Ninja Scroll 8/10

This movie has one of the coolest scenes ever. Giant stone guy is fighting this ninja. Picks him up and rips off both his arms. Proceeds to drink the blood from one of the arms while chuckling evilly. I love that part. +1 for that.

Theatrical anime is typically hit and miss story wise (more often miss) but always produced with high production standards. Ninja Scroll dates back to 1993 so no computer anything in this film. The art is fantastic with the backgrounds being full of detail and the characters being well animated with tons of frames. The music is old style Japanese which suits the movie's historical time frame and I've always liked the end theme. The one thing I DIDN'T like was how most of the characters have giant chins, especially the main kunoichi Kagero. On guys it looks OK but on the ladies....

Ninja Scroll is a story about Jubei, a wandering ninja who gets tricked by an old man into helping him investigate the circumstances behind the wiping out of a feudal Japanese village. The story is that it was plague but no no, it's the bad guys who poisoned the village well and are planning to take off with a bunch of gold to fund a revolution. A bunch of ninjas sent by a small clan also investigate but are wiped out so Jubei also acquires the only survivor as a traveling companion as well, a kunoichi named Kagero.

As our heroes get closer and closer to the evildoers and the gold they are stealing various freaky bad guys are sent to kill them. These fights are really the highlights of the movie. Each villain has some freaky power so the battles are varied and interesting, not to mention bloody. Blood showers all over and sprays the Japanese landscape so if that's what you like this movie has got it. The violence isn't very graphic though, a lot of blood but no intestines or eyeballs flying hither and yon which may disappoint some. There is also quite a bit of sexuality in this film with various naked women getting violated in various ways including with a snake. Keep an eye out for that scene. I figure this is mainly why this movie is as popular as it is as lots of movies have violence, so few have snake/woman coitus.

Once the various pawn enemies are dealt with there's a final fight an the movie ends. It does have some emotion nearing the finale so the movie has a bit of a heart even though most of the time its hack this, disembowel that. It's easy to recommend this since I've never met anyone who didn't like it. That stone guy needs his own movie though. Here's hoping.