A young blind woman called Ichi (Haruka Ayase) wanders through ancient Japan as a traveling shamisen player. She was cast out of a goze house for having an affair with a customer, never mind that it wasn't an affair, but rape. In her mind, she hasn't got much to live for anymore. There is only reason Ichi is actually still making an effort to live. She wants to find the blind man who brought her to the goze house and returned from time to time to teach her to use a swordcane and who was as much of a father to her as anyone ever was. It is in fact possible that the man is her biological father.
When she comes to the area around a small inn town, she meets a charming but seemingly cowardly ronin named Touma Fujihira (Takao Osawa). During their first meeting, Touma rather heroically tries to protect her from a group of outlaws, but is a wee bit hindered in it by his own inability to draw his sword. Ichi doesn't have those kind of problems and slaughters the outlaws in a few seconds.
Touma is intrigued by Ichi, even though she acts about as emotive and warm as a stone. She probably reminds him of his mother, whom he accidentally blinded in a sword training accident. That accident is the reason for his trouble with swords. As long as he fights with training weaponry, everything is fine (we'll later see that he is an even better fighter than Ichi), but drawing his actual weapon to fight is beyond his abilities.
The ronin, who is an aimless wanderer like Ichi, stumbles into the conflict that makes this inn town so special. The town is run by the Shirakawa group, the sort of honorable yakuza you'll mostly find in ninkyo eiga. It's just too bad that they are terrorized by the gang of outlaws of which Ichi's would-be rapists were only a small part. These people, the bakin gang (second in command: Riki Takeuchi, oh yes!) once were of a much higher position in life and have now made it their job to make everyone else as miserable as they are themselves. They are quite effective at that.
As things go, Ichi and Touma are drawn into the conflict for different reasons, both bound for some kind of change with the way they live with their trauma.
As a fan of the classical Zatoichi films with Shintaro Katsu, I was quite skeptical about a re-boot/re-think of the series with a female protagonist. To my delight, I found a film that may not reach the heights of the best of the original series, yet is very serious about being a chambara in the spirit of the older films. It also isn't a real re-boot, but more of a sequel with a new character. The film never outright says that Ichi's father figure is the original Ichi as played by Shintaro Katsu, but hints strongly and effectively at it.
After a relatively slow and not all that promising beginning, the film soon starts to hit one of my personal narrative kinks really hard when it turns into the story of two heavily traumatized people (Ichi herself does in fact suffer some of the classical symptoms of PTSD), who don't "get over their traumas" (because one does not), but start to live and change again. It's also not a film about love as the all-conquering power that makes every trauma go away (as taught by Hollywood), yet it also doesn't say that love and human kindness aren't necessary and helpful. In other words, Ichi is one of the few films that gets this aspect right.
I'm also quite taken with the fact that the film grants its minor characters a little more depth (and good lord, even character arcs! some of them even not ending in death!) than usual in the genre, enough to keep the less than original plot fresh and put everything on the character base that is fitting for a Zatoichi film.
The acting itself is mostly alright. You'll know just about everyone here from one Japanese direct to DVD production or the other, so you'll probably know that everyone here is perfectly capable to give a solid to good performance, with Osawa's Touma and Yosuke Kobuzuka's young yakuza leader as the stand-outs.
Ayase (being an idol, not an actress) is technically the least convincing actor, but she delivers what she is supposed to deliver, which is mostly to look pretty in rags and try to emote as little as possible since she's shut herself off from most of her feelings. She is also quite fantastic in her few action scenes, giving her Ichi a threatening, nearly ghostly presence through body language alone.
The action sequences aren't overtly spectacular, but effective and quite beautiful in their way. Director Fumihiko Sori does some interesting things with a rhythmic use of speed-ups and slow-motion I don't think I have seen before.
The only thing I found disappointing (and probably the part of the movie that keeps it below the Zatoichi films of - for example - Kenji Misumi) is the general look of the picture. Colours, lightning and film stock have the usual (quite ugly) look of a Japanese direct to DVD production - probably inescapable in this context, but we're at least not talking Onichanbara-ugly here - making it not as interesting to look at as one would wish.
But honestly, with this script and the respect for the classic samurai films of the chambara sub-genre the film breathes, I would probably not even complain when you could see a microphone arm smack dab in the middle of the picture for the complete duration of the film.
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