Shura Yukihime

What is Lady Snowblood about? Vengeance. Pure and simple, this is a revenge story. Yuki was named as a child of hell by her mother. Yuki's father was killed by a group of men who conspired to use him to start an uprising; they then brutalized her mother. Her mother subsequently killed one of her attackers and ended up in jail, where Yuki is born. Yuki's mother was serving a life sentence; there was no way she could escape and continue her revenge. Consequently, she concocted a plan which included seducing the guards in order to produce a child who could pass beyond the prison walls. Dying in childbirth, Yuki's mother impresses upon a friend the importance of imparting to her infant daughter the necessity of her revenge–the grudge that she could no longer carry, but which she passed to her daughter. The friend agrees to do so, and Yuki ("snow," so named for her snow-white skin) is trained to become the instrument of her mother's vengenace. Twenty years later, Yuki is a skilled assassin. For the price of 1,000 yen she will perform murderous miracles, often proceeding through trickery, deceit, and the assumption that as a woman she poses as little threat to the criminals she is often dispatching.