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Ninja ScrollNinja Scroll (original title: 獣兵衛忍風帖 or Jubei Ninpuuchou) (1995) is an anime set in feudal Japan. The Japanese title could be translated at "Jubei the Wind Ninja," although this is subject to debate as it does not account for the last part of the title. It was written and directed by Yoshiaki Kawajiri, and won the Citizen's Award at the 1993 Yubari International Fantastic Film Festival. A team of Koga Ninja is sent to investigate a plague in Shimoda village, but on their way, they are violently slaughtered to a man; the only survivor is Kagero, their lord's poison-taster. Their attacker is a giant man with stone skin and a colossal double-bladed sword, which can throw like a boomerang. The giant takes Kagero to his hut and proceeds to molest her; when she awakens, he tells her, "A dead girl might be an interesting lay." He is interrupted by an interloper who does not seem terrified of the fact that he can turn his skin to stone. Rather, the interloper, "A vagabond named Jubei Kibegami," who apparently stopped by to ask directions, puts out one of his eyes with a dart ("You can't be hard as rock all over.") and escapes with Kagero. The giant ambushes Jubei and proceeds to beat him bloody. Although he has the clear advantage (Jubei cannot even scratch his stony hide), he begins to fall apart. He throws his sword, but cannot catch it when Jubei manages to cut his fingers off, and the blade drives into his skull. An old monk appears and congratulates Jubei, telling him that the ninja girl's poisonous body did the demonic warrior in. The monk identifies the monster as one of "The Eight Devils of Kimon." Several other strange characters are concerned with the stone man's death: the well-dressed Yurimaru, who calls him Tessai, and the scarred Zakuro, who lusts for Yurimaru, even though the man is gay and sleeping with their bisexual master, Gemma. Jubei rests his battered body in a hot spring, but is entranced by a female bather and her snake tattoos. She identifies him as the man who killed Tessai (he had copied his face in his palm), and her tattoos start moving. This hypnotizes Jubei, and the snakes leave her body and approach him. A shuriken strikes Jubei, which wakes him up in time to cut the snakes down. He grabs the woman, but she sheds her skin and escapes, just like a snake. The old monk appears again. Jubei learns his name is Dakuan, and that the star was poisoned. Jubei must work for Dakuan, a Tokugawa Shogunate operative, in order to receive the antidote, or he will surely die within two days. As they boat down a river, Dakuan asks Jubei if he killed the chief retainers to the Yamashiro clan five years before, and leader of the Yamashiro ninja, Himuro Gemma, who were getting rich off a hidden and undisclosed gold mine. Dakuan claims that Gemma is still alive, despite Jubei's insistence (and flashback) that he decapitated him. They get separated once they land. A shadow attacks Dakuan with a mechanical claw, apparently impaling him against a tree, but he escaped into the branches, camouflaging himself. A man rises out of the shadow, muses that nobody has escaped "Shijima's claw," and sinks back down. Jubei enters an abandoned shrine, where an old woman is chanting the sutra for the dead of Shimoda. She erupts in a shower of snakes, and the woman from the spring, Benisato, returns. Kagero grabs her from behind and puts her knife to her throat. A snake slithers out of Benisato's nether region and bites Kagero, but she does not relent. Benisato is suddenly electrocuted until she dies. A thin cord stretches for miles, until Yurimaru admonishes Benisato for her failure, and the cord disintegrates while Jubei and Kagero follow it. When Jubei tries to suck the poison from Kagero's wound, she kicks him away, telling him that she is immune. Dakuan pops back up and requests that Kagero join them in their fight against the common enemy, and that he has valuable information about the enemy. Dakuan tells Jubei that Kagero poisons any man she sleeps with, and that's how he defeated Tessai. Yurimaru, Zakuro, and two other Devils gather to figure out how to defeat the man who killed Tessai. The two of them go with Dakuan to Shimoda, where they see for themselves that the well had been poisoned. A swarm of wasps descends on the village, going after the three of them. Kagero holds them off, and Jubei finds the master of the swarm, a hunchback named Mushizo, another of the Eight Devils, who lets slip that Gemma is still alive. The hunch is actually a wasp nest, and they attack Jubei. They fight in a water-powered mill, and then Jubei escapes into the river. Mushizo follows him, but remains on land. Jubei knocks him into the water, where the wasps sting Mushizo repeatedly trying to escape. Dakuan knows about the reincarnation technique, how one must have total control over every little piece of tissue, so that even if one loses a limb, or a head, it might be reattached, but human beings cannot achieve such control. Jubei does not seem interested in having a debt