Blade of the Immortal (2017)

When his young sister is brutally slaughtered, fearsome warrior “Manji” (Takuya Kimura) exacts his revenge on the killer and on his army of soldiers. What’s left of him at the end, though, isn’t going to survive for long - until a mysterious lady arrives and pours bloodworms into his wounds. Next thing his limbs are reattached and he is gifted with an immortality. In the next fifty years he acquires quite a reputation and it’s that that the young “Rin” (Hana Sugisaki) wants to tap into after her own father is brutally murdered and she wants her own pound of flesh. Initially, he isn’t really interested in getting involved but before long he is embroiled in a series of acrobatic combat scenarios that test not just the recuperative powers of his worms, but also bring into question his own attitude to his immortality as he encounters others “blessed” or ought that to be “cursed” by the same gift. What I did like about this is the crafted sword-fighting. Though doubtless perfectly choreographed for the camera, they come across as more spontaneous, bloody and less repetitious - especially impressive as there a great many of them as this obviously far more substantial story is rather tightly condensed into a two hours that does leave the principal characterisations a bit undersold at times. On that front, there are probably just too many characters for us to really embrace, and even when we do get a more solid villain in “Anotsu” (Sôta Fukushi) things all seem a bit rushed. Honestly, perhaps this could have been a trilogy, with more time spent developing the stories more thoroughly and taking more time to keep us from becoming solely subsumed in all the gore. Still, I enjoyed it and it does raise quite a few philosophical questions about humanity, humility and revenge.