Shuranosuke Zanmaken: Shikamamon no Otoko

Cheap ass version of Ninja Scroll. That's all I could think of as I watched this and thought about the trailer I seen for this. How dare they compare this to NInja Scroll. Dub was boring and poorly cast, story is familiar at best, action and violence is cheap and generic. Don't let the trailer fool you. However, If your a fan of cheesy dubs and the horribly over-acted OVAs, this one's for you. Weak blood sprays and cheap character design really make for a low-budget looking title. Yet, as a fan of these types, I have this dvd in my collection. It's right therewith Riding Bean, Vampire Wars and M.D Geist and can easily be rewatched due to it's short runtime. If you don't expect too much, you won't be disappointed.

Well, let me start off by saying that even though I went into this with really low expectations, this wasn't as bad as I was expecting it to be. There's some pretty decent moments here & there, but for the most part, it's still just kind of poorly made. First off, the writing is terrible and sounds like something I would have came up with if I was 13, and was into nothing but pointless violence and pointless sex. That's all that happens in this movie. There's a very generic story that they have in there as well, but it ends up being less of afull story, with scenes jumping between each other, not flowing very nicely or having any kind of a good transition between them. The whole thing is presented sloppily, and it's really more of an excuse to have a bunch of blood, gore, and naked ladies. Also, I should mention that the pacing is completely fucked. This movie is 49 minutes long, and if I had to guess, about 35 of those minutes are dedicated to dialogue and exposition. 5 minutes are dedicated to sex scenes, and the remaining 9 minutes are dedicated to action. The main villains that they introduce are usually killed off within the first 30 seconds of their introduction, thus giving the viewer very little time to even process what's going on, yet the movie just continues. The characters are really not good at all. The main character, Shuranosuke is virtually unbeatable and therefore, all of the fights end up becoming super boring to watch about halfway through, since it's just him wrecking house the whole time. The other characters are very generic or one-dimensional... and everybody's dialogue is written rather poorly. The quality of the animation ranges between "Good for a 1990 TV series", and "Wow, that was really embarrassingly poor". The art style leaves a bit to be desired, but it's fine, for the most part. Thing move pretty good, for the most part, too... however, there are a few parts where the animation just looks really stiff and unrealistic. The art is passable, though, and is probably the most well-accomplished part of the whole thing. Audio is pretty decent. The sound mix is dated, even for the time, and it just feels cheesy and doesn't work very well. I watched it in Japanese, and the voice acting was decent, but nothing spectacular. The soundtrack was also pretty middling. Overall, Sword for Truth is pretty bad, but there also ends up being some pretty silly moments in it, and some decent art that makes it somewhat bearable. Still, I wouldn't recommend this cheap Ninja Scroll knockoff to anybody with half a brain. I give it a 3 out of 10.

Contrary to animegorey's review, I actually found this to be better than Ninja Scroll but not so much because of the quality but because it's less fantasy and therefore comes much closer to the appeal of such shows as Fist of the North Star. The biggest disappointment is that the ending disappoints when it could have been easily continued. Certainly the protagonists while not necessarily being special aren't very annoying compared to most other samurai films. Not annoying might be underselling the characters though. The professional assassin feel of the characters carry this movie. That is, while normally the lack of character development is a detriment...maybe because it's rare for an anime to have a combination of Golgo 13 + Lone Wolf and Cub and a more silent bad ass Rurouni Kenshin's Sato meet up with a gaijin-like hand to hand grappler who just defeated a fat but seemingly veteran like Samurai but there's almost a Zen-like atmosphere to the whole movie. Like a Zen koan though, length is one of the best and worst features of this movie. You just don't know if the ending was intentionally there to spread a type of thought provoking message or it's merely there because the movie had no direction. Nonetheless, in the right mood, this mediocre anime can seemingly be worth a peek and may rise as much as an 8 if you can see past through this as an adventure anime featuring a samurai and more like a Golgo 13-like side event where the events don't really hold much storytelling substance but amid the confusing scenes in the end "it's all part of the character's existence".

Well, I think anyone who watched anime long enough ventured into the territory of trashy old OVAs with plain stories but lots of incredibly well animated sex and violence. At first glance Sword for Truth is just that, it starts off with a gigantic white tiger tearing through a bunch of samurai but it doesn't take long to realize that this is not gonna stand up to something like Ninja Scroll or even Demon City Shinjuku. Sword for Truth doesn't really have anything substantial to offer if you're seen any of the above or pretty much any other short movie in the same vein. There'sno story to speak of, all we get is a super strong samurai dude slashing through everyone and getting contracted to save the damsel in distress while killing yet more people on his way. There's a hint of continuation at the end but I think we know how that worked out. When it comes to animation and art there's really not much to speak of either. Character designs are bland and forgettable, while it's excusable for some side characters who simply wear period appropriate choice it doesn't excuse everyone else looking like as interesting as a plank of wood, especially considering that the OVA is far from being a period piece and features a bunch of bullshit monsters, ninjas and other things that sound cooler in paper than in this movie. Background art, shot compositions and art direction are completely unremarkable and even despite having a relatively decent director on board the whole thing looks extremely forgettable, I was actually baffled when I saw who directed it cause even though I'm not big fan of Dezaki I think he's usually capable of creating expressive, visually impressive shots. Animation is a bit of a mixed bag cause even though it's largely extremely mediocre it can have random moments of being good but they are so rare and unimpressive that's it hardly justifies watching it. If there's one good thing I can say about it is that at certain moments the english dub was so terrible that it was actually hilarious but otherwise not bad enough to watch it for the laughs. So yeah, avoid this garbage, complete waste of time.

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