忍 Shinobi

I’m going to start something different now on regarding my movie reviews. Instead of sticking links in random places, I’ll be listing them after my main paragraph (not including this).

So I first saw the trailer for this movie awhile ago (from Lsiymle) and I finally got the chance to see this movie today. Overall, the movie was fun. If I had to summarize the entire movie in one sentence, I’d say it’s a mix between Naruto, Romeo & Juliet, Spiderman, and maybe Rurouni Kenshin. The movie itself may also be called Shinobi – Heart Under Blade. Like I said, the movie was a lot of fun, but the storyline itself was pretty much predictable, though I had expected a Romeo & Juliet ending, and that turned out a bit different. You can say this would what Naruto would be like in live action. It actually got a bunch of jutsu (moves) into this movie and it was pretty sweet.

Official Site
IMDb: 6.7/10 (109 votes)
Apple Trailer
Yahoo! Movies: N/A
Amazon.co.jp

Spoilers: (Show)

Note: I’ll be using shinobi and ninja interchangably since in this context, they have no difference.

The story starts out with the future head of Koga, Gennosuke and the future head of Iga, Oboro meeting up and falling in love. Koga and Iga and 2 ninja tribes who have been sworn enemies for hundreds of years. Hattori Hanzo, apparently is a ninja/shinobi in real life (while Kill Bill depicted him as a sword blacksmith), got them to sign a cease fire treaty.

The movie goes on to show that Tokugawa Ieyasu has brought peace throughout the land and the his advisors are afraid these shinobi clans can threaten that peace and start another war.

He requests the head of each clan to come to the Sumpu castle along with their best warrior to demonstrate their shinobi skills. The movie claims that by this period, it’s already the 3rd generation of Hattori Hanzo, which made me think that maybe Hattori Hanzo is a title given to a specific warrior for every era, sort of like Hitokiri Battousai (the best assassin during the Edo era) or Honinbou (best Go player). But I wasn’t able to find any proof of that, and the Shogun said that Hattori Hanzo (3rd generation) wasn’t able to control the ninja clans as his ancestors were once able to.

Also, these shinobis aren’t your typical ninjas with swords and ninja stars. Like Naruto the anime series, each shinobi has a special set of skills they can utilize. One can even shoot threads out from his sleeve and swing from tree to tree like Spiderman.

Oboro was selected to lead the Iga team and Gennosuke was selected to lead Koga team and once again Oboro’s and Gennosuke’s path cross. Gennosuke doesn’t want to fight this meaningless fight and decides to get to the root of the real reason of this battle. The rest of his team are against his decision and would rather fight, but he is the leader now, so they follow. The Iga team follows them and many interesting battles happen.

I’m not going to describe each battle or tell you what the special abilities of each characters is, so you can watch the movie for that. Just like Naruto, both ninja villages are hidden villages, where not everyone knos how to get to or even get into. Tenzen, one of Iga’s people decides to give the map to both villages to the government. He believes its the time when Shinobis need to disappear into the dark because this era no longer has a need for them.

In the end, the army just start attacking the villages and it was pretty much one-sided when the army has cannons. For some reason Oboro ended up killing Gennosuke. Gennosuke let her and didn’t fight back or defend. Oboro goes and requests for the Shogun’s audenience. She begs him to let the both villages live, but the Shogun denies her request stating that her people are too powerful and can cause too much destruction. He gives an example of how even though she appears to be a normal human, her eyes of destruction has the ability to disable or kill anyone just by looking into their eyes. Oboro blinds herself and the Shogun is touched. He sends off the notification for cease fire and descendants of both clans are still living today.

The sound track was pretty awesome too, though I haven’t been able to find it. Only song I could find so far is the theme song: 浜崎あゆみ (Ayumi Hamasaki) – Heaven. You can click on that link and download the mp3, but the song is only okay in my opinion. If anyone finds these songs, please let me know:

1. 運命と宿命の出逢い
2. 死への序奏
3. 慈しみノ彼方より
4. 深淵の共鳴
5. 不死の化身
6. 遥かなる時のせせらぎ
7. 儚き夢の欠片
8. 不条理の約定
9. 暗躍の奇跡
10. 世界の果てで