A tough street fighter, Mugen is as straightforward as they
come, a smartass bundle of attitude and appetite. Orphaned at a young age, he
raised himself in rough-and-tumble Ryukyu--modern-day Okinawa--a wide-open
seaport/prison camp where toughs, pirates and sailors from everywhere were only
too eager to show off a wide range of brawling tactics. Mugen early on began
developing the free-for-all fighting style he calls “champuru kendo” (at least,
the writers say he does...), swiping bits and pieces from everything thrown at
him and making up the rest as he went along. He’s done jail time for an unknown
offense as well (the blue bands on his wrists and ankles are probably convict
tattoos), which doubtless taught him even more tricks as well as providing a
chance for him to use and hone his skills. His lazy, sloppy exterior covers a
feral temper that can flare into violence in an instant, but he’s equally
capable of forming quick loyalties and defending girls in peril when it suits
him. He’s shrewd, suspicious, perceptive, but basically relaxed and
happy-go-lucky; utterly practical and pragmatic (his name literally means “no
illusions” or “dreamless” ***), trusts nothing but his own abilities and
instincts, and has zero compunctions about kicking your lights out for lunch
money, or any other reason that amuses him. His distrust and dislike of
authority figures is deeply ingrained, and he'll basically do anything he's told
not to, just because. By the time we meet him, he’s about 19 and barely
civilized, well set in a course of devoting his life to nothing but his favorite
pursuits: eating, sleeping, chasing women and swordfighting, in no particular
order. A rough case with great charm, satisfied with his life and his freedom,
willing to handle whatever fate throws his way as long as he need follow no
rules and serve no master--and yet, every day he says, ready to die.
Except when he's not. In the remarkable first half of episode
#14, we see him have a near-death experience he's apparently had before; he
sinks down into the sea and comes out on the other side, as if through a mirror,
falls up through the water surface into a strange,luminous, inverted world. [I
think this must be Nirai-Kanai, the Okinawan traditional other-world, where
spirits go when they're ready to seek peace. It's represented as an island that
can be reached only underwater; if you try to sail there it will always be on
the horizon ahead, no matter how far you go. I think that Mugen leaves it
because his spirit isn't ready to seek peace, even if he's died.] He's
surrounded there by mysterious, tall figures, warrior-spirits or gods bearing
spears and wrapped in shaggy cloaks, and what does he say to them? "What, you
again?..." and then "Hey, wait, I don't want to go yet..." at which they vanish
and he falls back into the water to begin his return to the surface and his
unfinished life. This is a charmed life, unassuming as it seems on the surface,
one that' s been nearly lost at least twice and saved both times. Definitely
someone ready for a greater destiny to step up and take his hand...
And as the series has progressed, we've watched him develop a
remarkable depth of feeling, a conscience almost, a growing sense of the
wrongness and injustice in the world around him. He's no social crusader, but he
knows in his bones that people deserve freedom and self-determination, that
one's life is --and should be--one's own to shape, and the anger at official
oppression that used to be just a punk dislike of cops and soldiers has steadily
developed into something much deeper and stronger. His clear-cut sense of right
and wrong plays into this, as well. By the time of episode 17 we see him taking
out a bank of Matsumae-Han militia just because he's angry at the way they've
treated an Ainu villager, which is so far from the casual brawler we met back in
Edo. There's a huge destiny looming for this pirate kid, I can just feel it.
[**--footnote: There are many possible translations of Mugen's
name. One writer suggested that the stress in the meaning should not be "no
illusions", but rather "not an illusion": hence something more like "genuine,
the real thing, no bullshit". Another reassembled all the elements and rendered
it as "nothing but a dream". --More recently, Episode 18 offered yet another
interpretation--"infinite/limitless"--though this is not a translation of the
exact kanji used to spell his name on the show's official website. In this case
we have a clever pun: the kanji "mu" read (in this case) as "no/none/without",
but paired with two alternate kanji for "gen", one of which means
"dream/illusion/fantasy" --the one used on the website--and one of which means
"limit/boundary". So "Mugen" means both "no illusions/dreamless" and "no
limits/infinite", depending on the characters used to spell it.
