It's hard to believe that Anime this bad exists; while the premise of this story could make for a good Anime, Sword of Truth is anything but good. Manga Entertainment obviously purchased the rights to this title hoping that it would be the next Ninja Scroll, and it has been referred to as the "best film since Ninja Scroll," but as another reviewer so aptly said "not unless it's the only film since Ninja Scroll". To put it bluntly, Sword for Truth is nothing more than a very bad rip-off of Ninja Scroll.

A thin continuity serves little purpose other than to link the various action scenes together. The periods in between the action scenes however should not be mistaken for an attempt at plot or character development, they truly serve no purpose other than to fill time.

Lack of character and plot development can sometimes be forgiven if the rest of the movie is good. In the case of Sword for Truth, the rest of the movie consists of gratuitous sex and violence. The sex scenes are rather boring, nothing to get turned on about, and the action scenes are worse. The action segments seem as if they consists of only three frames, 1 before, 1 during and 1 after. For example, Shuranosuke faces an opponent, they draw their weapons and charge, blood gushes from the severed head and limbs of Shuranosuke's opponent. A few of the more detailed scenes may actually have 5 or 6 frames; honestly some manga are better animated than this.

Interestingly enough, the most detailed action segment comes near then end of the movie in a scene between an assassin and a government official. Unfortunately this scene has nothing to do with the rest of the movie, nothing.

One aspect that may explain some of the films shortcomings is that Sword for Truth seems to have been originally made to be the first of a series, however nothing more was ever made… fortunately.

If you really must watch this film, watch the subtitled version. On top of poor voice acting, liberties taken with the dubbed version's script only serve to further obscure this film's poor continuity.

The only good thing that can be said about this film is that some of the static art is rather nice; in fact the mini poster included with the DVD is quite beautiful.

DVD features include Dolby Digital 2.0 for the English and Japanese soundtracks and English subtitles as well as previews of other Manga releases which you'd be much better off watching than this garbage