The Dagger of Kamui

Jiro finds his mother and sister dead in their home. When the crime is pinned on him he flees his village and comes across a priest named Tenkai. Tenkai trains him for years, makes him a master assassin and gives him his first target. Years later Jiro learns the truth about his own past, and what he learns shows him who he has been working for and what he lost. Rintaro's two hour animation is adapted from Tetsu Yano's novel. The story begins in Japan but reaches Siberia, Russia and America; a ninja tale set under the shogunate spreading across a map this wide is unusual for the genre. The Ainu people stand at the centre of the story. The drawing and the movement are among the most ambitious in Japanese animation of the eighties, while the narrative sometimes trips over its own complications.