Samurai X – The Motion Picture

1997

published in Empire No.82, Sydney

2008

A lasting strength about anime is the way it can casually dive into any period of its long history and find compelling tales to tell. Samurai X – The Motion Picture is engagingly centred in Yokohama, the Japanese port where American merchant forces were taking hold in the aftermath of the fall of the Tokugawa Shogunate. The story follows the fateful bond shared by two samurai, Shigure and Kenshin, whose personal vendetta is complicated by their allegiance to held in the rebuilding of Japan in this mildly anti-western anime. Epic, historical and heroic stuff, but absent of the tawdry chest-thumping borne of clan war stories.