Kai Doh Maru

Whilst it makes a nice change to see an anime set in ancient Japan rather than some mech-infested near future, it's unfortunate that this particular anime is so stultifyingly dull. The makers of Blood: The Last Vampire have created a finished film with Kai Doh Maru, but at least with Blood you could imagine what might have been.

The washed-out visuals, a stylistic choice presumably intended to endow a kind of far-off mysticism on the film, only adds to the general torpor that sets in from the get go. The fact that the plot, supposedly based on Japanese folklore, is somewhat contrived borders on irrelevance as you will have long since been comatised by characters with less charm and guile than a bag of spanners.

怪童丸
Dir. Kanji Wakabayashi, 2003