Sutorenjia: Mukô hadan (2007)

Director:

Masahiro Andô

Writer:

Fumihiko Takayama (writer)

Release Date:

5 February 2009 (USA)

Genre:

Animation | Action

Plot:

A swordsman from a strange land is caught in a struggle between morality, righteousness, and devotion as he reluctantly agrees to take a raggedy boy and his dog to a remote, Buddhist temple.

Plot Keywords:

Dog | Warrior | Swordsman | Flashback | Espionage

Cast

Yûki Chinen
Tomoya Nagase
Akio Ôtsuka
Naoto Takenaka
Kôichi Yamadera

Also Known As:

Sword of the Stranger (International: English title) (UK) (USA)

Runtime:

103 min

Country:

Japan

Language:

Japanese

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Certification:

Japan:PG-12 | South Korea:15 | Singapore:M18 | France:U | UK:15 | Australia:MA

Company:

Bones

Most detailed animation i ever seen

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.