Yes the action in this film is total anime, though shot live action, though nothing I haven’t seen before, but I was totally let down by this. I mean I didn’t think AZUMI was the best film, but it was better than this. It purports to be a love story about Star Crossed lovers, but doesn’t really work out, and I really don’t believe it. Not only that but the story has huge holes in it, like why don’t these hidden shinobi villages have look outs to see when the army approaches? Yes I did like the fights, but the movie overall was pretty lame, with under-powering performances and a lame as hell ending.

REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS…

The world is at piece not and the Shogun has no use for it’s 2 400 year old clans of warring shinobi who are people made into living weapons, and who have lived to fight each other but under an agreement with a figure from the past they do not fight and wait for orders from the lord. The son of his clan Kouga, his name being Gen No Suke (Odargiri Jo), meets and falls in love the daughter of his enemy clan Iga, and her name is Oboro (Nakama Yukie whose beauty is one of the few things going for this film). The two decide they will mary on their won, but of course that won’t work out. As the Shogun has ordered that the 2 clans have their 5 best warriors as named by their leaders fight it out to the death, and whomever wins will decide the succession of the lords sons. Really it is a plan to get rid of the Shinobi, but no one seems to realize this, and the 2 clan leaders kill each other leaving their children in charge. Gen No Suke heads toward the capital to find out what is really going on and Oboro follows, with their warriors fighting even thought their leaders don’t want them to. And the deaths of her warriors steals Oboro’s heart, while one of her warriors who is 300 years old and named Tezen Takushiji (Shiina Kippei) and hard to kill explains to Gen No Suke was it going on in actuality, but he accepts his fight with Oboro who can’t use her eye death powers against her ex-lover, but does manage to run and kill him, though he makes her promise to save the villages, so she goes to the lord and pokes out her own eyes to save the villages, which she does, and it says they live to this day. Then it shows her with eyes drinking water from a river in the snow. Huh?

Lame, lame lame! And Sakaguchi was underused and his tentacle power was kind of lame, though very anime like. The duals all seem to go pretty quickly, and the end is a let down, with only some scenes of the army bombing the 2 villages.

Certainly not as good as Azumi, and a little better visually than Azumi 2, though I liked that story better, probably because I cared about the lead, and didn’t care at all about the leads in Shinobi.

Don’t waste your money.