This is the show that takes the film's grime and stretches it across thirteen weeks, and it never once pretends the countryside is safe. Jubei Kibagami still fights like a man who resents being good at it, dragged back into service escorting Shigure, the Hiruko girl whose whole life exists to guard the Dragon Stone. Dakuan is around too, still lying to Jubei's face for the greater good, still getting away with it. The structure is pure blood-soaked serial: a new Kimon freak crawls out of the dark each episode, some barely human, and the horror lands because the animation lingers on what a sword actually does to a body. The Edo peace is described as bought with blood, and the series keeps sending you the bill. Thirteen episodes, no comfort, no clean ending, and the sacred treasure was never worth what it cost anyone carrying it.

Fourteen years after his battle with the immortal Himuro Genma, Jubei Kibagami still wanders Edo-period Japan as a masterless swordsman who hires out his blade. Along the way he meets Shigure, a priestess who has never left her village. When demons wipe out that village, Jubei ends up holding the Dragon Stone, a jewel of unknown origin, and becomes a target himself. The Hiruko Clan, fated to live in darkness, protects the stone, while the Kimon Clan wants it in order to restore Toyotomi power. With two demon clans hunting Shigure, the Priestess of Light and the only one who can use the stone, the monk Dakuan once more hires Jubei to guard her as she travels toward Yagyu with a young thief named Tsubute. The series is an adventure with supernatural horror at its core.