Killer B's on DVD: Shogun Assassin 2

The first Shogun Assassin was something of a mongrel. Released in 1980, it was culled from the first two films in the Lone Wolf and Cub series of films (referred to in some translations as The Babycart films), Lone Wolf and Cub: Sword of Vengeance and Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart at the River Styx, both of which were from 1972 and based on a series of manga. Set in feudal Japan, Shogun Assassin told the tale of Ogami Itto (Tomisaburo Wakayama), samurai and former executioner to a powerful Shogun. After being betrayed by his master who also murdered his wife, Ogami is forced to flee and wander the land with his young son Daigoro (Akihiro Tomikawa). The Shogun's men are dispatched to kill the samurai, and violence finds the father and son at nearly every turn. Though I haven't seen the first two films in their unedited state, the hybrid they form with Shogun Assassin is an exciting and brutally violent film. The narrative is choppy at times, but the nearly non-stop samurai carnage forgives many flaws. I've heard purists say these films are best watched in their original forms, but Shogun Assassin is the film by which English speaking audiences first saw the series, and it is pretty entertaining in its own right.

Shogun Assassin 2: Lightning Swords of Death is the English dubbed version of Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart to Hades, though the onscreen title is presented as Lone Wolf With a Child : Baby Cart On To The Hades (sic). This stilted English title is actually difficult to read because it is cut off on the left and right sides of the screen. Although presented in widescreen the DVD from AnimEigo does not use the original aspect ratio, a situation that creates problems for onscreen compositions throughout the film.

Ogami, looking intense and sweaty in every shot, still wanders the countryside with his son, making a living as an assassin when the opportunity presents itself. The two come across a group of mercenary samurai who have raped and killed two women. Ogami kills several of them, but upon realizing that the one named Kanbei is one of the few remaining men to truly understand what it means to be a samurai, Ogami refuses to fight him. Ogami then comes to the aid of a young woman who has killed a man who was about to deliver her into a life of prostitution. When confronted by Torizo (Yuko Hamada), the woman who has paid for the girl, Ogami refuses to hand the girl over. Torizo explains how the girl's obligation could be satisfied by her undergoing ritual torture. Ogami agrees to this, but under the stipulation he endure the torture in her place. The procedure which involves submerging the victim's head repeatedly before mercilessly pounding him with reeds leaves Ogami bloody but alive. Impressed with the samurai's stamina Torizo and her father hire him to kill a Governor who has wronged their family.

The explanation of how Torizo's family has been slighted is rather confusing and this is where the film started losing me. I had expected more of what I had seen in Shogun Assassin with Ogami and Daigoro wandering from one brutally violent confrontation to the next, but this film takes too much time to get things moving, and the action scenes aren't enough to justify the slow buildup. Granted, the samurai brawl near the end of the film is quite ambitious, the final confrontation between Ogami and Kanbei gives a nice symmetry to the story, and there's a POV shot from a flying decapitated head that will make you sit up and take notice, but it's a case of too little too late. While I've seen worse dubbing, the practice of writing English lines to match the lip movements of the Japanese actors invariably compromises the dialog, and I found myself wishing I was watching a subtitled version. All this combined with the aforementioned issue with the picture being noticeably truncated on both sides of the screen lead me to classify Shogun Assassin 2 as a disappointment.

The disk provides an option for displaying captions onscreen that translate Japanese characters and explain certain concepts of Japanese culture like the mercenary samurai we see early in the film. It's an interesting idea, but since I only saw this feature kick in two or three times it didn't add much to the experience. Other features include some interesting program notes that place the film in its historical context, give details of the regions of Japan in which the film takes place, and explain certain Japanese customs seen in the film. The image gallery shows a dozen or so stills from the film, and there are trailers for three more vintage samurai films available from AnimEigo, including the first Shogun Assassin.