not twisted into something erotic. That said, it's still absolutely not for kids (particularly this volume), but if you are a comic book-reading adult, start reading Blade of the Immortal.
Rating:
Summary: Never stop the amazement
Review: What can i say about this wonderful masterpiece that have not been said by me in other reviews or by other fans? First for those who do not know about the history (others bear with me). Rin is a young girl who is looking to avenge the murder of her family at the hands of a rival sword school; she meets Manji, a samurai cursed with inmortality until he kills a thousand evil guys. What follows could have been a cheesy samurai opera where, in every chapter Manji kills an "evil" guy until they find the boss of all the minions and kill him after a dramatic battle. Well, that is not the case for this series. Mr. Samura manages to make the best story i have read so far by playing with the meaning of good and bad masterfully, the first books had its compliment of gore, but from the third book so far, each fight gets harder not because of the physical might or swordmanship but for the moral reasons to pursue vengeance, at every corner Rin must face real flesh and blood adversaries, not just plain evil antagonists, each with a reason for what they did. This is the second part of a story that centers around Rin, we finally find out what she really thinks, and specially how she feels, about what she is doing. She and Manji find one of the guys responsible for the death of her family, he is now a mask maker with a little boy under his care. Instead of blindingly killing him, Rin tries to figure out if he really has reformed or if it is just another mask he is wearing now . And she also has to solve the dilemma that by killing him she would make an innocent boy a vengeance filled monster just like her. The ending is great and you really begin to ask yourself if you could keep going after all, even with such good reasons as the one Rin has
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