Chiasmus cult cinema trailers - "Blade of the Immortal" (2017). *These will be ongoing posts, courtesy of the A.Glass DVD collection. As I offer via Chiasmus Cult trailers, my summarized overviews*

Would an immortal eventually become tired of life?   "Blade of the Immortal" (2017) based off the 1993, 2013 Manga comic book of the same name, and directed by controversial Japanese film director Takashi Miike who has over 100 movies credited to his name, but also proven, despite the controversy of some of his movies, to be one the most adaptive of Japanese film directors to date.  Able to shift from extreme violence, gore and sexual mayhem to children friendly productions over his Thirty year tenure within Japan's expansive movie industry.

And Blade of the Immortal is very much aligned with Miike's bloodsoaked gorefest of tons of severed limbs and bloody samurai battles, as the movie centres around Manji a wandering Samurai, played by Japanese 1990s teen icon and pop singer Takuya Kimura, who appears far removed from his 'boy band' days as that makeup wearing heartthrob, although the actor was well into his Forties when the production for Blade of the Immortal began in 2015.  Portrays the worntorn "Manji" with gusto, displaying his 'before immortal' battle scars and therafetafter weariness as the ageless immortal, and Kimura ups the charismatic ante in his portrayal of the disinterested, cynical and scarred Samurai.  As he chops through a many villians, while sustaining a plethora of wounds, healing each time (thanks to a witch, an aftermath of the 1st major battle scene, gives a near dying Manji "blood worms" for immortality), after being hired by a young girl, "Rin Asano" on a revenge mission, played by Hana Sugisaki, whose mother and father were killed by a ruthless Samurai group known as the "ttō-ryū".

Miike's Blade of the Immortal, does offer that mixture of Japanese quirkiness, its reworking of history and timelines, with questions about life, death and our desire for immortality, that may indeed be overblown.  All wrapped up in 140 minutes of some of the most epic, bloody and brutal Samurai fight sequences this side of the infamous, "Lone Wolf and Cub" movies of the early 1970s.

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(A.Glass 2025)

All CHIAMUS Cult Cinema trailers/commentary to date: chiasmusmagazine.blogspot.com/search/label/Chiasmus%20cult%20cinema