Posts tagged samurai in January 2009

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Kataribe (Masayuki Ishikawa)

Before Masayuki Ishikawa had his big hit with Moyasimon (a tale of talking bacteria, no less), he had a couple of other one-shot titles that may or may not get an English release. I’ve been pushing for “may”, as after...

Sword of the Stranger

How long has it been since we’ve seen a really good animated samurai epic? Not a series, but a feature film? Apart from Ninja Scroll (which wasn’t to my taste), the animated Musashi (not yet seen by me) the middling...

Makai Tenshō (2003) (Samurai Resurrection)

All countries have their perennial movie subjects. Western viewers get treated to new cinematic versions of Dickens and Shakespeare every few years, and Japan has had no less than three movie adaptations of the immensely popular pulp-fantasy novel Makai Tensho...

Kaidan

Kaidan’s an experiment in contrasting forms, shilling for conflicting. Take one of the samurai-horror flicks of the Fifties and Sixties, bring it up to date with modulated acting styles, psychological realism and understated visual style, and then force the conceits...

Batten Vol. #2 (×天~ばってん) (Tōya Ataka)

Well, that was short-lived. Such was my reaction at reading the second, and apparently final, volume of Batten. There’s little more depressing than reading something you have a furtive sidelong liking for despite all its flaws, and then seeing it...

Shigurui: Death Frenzy

The mark of a skilled executioner in feudal Japan was to be able to slice off the head of a victim and yet still leave it attached to the corpse by a single shred of flesh. Here is a story...

See previous posts tagged samurai from January 2008

See future posts tagged samurai from January 2010