Mekurano Oichi monogatari: Makkana nagaradori

Okay, it you compete with the well-paced and well-directed Zatoichi movies, you will be compared to them. Crimson Bat doesn't hold a candle to Zatoichi; however, the movie that I just saw (the first of the Crimson Bat series) was not bad. Yoko Matsuyama's character is mostly set on revenge and that puts it into the class of mundane samurai movies. Zatoichi had a zen pace to it...a series of things that happened.

Oichi, the blind swordswoman, has a face as expressionless as a china doll. One could do a lot with such a face, as in Kurasawa's Throne of Blood. Sadly, it ended up as an average sword-fighting movie, well worth watching, but not really worth a repeat viewing...