decore79

Having watched the other movies in this five part story arc, Yuria's disappointed me the most. As someone who only had seen the movie before watching these story arcs, it was actually worth watching to learn more about Yuria and what happened to her as the movie failed to do so.

I had a great deal of high hopes for this movie arc as I imagined it would have gone over a lot of what happened in the original motion picture version and it did..just not the way I expected.

It managed to gloss over every one of the epic battles that took place. It was like they purposely wanted to crush your dreams of seeing all the great reenactments take place and it hurt knowing that they squandered the opportunity.

To add insult to injury they took the time that they could have used for these battles to replay events that should have been viewed if anyone took the time to look at the other story arcs. It was not a very smart film decision in my opinion.

Some may say they were taking a higher road as to express a "softer"(:P) side for the heroines story line, I say they were just trying to cut corners in an Arc that should have been littered with memorable fight scenes and its just ashamed they took this route because there may never be another retelling of this the story again.

For a long time, feature film anime had been lacking when it came to top-notch production. I found this title not expecting much but from the very beginning it had me. Everything that was great about the ninja/samurai animations in the 90's re-emerged onto this film and I think its safe to say that the choreography far excelled that of its predecessors. The story as vague as it may have been did enough to keep my interest ,but in the end it was the fight scenes that kept me compliant to watch further. Not often do you find a final battle to be so intense pushing the boundaries of fluid animation that your eyes are glued to every moment of the fight. I really can't say enough about this film. At a time where many anime have become primarily viewed in a TV series format, Sword of the Stranger was a breath of fresh air and nostalgic return to what I loved so much about anime feature films. For any fan of Ninja Scroll,Dagger of Kamui, Samurai X, and other great anime classics, this one is for you trust me.