Synopsis

Sadistic daimyo Tadanaga Tokugawa has ordered Japan's first martial arts tournament using real swords—a decision that horrifies even his most devoted retainers. The opening match, however, proves genuinely shocking: it features Gennosuke Fujiki, a one-armed swordsman, facing off against Seigen Irako, who is both blind and crippled. Spectators who'd already condemned the tournament as barbaric now openly mock it as a farce, seeing the fighters' disabilities as an insult to their samurai honor. What the crowd doesn't know is that Gennosuke and Seigen harbor a vicious hatred for each other. Years earlier, they'd both trained under the unstable master Kogan Iwamoto at his dojo, competing fiercely to become his successor and win the hand of his daughter Mie. Their rivalry started as respectful rivalry but turned brutal when one of them provoked Kogan's fury, triggering a chain reaction of violence that left them both crippled. Now they're here, scarred and broken, ready to finish what they started. Shigurui traces the path that brought these two men to this desperate reckoning, and explores how the brutal code of samurai culture destroys everyone it touches.

Content compiled by AnimeList.moe from publicly available sources.

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