Sword of the Stranger

Chinese agents come to Japan hunting a boy. They are well prepared, have a lot of money and seem to be indomitable in battle, especially one of them, who is a blue eyed blonde. The boy is clueless, rude and his only companion and friend is a dog. When they meet a mysterious samurai, he reluctantly agrees to help them escape pursuit.

Well drawn, cool action scenes reminiscent of Ninja Scroll, credible characters, doing things for reasons that one can believe, rather than the classic "I will protect something, hear me roar!", and an interesting story with roots in a real event.

It lasts for one hour forty minutes and I warmly recommend it. It has some issues at the end when some of the characters are just ridiculously overpowered, but overall it was really cool.

For those of you familiar with Chambara (samurai) movies, Sword of the Stranger, is the anime equivalent. Story line is typical Samurai storyline, wandering samurai helps out a kid and gets caught up in a plot by foreigners and "bad" samurai. without giving the plot line away I will say that if you are familiar with chambara movies and enjoy the stories/genre you will enjoy this movie. Technically wise, this movie is very well animated. Traditional hand drawn cel work mixed with some CG. It is beautiful to look at and the fighting scenes are amongst the best I have seen in anime or in real life action. A beautifully crafted movie that needs to be seen just on the technical aspects alone.

I watched this movie last night with my dad and we both loved it. I'm 27 and he happens to be in his 50's. I expect everyone younger, older and in between will love it as well.

I'm sure you can imagine what an anime title like "The Sword of the Stranger" might hold in store for you. A young boy named Kotaru and his faithful companion Tobimaru. A deadly swordsman with blue eyes. A hungry samurai with a troubled past. The Sword of the Stranger doesn't re-invent the wheel but it is more than the sum of it's parts.

All in all: If you enjoy anime watch it. You can also expect to hear a great score.

One of the most outstanding action animation movies.

(sorry if you are confused with my comments cause i'm not a native English speaker :>)

The storyline is quite simple and unlike the other tedious Japanese animation movies, the audience don't need to smash their head onto the wall to get an idea about what's going on. Actually the only down side of the movie is you can guess the ending more or less at the beginning.

The blood spilling scenes are very astonishing, and the Chinese swordsmen who take secret pills and never feel pains will give you chill in the bones with their cruelty.

Actually In real history, the famous emperor who sacrifice his people to find a medicine of Immortality, is Yíng Zhèng, the first emperor (we call him Qin Shi Huang)of a unified China from 221 BCE to 210 BCE. Later in his life, Qin Shi Huang feared death and desperately sought the fabled elixir of life, visiting Zhifu Island several times to this end. He even sent a Zhifu islander Xu Fu with ships carrying hundreds of young men and women in search of Mount Penglai, where the Eight Immortals lived. These people never returned, as they knew that if they returned without the promised elixir, they would surely be executed. Legends claim that they settled down in one of the Japanese islands, a view that many Chinese and Japanese people are familiar with today. (from HTTP://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qin_Shi_Huang)

Although the movie is mainly animated in 2D, the 3D effects used in scenes are perfect and only used when necessary, It's more practical 3D than showing off the techniques.

Music used in the movie is extraordinary, you can actually feel the cold wind passing by your face and hear the echos among the mountains. Bamboo flute used in the music gives an amazing oriental feeling throughout the movie.

As a native Chinese speaker, i think the Chinese dialogue reflects the way people talking at that time pretty well, but sometimes they speak Japanese as well, which breaks the reality of the movie, hope they could manage to get more voice casters in Chinese.

I highly recommend this movie to anyone interested in actions, orient myths or violent scenes.

One of the Best samurai animation action flicks I have seen in a very long time. The story isn't drawn out into a long story about nothing. You get a good sense of the main character without them going into a long epilogue. The characters are well drawn with great attention to detail especially in the action sequences which in my opinion are drawn very well. The score goes perfectly with all the different scenes of the movie. I am pretty good on what good anime samurai flicks are out and I am surprised that I never got a heads up about this one and also why this film wasn't nominated for any type of award. Honestly from the action to the music this movie will grab you. :)