MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*
This misleadingly titled offering on a couple of streaming channels must be the most obscure item I've reviewed yet. Not only did the 1995 TV-film-- originally entitled ONIMARO ZANSHINKEN-- not have any online reviews, it didn't even have any visual representations on the three major search engines, except the above placeholder. I assume SWORD only recently showed up on the service I watched.
The title is an almost complete fakeout: there's not even a mention of metaphorical demons, much less demons who can be slain by a magical sword. Rather, this is a story that might've been slightly compelling given its novel concept. In SWORD, an apprentice swordsmith must journey from town to town in Edo-era Japan, trying to recover the badly forged swords left behind by the apprentice's late master. I have no idea what the "Zanshinken" of the title means but "Onimaro," played by Hidekazu Akai, is the name of the apprentice seeking to erase the stain on his master's name by buying back, or even stealing, the inferior craftworks. But Onimaro doesn't only have to contend with sword-owners who have various reasons for not wanting to sell the bad swords. A gang of ninjas, belonging to the legendary Iga Clan, want to kill Onimaro because the clan-leader had some old beef with the deceased swordsmith.
The problem is that because this is a TV-movie, there's not much time spent explaining the various motives of the support-characters, and even Onimaro and his allies are underwhelming. The production values are pretty strong, as are the three major swordfights. But even though as a Westerner I've been exposed to SOME of the mystique surrounding Japanese sword-crafting, SWORD didn't communicate the slightest sense of what that mystique might consist of. Maybe the script would have been able to concentrate more on Onimaro's swordmaking aesthetics had it not saddled the hero with a little "family:" a sassy orphan boy and the daughter of the nasty clan-leader. The daughter of course falls for the hero and is played by Eriko Tamura of DRAGONBALL EVOLUTION fame.
There are two clearly uncanny incidents in the movie. One involves the bad ninjas-- who don't dress in the standard pajamas-- catching the orphan boy in the forest with a multitude of lasso-ropes. This carries an uncanny feel since one cannot see the rope-casters. The other comes at the climax. Several sword-wielders attack Onimaro, and apparently both the hero and his sword are so excellent that not only can Onimaro split the enemies' swords, he can also rapidly whittle the blades into tiny fragments. In any case, still no demons, nor any supernatural phenomena whatever.
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