Film: Musashi – The Dream Of The Last Samurai
Year of production: 2009
UK Release date: 4th July 2011
Distributor: Manga
Certificate: 15
Running time: 72 mins
Director: Mizuho Nishikubo
Genre: Anime
Format: DVD
Country of Production: Japan
Language: Japanese
Review by: Alex Jones
From Production I.G. (Ghost in the Shell, Blood+), director Mizuho Nishikubo and a screenplay by the critically acclaimed Mamoru Oshii (director of Ghost In The Shell, Jin Roh: The Wolf Brigade, The Sky Crawlers and many more) comes a documentary like no other. Combining hand-drawn animation, CGi and traditional art, Musashi – The Dream Of The Last Samurai both tells and analyses the history of one of the Japan’s greatest legends.
Miyamoto Musashi is a legendary Japanese swordsman who, through the years, has become both a key historical figure and hero of myth. He is internationally recognised as the vision of a samurai, and not only wrote one of the key texts of Japanese Samurai philosophy (The Legend Of The Five Rings) but is also famous for inventing the Ni-Ten Ichi Ryu style of two-sword fighting. Over the years, his name has been spread across not only history books, but also films, manga and anime.
In this film, a researcher attempts to tackle the centuries of contradicting information concerning Mushashi, separating the false image of the man from reality…
Animated documentaries are a rarity, and so Mushashi – The Dream Of The Last Samurai is already highly recommendable to anyone looking for anime that breaks the mould. The opening footage creates the perfect aura of what kind of man Musashi was, and the segments of the film that deal with him directly never break away from this. A huge variety of information about the man is presented – from his life and legacy to his fighting technique. Each bit of information is carefully explained without sounding too condescending or patronising. Despite it dealing with real life characters, the film also manages to have a lot of fun with its one fictional element – the researcher. Both colourful and creative, he is really brought to life with his actions and his frustration at both his assistant and fabricated myths about the man who he has devoted his studies to.
While the film deals with many other aspects of Japanese history as well as the life of Musashi, this proves to be a double edged sword. It spreads the film’s focus, but also means that the film diverges from the point it was trying to make far too often (something the researcher even addresses himself). Not only that, but it means there are also potentially crucial details of Musashi’s life omitted in order to maintain the film’s relatively short running time. No time is spent whatsoever on his birth or childhood, moving straight onto his life as an adult. It could simply mean that this chapter of his life his unimportant; however, within the film itself, it comes across more as Oshii writing for those already familiar with Miyamoto Musashi, thus somewhat alienating anyone who may be new to his stories (while Musashi is common ground in Japan, this is definitely not the case for most English speaking countries).
Where this film really shines though is in its visuals. The CGi moments of the Nintendo Mii-esque researcher and his assistant offer light moments of comedy to maintain interest while juxtaposing the traditionally drawn (and spectacularly choreographed) fight sequences, real life photos of places Musashi visited, and paintings of events in his life. The fights are presented in greyscale just to add that extra feeling of it being historical, and there are even instances of the anime Musashi model superimposed over historical artwork, clashing two completely different art styles to create something completely new. The music is also a triumph, the film’s grand score helping to maintain the epic scale the stories of Musashi have now reached.
Musashi – The Dream Of The Last Samurai is a film that takes so many contradicting art styles and blends them into one beautiful picture. Its only flaws are that it sometimes wanders off the subject matter a little too much, and that it perhaps doesn’t provide enough to entice those not already familiar with Miyamoto Mushashi or the works of Oshii. Still, it is apparent that Oshii has a passion for the legendary swordsman, and this is truly reflected in both the visual appeal of the film and the insight it provides. AJ
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