
Eventually Manji joins but quickly pulls out after he finds out a member, Shira, is way too sadistic for his tastes.

They try to enlist Manji's help as they seem to want the same thing. Its true leadership and motives are initially a mystery, but its methods (any tactics that leads to victory) resemble those of the Ittō-ryū. In addition, another group calling itself the Mugai-ryū has emerged, in opposition to the Ittō-ryū. Anotsu's quest is to gather other outcasts and form an extremely powerful new dojo, the Ittō-ryū (a school teaching any technique that wins, no matter how exotic or underhanded), and has started taking over and destroying other dojos.

Anotsu killed Rin's father and his entire dōjō, making them a family of outcasts. Manji crosses paths with a young girl named Asano Rin and promises to help her avenge her parents, who were killed by a cadre of master swordsmen led by Anotsu Kagehisa. They cannot handle regrowth on a large scale, but, for example, can reattach a severed limb or seal a hole in the brain. They work by sacrificing themselves to seal the wound - they're worms that were bred to be as close in their chemical and physical make-up to humans as you can get without being human. He has vowed to make amends by killing 1000 evil men, and until he does Manji will be kept alive by "sacred bloodworms" ( 血仙蟲 kessen-chū ?), remarkable creatures that allow him to survive nearly any injury and reattach severed limbs even after hours of separation. He becomes immortal at the hand of an 800-year-old nun named Yaobikuni, and is compelled by the death of his sister to accept the quest that will end his agelessness.

In the past, his criminal actions led to the death of 100 other samurai (including his sister's husband). See also: List of Blade of the Immortal charactersīlade of the Immortal follows the deeds of Manji, a skilled samurai who has a decisive advantage: no wound can kill him, except for a rare poison.
