So I recently started playing Ghost of Tsushima on PlayStation 4, and man I wish I’ve had a game like this when I was younger. I remember falling in love with Japan and samurai history watching a miniseries called Shogun. It’s based on a novel by James Clavell and it tells the story of an English sailor that gets stranded in Japan during feudal times. Everything about that show just captivated me, from the proud samurai Yoshi Toranaga (masterfully played by the great Toshiro Mifune) to the beautiful Mariko (Yoko Shimada) to the castles, armors and katanas. I remember my dad recording it on VHS and me rewatching every episode time and time again.
After that I started getting into Akira Kurosawa movies. Seven Samurai, Kagemusha, (other movies) … but my favorite movie of Kurosawa-San is his epic masterpiece Ran. This movie is a retelling of Shakespear’s King’s Lear but with a Japanese twist. It’s a masterful piece of art and if you’re into Samurai armors and battles, it doesn’t get any better than this. Each samurai army is given a color, and it’s a visual orgasm watching all the different armies clash with their bright blues, reds and yellows. If you haven’t seen this movie, stop what you’re doing and go watch it. You can find a blu ray copy in Amazon or you can rent or download from Amazon Prime video. It’s worth the investment if you’re into samurai cinema.
Another medium that has samurai or ninja movies is, of course, anime. The main movie worth mentioning here is Ninja Scroll by Yoshiaki Kawajiri. It takes the ninja mysticism to its fullest expression. It starts Jubei Kabagami ( voiced by Koichi Yamadera) as a vagrant ninja who gets entangled in a conspiracy to overthrow the Tokugawa shogunate. This may be a cartoon, but it’s by no means for kids. It’s ultra-violent and has many sexual scenes. However, it is a masterpiece of animation, with battles and characters that will stay long with you after you’ve finished watching it. You should be able to see it on Hulu.
There are also some modern classics of samurai cinema and the movie that I absolutely love from recent years is 13 Assassins by Takashi Miike. All I will say about this movie is this; it’s 2 hours long and 1 hour is a samurai battle of the 13 assassins from the title against an army of samurai. It is violent, bloody and a great freaking movie.
Speaking of Miike-San, he went on a little binge of making samurai movies and his next 2 films, even though different from 13 Assassins, are both samurai dramas. The first of the 2 is titled Hara Kiri and touches on the subject of honor and what that meant to samurai from feudal times. It’s very very different from 13 Assassins and more of a slow burner.
His movie after that is one based on the manga Blade of the Immortal by Hiroaki Samura. This one was one that I was really looking forward when it was first announced, since the manga is one of my favorites ever. It tells the story of a samurai that becomes immortal and has to atone for sins of the past by killing 1,000 evil men. A girl named Rin hires him to help her avenge her parents murder at the hands of a rouge group called the Itto-Ryu. It is a good movie, but it took me a couple of view to fully appreciate it because I was so heavily invested in the manga story and at one point the movie completely deviates from the manga. I also thought that it showed some of the characters from the manga just because they were popular, but it relegated them to such a secondary status, it didn’t do them justice. It’s still a good movie with good action scenes.
Well that’s my samurai movie list/rant. It by no means encompasses all the samurai movies I like nor their whole plots, but I hope it helps you if you’re looking into some good samurai cinema.