Synopsis:

Takaaki Nomi plays a samurai named Kanjuro who decided to give up his sword after a certain incident. He wanders aimlessly with his daughter (Sea Kumada), but because he abandoned his position as a samurai without permission, a price is put on his head and they’re eventually captured. However, a notoriously eccentric feudal lord offers Kanjuro a unique opportunity to earn a full acquittal.

[via Nippon Cinema]

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First teaser trailer for Hitoshi Matsumoto’s (Symbol, Big Man Japan) latest film Saya Zamurai which will probably be a bit different from the samurai stories Japanese studios usually try to sell us…

Synopsis:

Takaaki Nomi plays a samurai named Kanjuro who decided to give up his sword after a certain incident. He wanders aimlessly with his daughter (Sea Kumada), but because he abandoned his position as a samurai without permission, a price is put on his head and they’re eventually captured. However, a notoriously eccentric feudal lord offers Kanjuro a unique opportunity to earn a full acquittal.

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Synopsis:

In the era of the Shogun, an evil young lord rapes and kills, assured of immunity by law. But he didn’t count on the Thirteen Assassins. A feared secret force, each with their own deadly skill, the Assassins undertake a suicide mission to wipe out the Lord. As he embarks on a perilous journey, the Assassins close off his escape route and ambush him in a village of death. But little do they know, they are outnumbered four to one by the Lord’s crack team of bodyguards.

[via Wildgrounds & CinemaAsia]

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Good news for those of you who just couldn’t get enough from The Cup of Tears. The amazing trailer/short film from Irish director Gary Shore that hit the net last October and raised some eyebrows (it’s embedded below if you haven’t seen it yet) is about to be turned into a full-length film! According to Heat Vision, Universal and Working Title have acquired the rights and are bringing writers to work out the script for the film while Shore is supposed to direct.

The narrative follows a scorned geisha who creates a magical cup made of tears that causes any man who drinks from it to fall under a stasis of permanent sleep. One night the cup is stolen, setting off a chain of events that threatens civil war amongst the clans. Taro, a once gifted samurai, and his companion Jin set out to find the cup and the one who can break the spell before inner turmoil.

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First Teaser Trailer for Hideyuki Hirayama‘s Hisshiken Torisashi, another samurai flick based on a short story from Shuhei Fujisawa (Twilight Samurai, The Hidden Blade,…).

Hisshiken Torisashi opens July 10, 2010.
[via Nippon Cinema]

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Directors Kazuaki Kiriya and Gary Shore are sitting in a tree…K I S S I…but seriously, the first trailer for Shore’s The Cup of Tears could as well be a preview for a new film from the director of Casshern and Goemon. There’s little known about the film currently under production at the Irish One Punch Films studio, but if the full the full film will bring more overstylized samurai action and swordfights in outer space, I’m on board!

Update: Synopsis via Quiet Earth:

The narrative follows a scorned geisha who creates a magical cup made of tears that causes any man who drinks from it to fall under a stasis of permanent sleep. One night the cup is stolen, setting off a chain of events that threatens civil war amongst the clans. Taro, a once gifted samurai, and his companion Jin set out to find the cup and the one who can break the spell before inner turmoil.

[via Twitch]

15 Comments

Since my copy of Bandai Entertainment’s US Blu-ray Disc release of Sword of the Stranger (Mukoh Hadan) arrived a few days before the official release date on June 16, here’s my short review on the disc itself. Luckily and unlike on their Ghost in the Shell: Innocence release, Bandai has decided not to use region encoding so feel free to (pre-)order, there’s no need to wait for the announced Region B release.
Bandai also does not repeat the audio track mistake from their first BD release (lossy DD only), as both audio tracks (original Japanese and English) on Sword of the Stranger are available in sweet and lossless Dolby TrueHD 5.1 that especially shine during the grand finale and the fight scenes accompanied by Naoki Sato’s gripping score. The English subtitles are available for all dialogues or signs only which is a nice gift to fans of the English dub.
The visual presentation of Masahiro Ando’s adventure tale should also convince those who keep on repeating the same “animation does not benefit from higher resolution” jabber. The characters as well as the detailed background art just look great, especially the stunningly animated fight scenes. Studio Bones’ artists did really flex their muscles in these scenes when it comes to animation quality and choreography. The picture is virtually free of compression artefacts and banding effects, which sometimes are issue on Anime releases on Blu-ray Disc.

I’ve uploaded 40 full resolution screenshots to the Asian Blu-ray Disc gallery.
To fill the BD50, Bandai has included some interviews and Japanese press events (HD), several trailers and TV spots (SD & HD) for the main features and even a three minutes long pilot film (HD).
All in all, Bandai Entertainment has shown with this release that they can indeed rival the Japanese release when it comes to picture and sound quality. Meaning good times for high definition anime fans are coming if Bandai can keep this up with their following releases (The Girl Who Leapt through Time, please?).

9 Comments