I have no idea about the historical accuracy of all this but as a study of how humans might be molded to fit a hard society, Shigurui is an interesting piece. You have to brace yourself in the face of instances of women being practically sold out just to ensure the offspring, people eating eyes of their opponents (…yeah…) and other pretty disgusting stuff. I don’t think it’s possible to enjoy the show otherwise – the actions of the characters sometimes seem very alien and even inhuman. I choose to view Shigurui as a historical piece and a portrayal of the values that were relevant at the time. I’d agree that some of it might be excessive but ultimately I think it’s needed to make the show what it is. Sure, the gritty elements and quite a bit of nudity (though none of it is outright fanservice) is certainly there, and many might be (and probably should be) turned off by it. I mentioned flying guts and stuff earlier but you’d be very mistaken thinking that that’s all there is to Shigurui. Excerpt from the OST: Akune by Kiyoshi Yoshida But that’s not a problem because at least to me every single more prominent character seemed to be equally important – each of them a person with goals and wishes, a person whose destiny is intertwined with others, for better or worse. I don’t think the show can boast of that memorable characters except maybe the old master (who looks rather like a demon). The music and staging provided enough information to keep the mind occupied while also leaving space to analyze and think about the proceeding events. It’s great then that the story is very slow paced – there’s lots of still and pans, – but I don’t think I was ever bored by it. The visuals do provide some cues about what’s happening in the heads of the characters but ultimately we see only the actions, and the drawing of the conclusions is up to the viewer. In contrast to the manga that tends to provide some information about what the characters are thinking, the anime leaves the judgment entirely to the viewers. Add some women to the mix, the mad master and his craved technique, and you have a great stage for a play about human interaction in a particular setting.Īnd in that respect Shigurui definitely delivers. Everything didn’t go so smoothly and eventually Fujiki and Irako became fierce rivals. One day a new swordsmen named Irako arrived with a wish to become a pupil and learn the secret technique that the master was famous for. It was quite troublesome but by the sheer force of will and devotion of the apprentices the dojo was still able to survive.
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At that time the protagonist Fujiki was an apprentice in a dojo under a master whose old age forced him to continuously snap in and out of a demented state. The scene that I described earlier actually isn’t that relevant because the main events of the story happen several years earlier (by the way, flashbacks and time jumps do happen quite a bit and might be disorienting at times, but to me that wasn’t a big problem). Remember these gritty and messed up 80s and 90s OVAs by, for example, Yoshiaki Kawajiri? Yeah. Shigurui is precisely the polar opposite of CGDCT – it’s scary men (mostly) doing hacking and slashing (I guess I can name it SMDHaS then), so be warned. If you can’t stomach flying guts and some nudity, you can stop right there. Shigurui is nothing if not suspenseful (and pretty disturbing by the way), but first things first. Their women, slightly trembling, both looked stone-faced. Each of the opponents was determined to end everything here. Everything became still as if before the storm. The cicadas also seemed to had gone silent. How could that be? Isn’t it a disgrace to the Lord? The lord was silent. The public began to stir, seeing that one of the samurai was one-handed and the other was both blind and crippled. The rivals slowly got into their positions, as if judging one another and trying to pick up the slightest hints about their moves. It seemed like the bleaching light was so thick and all-embracing that it was hard to move through the wall of it. On the other side even more silently appeared his opponent, led by a woman. Only the silent crunch of the pebbles was heard as a samurai entered the field.
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Wide opened unblinking eyes were fixated on the beaten field, his thin lips slightly curled into a cruel smile, ripe with anticipation and excitement. The daimyo sat under the shadow but the cruel light encompassed everything. Cicadas were mostly hidden in a few trees but their chirping almost drowned slow and sparse beats of drums. It was near the end of September but the sun still climbed high and showered everything with its inescapable piercing rays.