The Dagger of Kamui

1985
6.9| 2h12m| en
Details

A young boy named Jiro finds his mother and sister murdered in his home. Falsely accused of the crime, he flees from his village and meets a priest named Tenkai, who has him kill a rogue ninja named Tarouza. After fulfilling that task, Jiro undergoes training to become a master assassin. Many years later, Jiro finds out that he was an orphan and his real father was Tarouza, who had worked for Tenkai until he aborted his mission when he fell in love with an Ainu woman. The young ninja discovers that the Shogunate was to retrieve the lost treasure of Captain Kidd and use it to once again isolate Japan from the rest of the world. Using the clues that Tarouza had kept secret, Jiro - along with the female ninja Oyuki and a slave named Sam - travels to Russia and America to search for the treasure in hopes of using it to extract revenge from Tenkai.

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Reviews

Evengyny Thanks for the memories!
BoardChiri Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay
Matrixiole Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.
Logan By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.
CurtHerzstark I haven't read the original manga series that this film is based on so I don't know how close the film is to its original source.The story is simple, young Jirô gets his family killed, falsely accused of the murders and starts investigating into who and why his family was murdered.He quickly realizes that he is a foundling and the people responsible for the killings has very dangerous agenda.This film is basically a action melodrama where the director/screenwriter tries to fit in as much storyline as possible in the shortest amount of time.Therefore the viewer served a very long, confusing, erratic storyline that sometimes doesn't make any sense at all. Political intrigues that hardly gets explained(yes I saw the 132 min with original audio), characters that comes and goes without explanation.Something must have been edited out, is there a TV -series version somewhere? Who knows.....But the action sequences are very visually striking and surreal, as if the animators wants to capture the fleeting moment of combat(or if they all were high on drugs which would explain the bad storyline) that split second when you enter a duel and only one can survive.Personally I prefer Jûbê ninpûchô/Ninja Scroll (1993), Rurouni Kenshin (2000), Samurai chanpurû/Samurai Champloo(2004–2005) etc but this should be seen by future viewers because of the amazing fighting sequences.Remember that this film was made in 1985, and the animation in some cases still holds up.
bbally81 This was a great anime. True the animation is old but its still worth watching and has a better plot than Ninja Scroll, the problem that it was kinda long.Japanese movie star Hiroyuki Sanada who played Ujio from Last Samurai played the main character Jiro and it was directed by Rintaro who did Galaxy Express 999 and Metropolis.The anime has some good animation for an old anime, interesting characters like the main villain Tenkai and Ando Shouzan and of course lets not forget the beautiful musical scores in the film.All in all this movie is worth watching for fans of anime, animation in general, action, and Samurai/Ninja flicks. Despite the lows in the film that didn't the film from being a great film to watch.Don't miss this film.
Blinking_Fish This movie was a little to long. It could have easily been shorter and considering what I thought of the movie it should have been shorter. I thought this ran for a bit to long, it was manly because it had a deep story to it. I just saw points that could have easily been cut out but weren't. The story had its highs and low, more lows then highs. And the lows kept the movie dragging along. The artwork in this was very familiar. Like I' ve seen it before, probably from Galaxy Express 999. One other thing I thought about this was what's the deal with the blood. The blood was bright orange. Blood does not need to be this bright and that colour. The people seemed to spurt radioactive Orange juice when they where killed. Anyways this movie was watchable. It's probably a little too violent and long for younger people. And the fact that it's animation my turn off adults.My review 5 out of 10.
deepcheck Above all, you must not take this movie seriously. It takes itself seriously, unfortunately, but that can't be helped. This anime ninja flic has to be the crowning achievement in spoiling what could have been an endearing, if unoriginal, story with bad plot twists, ridiculous time-killing cutscenes, and one outrageous guest appearance which will either make you laugh or groan (or both, like me).While I'm typically a fan of ninja/samurai anime (Ninja Scroll and Rurouni Kenshin to name a few), this one has to be the exception. For the record, from a technical point of view of its time, this movie was very well animated and constructed. It is just the plot that stunk. The authors of this movie clearly decided (for what rational reason I don't know) that they could somehow make up for the lack of a script if the character halfway around the world in search of a treasure that (he learns) his father fought and died for. In the process, he saves a black slave named Sam, meets a French girl who is living in an Apache village, makes friends with a ninja clan whose members then try to kill him, meets more family members then he knew he had in the weirdest places and circumstances (and whom all subsequently die at some point in the movie).Even so far, these ludicrous plot twists could be excused, but then come the two "guest appearances". #1: After having a ridicuously cliche showdown with two cowboys, Jiro meets a man who introduces himself as "Mark Twain". At this point, you're probably saying "What the ****?!!" This "meeting" serves one purpose: it entirely discredits a movie which tries to add to itself an educated historical background. I found it disappointing that the authors went to all this trouble to research the 1860s US and didn't manage to realize that "Mark Twain's" real name was Samuel Clemens. #2: When Jiro finally finds the treasure, it turns out that it used to belong to Captain Kidd. I can hear the groans of disgust now.Finally, there are the running scenes. These scenes show various characters running, with the landscape moving statically behind them, for several minutes, and there are a lot of them. It is these scenes which make this movie, 2hrs 12 min, to seem to last a week and a half.If you and your friends are looking for a bad subtitled movie that just asks to be made fun of, this is it. Feel free to poke fun at every possible aspect of it, and have fun. Just don't take it seriously. 3/10