It's always interesting to finally see a masterwork by a master craftsman. Most Americans' first encounter with Rintarō was the theatrical release of CLAMP's X. With an uneven translation and significant violence when compared with the manga, the movie received mixed reviews when it premiered in the US. I remember watching it, half-wondering what made Rintarō's reputation as a director. Now that I have watched Dagger of Kamui, I may have better insight into the answer to that.

This movie captures so much of what made anime great in the 1980s and 1990s. Mood-enhancing music and visuals create a trippy, almost mind-machine-like feel to the opening and many of the individual scenes. The music is particularly effective in scenes where it gives a ritual feeling to the story.

This story, based on the novel series by Testu Yano, is so much, with extra muchnesses attached to the side, that I felt that it was poorly served by being a movie. A serial would have been able to give each sequence the weight and time it needed to develop. As a movie, it came off as a series of wild coincidences that lead to needlessly tragic outcomes in what is a massively epic story that has everything from the Boshin War to the Nevada Desert.

Jiro is a half-Ainu child brought up in the far north of what is now known as Hokkaido. After his foster family is killed and he is blamed, he runs into the arms of a clearly evil, power-hungry priest named Tenkai. Tenkai is the worst kind of bad guy. He's murderous, greedy, gloating, and Tenkai will haunt Jiro for the rest of the movie, killing people who help Jiro to find…

…and here is where I have to be honest with you. It was not the fact that they were looking for Captain Kidd's treasure that threw me out of the story. Nor was it the avalanche or the pirates or the Native American girl who turned out to be the daughter of a Frenchman also looking for Kidd's treasure, or even Mark Twain. All of those were fine. But the moment we learned the true identity of the ninja woman who had tracked Jiro to the United States after he had been thrown off the ship in the Sea of Okhotsk…I just threw my hands up and said, “Oh, you have got to be kidding me.”

Even so, I found the historicity of this story fascinating. Dagger of Kamui is a classic example of the reminder that cowboys and samurai were contemporary to one another. While it begins in the Edo period, filled with samurai, mysterious shinobi, and murderous priests, it ends with the Boshin War, which led to the Meiji restoration and, eventually, a Japan that stepped onto the world stage in a completely different kind of epic history.

The thing about all this is that it is really interesting, even if Jiro has the personality of a plank. Rintarō's vision guides the story as it wanders through snowy highlands, across raging oceans, through deserts and mountains, all accompanied by flashing swords and the driving musical theme. All of this animation was done by hand, which makes the vision just that much more fascinating. It was really interesting as a whole (even with that one too many coincidences), and now, at last, I understand what people saw in Rintarō's work. Rintarō's vision was epic in that every scene of this movie ties into a grander vision. Every sword fight is a classic fight scene, and every bit of weather or geography is rendered with care and precision.

Extras on the Blu-Ray include a conversation between the director and anime historian Masahiro “Data” Hisaguchi, which likewise ranges far and wide, beginning with Rintarō's love for the chambara genre (also known as samurai movies). Any fan of anime history would find this a real delight. Folks interested in cinema and how anime uses cinematic techniques will also find the commentary to be very worthwhile. AnimEigo and MediaOCD did a bang-up job on this release.