from Kagero. They climb a cliff to get a better view of the land, but Kagero sees her former commander, Hanza (whose arms Tessai had torn from their sockets), walking aimlessly toward the brink. His eyes and mouth have been sewn shut. Kagero stops him, but Zakuro is there, and she releases streams of gunpowder into the air. Hanza reacts with it, and explodes. Jubei grabs Kagero and throws himself off the cliff to save her. Jubei is hanging by the cord attached to his sword sheath, and he has Kagero climb up the cliff. When Jubei gets there, a swordsman in white is holding his sword. He introduces himself as Utsusu Mujuro, and challenges Jubei. He lures him into a nearby bamboo forest, hoping to take advantage of his blindness, but Mujuro's ears are sharp, and he blinds Jubei with the reflection off his katana blade. However, Kagero tricks Mujuro into attacking the wrong blade, and Jubei impales him. Jubei accuses Kagero of not valuing her life, and she responds by saying that she cannot touch a man, lest she kill him. Kagero passes out, and awakens with Jubei. He notices a beached cargo ship, and concludes that the Devils poisoned Shimoda to keep it secret, so they could take the cargo. Kagero wants to stop the cargo from reaching Kishima Harbour, where it will be taken away by boat, so she agrees to work with Jubei until then. Dakuan finds them, and tells them that the cargo is the gold from the secret Yamashiro mine, which the Shogun of the Dark will use to topple the Tokugawa and initiate a civil war. Jubei chases after something that has followed him, and Kagero sends a message to the chamberlain. She then demands that Dakuan give her the antidote for Jubei. He tells her, and it shocks her. Jubei returns from the chase that yielded nothing, to find Kagero kidnapped, and a ransom note carved into a tree. Dakuan tries to dissuade him, but he runs off after her. He finds her in an abandoned building, but when she awakens, she attacks him, with a disembodied voice goading her on. Jubei has to allow Kagero to stab his wrist so he can block the incoming spring-loaded claw from the shadow. He throws his sword toward the shadow, and he impales Shijima in the back. He falls down, dead, and Kagero snaps out of his mind control. Two hours later, the Koga army hasn't arrived, and Kagero wonders why Jubei stepped into an obvious trap to save her. He tells her that she's his comrade, since they've worked together since the day before. Kagero then tells him that shehas to pay back the debt, and insists that she do so now. She strips, and tells him that the antidote for his poison is another poison, and that she can save him, if he takes her. He refuses, and leaves to intercept the Shogun of the Dark's forces. Jubei meets up with Dakuan, and plans to sink the ship when it's fully loaded and out to sea. The Mochizuki have apparently decided to intervene, but the chamberlain stabs Kagero, and transforms into Gemma. Jubei attacks, but the ninja horde stands in his way. Yurimaru asks for the honour of killing Jubei, and Gemma lets him. Yurimaru leads Jubei into a warehouse, where he strings him up and electrocutes him. Yurimaru notices a rat scurrying about, and then it collapses. He sees the sutured cut on its belly, and the gunpowder on the ground, and then the rat explodes. Yurimaru's dismembered arm falls into the water, and Zakuro picks it up. She muses that he "accidentally" walked into her trap, and now he's "Queen of the Devils." Jubei finds the dying Kagero, who is glad that she found someone who treated her as a person, and not an expendable soldier. She expresses her wish that they could have made love just once, and Jubei kisses her before she dies. Setting her adrift on a funeral boat, Jubei takes her headband and tears the arms off his shirt. Gemma meets the leader of the Toyotomi ninja, and declares that Devils of Kimon will take the gold and build a ninja army to terrorize Japan, and not even the Shogun of the Dark can stop them. Zakuro finds Dakuan rooting about in the hold, and he throws one of his gourds at her. She cuts it in half, spraying liquid on her and the floor. Dakuan grabs a candle, but she puts it out. Jubei appears, holding another candle, and drops it on the liquid, which immediately erupts in flame. Zakuro's gunpowder also explodes, breaching the hull. Gemma enters the hold and finds Jubei, and they fight to the death. Jubei cuts Gemma's arm off, but he still manages to knock him around before reattaching it. Jubei headbutts him into the floor, breaking his facial bones, but he heals and stands up. Even when the support beams crash down on him, Gemma stands up, impaled on a wooden shard. He pounds on Jubei, proclaiming that he can't die. Jubei then stabs him and cuts upward, splitting him in half from the belly up. Gemma recovers, but a river of liquid gold flows over him. He grabs Jubei as he climbs to safety, but Jubei cuts his arm off, and Gemma falls into the water, sinking to the bottom of the sea with the rest of the gold. External links
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