Ian’s review published on Letterboxd:
77/100
”The only sound you'll hear... is the sound of your own voice, screaming.”
After my real disliking to director Yoshiaki Kawajiri’s previous film Wicked City, I wasn’t all too enthralled to make my way through this because honestly I expect the exact same. Given that I *also* had just watched right before this one of the absolute worst and boring films that I’ve ever seen, but I loved Ninja Scroll. Not only does it completely flip the sort of films that Kawajiri had done before, but it’s by far one of the most beautiful and engaging anime films that I’ve seen and it all comes together to create such an exciting mixer between light-horror and action/samurai films.
I think what makes for such an exciting film is how much time we actually get to spend and get invested into this world. Now granted, it’s not some crazy deep world-building, but getting this little moments with Jubei & Kagero and then watching everything unfold creates such a compelling end. That’s not even taking about how spectacular the action sequences look here. I can easily see how this was one of the defining anime films that brought its popularity over to the western world. Each fight is exhilarating and gorgeous and man, it was just refreshing to watch. Ninja Scroll is solid as hell.
