The Dagger of Kamui

I haven't read the original manga series that this film is based on so I don't know how close the film is to its original source.

The story is simple, young Jirô gets his family killed, falsely accused of the murders and starts investigating into who and why his family was murdered.

He quickly realizes that he is a foundling and the people responsible for the killings has very dangerous agenda.

This film is basically a action melodrama where the director/screenwriter tries to fit in as much storyline as possible in the shortest amount of time.

Therefore the viewer served a very long, confusing, erratic storyline that sometimes doesn't make any sense at all. Political intrigues that hardly gets explained(yes I saw the 132 min with original audio), characters that comes and goes without explanation.

Something must have been edited out, is there a TV -series version somewhere? Who knows.....

But the action sequences are very visually striking and surreal, as if the animators wants to capture the fleeting moment of combat(or if they all were high on drugs which would explain the bad storyline) that split second when you enter a duel and only one can survive.

Personally I prefer Jûbê ninpûchô/Ninja Scroll (1993), Rurouni Kenshin (2000), Samurai chanpurû/Samurai Champloo(2004–2005) etc but this should be seen by future viewers because of the amazing fighting sequences.

Remember that this film was made in 1985, and the animation in some cases still holds up.

This is one of the first feature length anime movies I ever saw and it still ranks as one of my favorites. It's an epic story that covers all the basses. Great story, characters, settings and, as a bonus is set during a time that is well documented in Japanese history. Some may feel it's too long, but a great story has to take time to develop. I don't care that it's over two hours, it's just the length it needs to be. Newer anime may look better but nothing new can equal the quality of story that's here. Even so it's still a great looking movie.

This movie was a little to long. It could have easily been shorter and considering what I thought of the movie it should have been shorter. I thought this ran for a bit to long, it was manly because it had a deep story to it. I just saw points that could have easily been cut out but weren't. The story had its highs and low, more lows then highs. And the lows kept the movie dragging along. The artwork in this was very familiar. Like I' ve seen it before, probably from Galaxy Express 999. One other thing I thought about this was what's the deal with the blood. The blood was bright orange. Blood does not need to be this bright and that colour. The people seemed to spurt radioactive Orange juice when they where killed. Anyways this movie was watchable. It's probably a little too violent and long for younger people. And the fact that it's animation my turn off adults.

My review 5 out of 10.

This was a great anime. True the animation is old but its still worth watching and has a better plot than Ninja Scroll, the problem that it was kinda long.

Japanese movie star Hiroyuki Sanada who played Ujio from Last Samurai played the main character Jiro and it was directed by Rintaro who did Galaxy Express 999 and Metropolis.

The anime has some good animation for an old anime, interesting characters like the main villain Tenkai and Ando Shouzan and of course lets not forget the beautiful musical scores in the film.

All in all this movie is worth watching for fans of anime, animation in general, action, and Samurai/Ninja flicks. Despite the lows in the film that didn't the film from being a great film to watch.

Don't miss this film.

When I saw this movie at age 6, it was in the CHILDRENS' section at Erols Video because it was animation. We watched it and it was a whole different ball game! A very violent story and graphic deaths are VERY entertaining and compelling, but not for children. Avoid for family viewing, my mom nearly had a heart attack and ripped the video apart!