Sword of the stranger ending

S

sanji no 1

Vampire Ninja
I watched sword of the stranger and it was very good! great action and fantastic animation. But what kind of bugged me though was the ending

*spoilers*

At the ending, the little kid is riding on a horse with No name leaning on his back. they talk a little and after No name speaks he closes his eyes. The little kid looks slightly sad but continues to smile and rides on and then you see blood on the ground as they ride on.

So did No name die? or is he just wounded?
 
It's not uncommon to leave the ending open for various reasons, including the possibility of turning it into a series and milking it some more etc. Watch the ending and decide for yourself what you want to believe happened, neither answer is technically wrong right now.
 
VivisQueen said:
God, this movie is so overrated.
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LIES

I'm interested to hear why you think so. Surely the only way anyone could be disappointed with SotS is if they went into it expecting something more than a top-notch action movie. It has the best sword fight scenes in anime.
 
^ That it does, the fights are out of this world, especially at the end.

And I would hardly say it was overrated it's not like it was being hailed as a masterpeice, just a very entertaining film

I also liked the way they handled the languages in the movie
 
I wrote a review for Sword of the Stranger, but it's awful because I approach the analysis from the wrong angle. I may RE-write if I ever RE-watch it.

Basically, the characters were terribly conceptualised, threads in the plot left hanging, the antagonist was banal, the animation concept was dull as hell, the direction lacking imagination, the fights were okay but few and hardly the most breathless I've seen. I enjoyed Ninja Scroll's and Samurai Champloo's inventive action scenes a lot more, and they probably didn't have half this movie's budget. Not to forget Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust, which STILL looks ******* intense. And Advent Children, as grotesquely shallow as its "plot" was, still left me with a sort of 'Haha! THAT IS SO ******* RIDICULOUS ITS AWESOME!' feeling. But Sword's developments were so ham-fisted that climactic battles often just left me thinking 'Wait? WHY are they fighting again? Didn't they just happen to meet on a road? Oh whoopeeeee, another slow-mo-almost-got-you-in-the-face shot'.

Conventional in every way, it is a stable action movie, but it will be surpassed within three seconds. Any shmuck could have made this movie (looking at Ando's history as key animator, he's done great things, but as director... Canaan?), but maybe in the hands of others it could have been much better.
 
It's certainly not as stylized as Kawajiri's Ninja Scroll and Bloodlust, nor Watanabe's Samurai Champloo (all of which, incidentally, I like more than Sword of the Stranger), but I don't think that's what Ando was aiming for. SotS is more like a modern animated version of old an samurai movie. What I found refreshing was that the usual cutaways and other shortcuts were dispensed with in favour of actually animating the fights. Like, wow.
 
Good for Ando, I suppose, but it doesn't mean it's a great film. It's not as though I'm arguing the film was trash - just that I don't think it's actually worth the fuss people make over it. Also, the fact that someone animated the fights rather than using cuts seems a hollow victory when everything else is so meh. But an interesting point nonetheless.
 
Really? I thought this was a great action movie. It's not the most complicated film ever conceived, but if you seriously don't get a spine-tingling, awe-inspiring feeling from these action scenes, then you either missed something or just aren't into these kind of films; nothing in the plot felt stupid to me and the whole climatic battle in the fortress was great/cathartic/heart breaking.

Got a URL for your review, VivisQueen? I'd be interested in delving further into your thought processes on SofS.
 
VivisQueen said:
[...]Conventional in every way, it is a stable action movie, but it will be surpassed within three seconds[...]
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I'm going to take a chance and summarise your views here, but I'm guessing you essentially think it's somewhat... sterile? It's a criticism I can agree with, but I manage to enjoy the film for the artistry and fight scenes regardless of the predictable plot and characters.

Back to the original question:

I was going to mention actually using the spoiler tags, but the thread title kind of sorts that out. No Name specifically says he was saved by the jewel thingy and given how conventional the rest of the plot was I just took that at face value.
 
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fabricatedlunatic said:
It's certainly not as stylized as Kawajiri's Ninja Scroll and Bloodlust, nor Watanabe's Samurai Champloo (all of which, incidentally, I like more than Sword of the Stranger), but I don't think that's what Ando was aiming for. SotS is more like a modern animated version of old an samurai movie. What I found refreshing was that the usual cutaways and other shortcuts were dispensed with in favour of actually animating the fights. Like, wow.
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Absolustely agree. this was the main reason the fights were so good. I can't stand it when during a fight scene there are 50 million cut's breaking up the action, whether it be animated or live action. There were some really nice long shots of the fights and they were quite impressively handled.

Also while I love Ninja scroll and bloodlust the fight scenes(mainly the last one) in SotS are surely a hell of a lot better.

It's true it was very conventional in a lot of ways(which it has been fairly critisized for), but for me it was also just as unconventional in other ways. For example it feels very realistic and believeable compared to other anime in it's genre, the way both the Japanese and Chinese are portrayed as equally horrid scumbags(nearly every character), and the way the languages were handled.

But then again Im probably just a sucka for a movie that puts the greatest chinese warriors against the best Japanese samurai :D , and I haven't seen it done in any other another anime
 
Bump for this thread.

This film is easily the best slice of 'new' anime I've seen in the last couple of years. Can anyone tell me what the director/Studio Bones is working on at the moment?

Cheers,
K
 
Out of more recent stuff, I would recommend CANAAN (which was directed by Ando), certainly for action. BONES's current series, Star Driver, has also improved exponentially after the first few episodes.
 
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