Interesting how all of the negative reviews for Kamui no Ken seem to have risen to the top. So I figured I might as well add my opinion just to keep this all in perspective. Yes, this movie is about 15-30 minutes too long. Yes, there are about 3 too many plot twists. And yes, the majority of the mainstream "We love Ninja Scroll" anime crowd will likely it. But Kamui no Ken has stuck with me over the years, and is easily one of my favorite anime titles.Rin Taro is a brilliant director, but his films take getting used to. He often uses a very slow pace, and allows periods of silence and dead space to make his powerful images have even more impact. Kamui no Ken is the long, winding oddessy of a young boy who goes from a foundling to a true ninja warrior. Many, many things happen along the way, and the movie chronicles ALL of them. This epic scope will either make the film fascinating, or boring. It all depends on you. Personally, I loved it. The characters are uniformly amazing, and as I have said before, the film is awash with brilliant imagery. It feels much closer to the style of classic Japanese historical drama than the splattering action of Ninja Scroll or the Kenshin OVA's (both of which I also loved).Problem... it drags. and it runs on for quite a long time. One plot twist in particular (MINOR SPOILER, NO SPECIFICS) involves the apparent death of an evil character. This will seem terribly implausible, even ludicrous, to American audiences (Although from the traditional Japanese storytelling perspective, this is much less far fetched). Individually, I can't think of many scenes to cut (one showdown in the wild west was perhaps unneccessary), but even these scenes are very cool in their own way. If this movie weren't so long and epic, it wouldn't be as interesting as it is.Basically, it depends on you. If you REALLY love the ancient japanese tradition, and enjoy the more serious, dramatic aspect to samurai/ninja tales, you will enjoy Kamui no Ken. But casual anime fans may be disappointed.

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

When I saw this movie at age 6, it was in the CHILDRENS' section at Erols Video because it was animation. We watched it and it was a whole different ball game! A very violent story and graphic deaths are VERY entertaining and compelling, but not for children. Avoid for family viewing, my mom nearly had a heart attack and ripped the video apart!

What can be said about a movie that makes two hours seem like three weeks? The hero starts out in ninjaville, Japan, goes through an identity crisis (saving a shinobi), makes a voyage to America (saving a slave named Sam) engages in a little wild west action (saving a French/japanese native american named Julie), goes hunting pirate's gold, and then heads back to Japan to fight a war. The film obviously has no clue where it's going at any point in time; I think the director modeled each scene after the last movie he'd watched. If you're going to watch this film, I suggest renting the subtitled so you and your peers can openly discuss how dumb the movie is without speaking over the movie, potentially missing another dumb plot twist.Movies the director was watching during the making of this movie - An American Tail, Fievel Goes West, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, The Goonies, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Kung Fu, Vampire Hunter D, The Ten Commandments.Notes of Interests - Most fear inspiring line of all time. About 90 minutes (or 19 days) into the movie, the lead character has just bested an American villain, and just as one heads to the vcr to end the pain the hero proclaims "Let's go back to Japan", and the agony continues for another week.