I have read several of the manga series and liked it very much, when I found that it had been turned into an anime. For me, this is another case of that I like the manga better than the anime. Not to say the anime is bad--I just like the written series better. I did like this anime. It has an unique and intriguing storyline, although the animation is not that great. There are a lot of stills involved with this anime and it has none of the impressive animation or backgrounds like in other anime such as Descendants of Darkness. It’s the storyline that actually carries this anime.
source
In the first volume that includes episodes 1-5, we begin with a medicine man, Kyoshiro, and a lady bounty hunter, Yuya. She travels with a tri-barrel gun and seeks to find the man who killed her brother. Along the way, she collects any bounties she can, which just happens to include our docile humanitarian medicine man. Seems he skipped out on a food bill somewhere, and now has a bounty on his head. Our medicine man lives to help the sick with his medications and to get close to any woman who is well endowed. Yuya believes she just has an easy bounty on her hands. She figures out otherwise when demons begin to pursue her and her bounty. In episode 1, a snake demon comes after Yuya and Kyoshiro. Yuya finds that her gun is useless and that she and Kyoshiro are at the mercy of this creature (but that would make for a short and boring anime).
Then Kyoshiro morphs (not physically but mentally) into another person. A dangerous Samurai called Demon Eyes Kyo—killer of a thousand men. We quickly find out that at a famous battle (Tokugawa Ieyasu’s epic battle of Sekigahara) that Kyoshiro and Demon Eyes Kyo faced each other in battle. A shooting star collided with them during the battle and forced both souls into Kyoshiro’s body. Also, it caused Kyoshiro to lose part of his memories. Most of the time Kyoshiro is in charge of the body, but occasionally Demon Eyes Kyo is in charge—mainly when the body is threatened by something Kyoshiro cannot deal with, but if he lets Kyo have control too often will he stay in control?
What follows in the anime is a search to find out what happened at the battle and how the souls came to share the body. We learn what kind of people each of the men were and there is also the hunt for Kyo’s body, which is missing. They gather a lot of side characters in this journey each with their own side plot that fits within rather than taking from the main storyline. The characters main and minor alike grow throughout the series making them seem more real and life-like. I really enjoyed the characters in this anime. There are also some good twists within the storyline that I did not expect—which was great!
The scripting is okay—not great but I did watch this with subtitles instead of the American voice over which could lead to the scripting not being so good. The animation is not the best I have seen, like I said before nothing flashy and there are a great many stills, yet this is a good anime. The story is intriguing enough to keep you going all the way to episode 26. If you like good anime—this one is at least worth the watching.