Muramasa
村正"A man with arms which can kill people like puppets is not aware that he himself has already become a puppet." In this short hand-drawn silent animation, a wandering samurai learns this lesson firsthand.Along his travels, the samurai comes across a straw dummy at the base of a tree, with a sword lodged in its body. Upon drawing it out, the samurai learns that the blade is imbued with magic, and immensely powerful. The power comes at a price, though, and wielding the blade begins to slowly drive the warrior mad. He now has a choice to make: remain himself, or sacrifice his sanity for ultimate power?
Reviews
graham.victoria - 2014-10-15 01:14:59
Muramasa is one of Tezuka Osamu's 13 experimental films.
The films follows a samurai who finds a sword in the woods, stabbed into a scarecrow. He takes it out and starts to use it, practicing on scarecrows. His master (I'm assuming) tells him it's no good but he continues to use it anyways. After sometime, the scarecrows he practices on turn out to be actual people, the sword just makes him see them as scarecrows.
The ending is great, the best part in my opinion. I don't want to spoil it though so I won't say anything about it. (You'll have to find out yourself.)
The animation is very good but not in the way you'd think. The actual movement is poor, the characters hardly move and when they do it's very cookie cutter like (when they walk, their feet don't move). But it makes up for it with the art. The drawings in this are beautiful, the landscapes and characters are all very well done.
In the end Muramasa is a great short film, good story, characters and animation. I highly recommend it!
(This is my first review by the way so I hope I didn't do too bad. I wrote this out once but I accidentally backspaced and had rewrite it again so it's not exactly what I wanted.)