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somewhere in feudal Japan, a landless samurai crosses an old wooden bridge at a leisurely pace. The sound of the wind and his solitude are interrupted by two men who, after attacking him, accuse him of having made them lose 300 pieces of gold. This is the opening scene of the Ninja Scroll, the animated movie written and directed by Yoshiaki Kawajiri and released in 1993. The film is based on Futaro Yamada's erotic ninja novels and is for sure Kawajiri's most successful work, which he managed to complete despite a very complicated production due to its genre. The story is about the lordless samurai Kibagami Jubei, who offers his sword skills in exchange for gold. After saving a female ninja Kagero from rape, Kibagami gets involved in a power struggle between the Tokugawa and Toyotomi shogunates to control the country. Because of this, he is forced to fight against eight demons bearing supernatural powers, that will endanger his life and try to ending his wanderings forever. With this movie, Kawajiri wants to describe the serious economic crisis that hit his country in the early '90s. To do so, he chooses a very specific moment in Japanese history: the Edo period. In fact, during that time, the shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu - shogun is the name given to a military dictator - takes power in Japan and starts a close borders policy, expelling all foreigners from the country. (it’s the same time in which Martin Scorsese set his film Silence) Using the past as a trick, the Japanese director tells us about his contemporaneity by exposing political and social uncertainty, through dark and gloomy shots that portray places, where deception and violence appear behind every corner. The greed of banks and the financial market’s manipulation become an inspiration to structure the motivations and traits of the characters. Kibagami Jubei, inspired by the historical figure of Yagyu Jubei, is forced - as the ordinary citizen - to fight against these invincible entities not by his own will, but for survival. Justice is partially absent and, when present, it is instrumentalized for political or personal purposes. The film is part of the Chambara, a Japanese film genre, that shares similarities with the Western, in which the fighting takes place with swords instead of guns. (Tarantino made an entire franchise out of it, see Kill Bill). Like a Tekken-style fighting game, fights between challengers are fast and short, giving the film a dry and pragmatic rhythm. Aided by Kaoru Wada's music, Hitoshi Yamaguchi's detailed cinematography ,focuses on creating fantastic landscapes that we can see on Japanese folklore. In one of the film's most beautiful scenes, we have a blood-colored shot in which the lights cast sharp shadows, reinforcing in the viewer's mind a feeling of constant danger and terror. The result is a profoundly disturbing film, whose strengths are represented by the unspoken and the power of images, while presenting some iconic sequences (the battle between Jubei and the blind samurai in the bamboo forest is amazing). There are also references to Japanese culture: in this frame, we see the Demons of Kimon under a Japanese torii (torii - Japanese portals) while a violent storm is raging. It is a tribute to Akira Kurosawa's 7 Samurai, the most successful film in Japanese history. In this other scene, the main villain and leader of the Kimon Demons, Himuro Gemma, is a clear reference to Kenshiro, (Hokuto no Ken’s protagonist) the legendary martial arts expert . The film is extremely enjoyable and aims to entertain the audience with a simple and concise plot, without getting lost in existentialist philosophical reasoning. In my opinion, the screenplay flows too quickly and does not give enough time to enjoy the scenes with the right timing. Despite that, Ninja Scroll represents a classic of Japanese animation, together with masterpieces such as Ghost in Shell and Akira, and has also had a huge influence on the Matrix franchise and other movies which that came after, including Afro Samurai: The resurrection (2009) and Sword of Stranger (2007).