Kamui-den/YMMV

These things about Kamui-den are subjective - not everyone will agree with all of them.

Best Known for the Fanservice: Never mind that the series was a critical darling, which gained a cult following and even influenced political movements in the 70s, anyone you talk to today who took it out of the school library is likely to remember all the sex and nudity.
Complete Monster: The lord of the Hioki Domain in the first series of Kamui-den: among many other misdeeds, he rapes a peasant girl who is serving at his residence, then after she's drowned herself in despair, he spitefully hacks up her corpse and sends it back to the village, bundled together with rotting animal meat.
Dying Moment of Awesome: Ukon Minazuki engages in a hopeless battle with Hioki samurai, slashing his way through throngs of guards to challenge the leader before being literally blown to pieces by a volley of musket fire.
- And then there's the rebellious peasant leader Gon, who cuts his own torture session short by gulping down molten iron. he has time to smile at his horrified captors before collapsing.
Harsher in Hindsight: The injustices of Edo Period Japan, often regarded as a period of stability and peace, are treated with unflinching honesty in Kamui-den. Disturbingly, some of the class-based discrimination depicted in the series persists to this day, though no longer in institutionalized form.
Ho Yay: There are significant gay and lesbian overtones in the early volumes of the second series.
Non Sequitur Scene: Anytime the gigantic mountain man Yamajo makes an appearance.
Sequelitis: Very much a YMMV thing. The '80s reboot of Kamui Gaiden (itself a sequel/spinoff of Kamui-den) is by no means bad. But it lacks much of the subversive punch that made the original series a classic. Sadly, this is still the only portion of the Kamui franchise ever to have been published in English.
Values Dissonance: Western readers will (or rather would) likely experience this, though it's hard to say whether the often brutal treatment of female characters is more due to the author's nihilistic bent or actual historical attitudes toward women in feudal Japan.

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