It seems that recently my ISP has taken a sudden dislike in me because they decided to be all slow and buggy and i am at the point where i can no longer stream my anime updates but i must download (via torrent or whatnot), sigh i need to remember to go to the main office and go all “Gear Second” on them (once piece fans know what im talking about ><. Well for now i’m taking this opportunity to watch various anime movies 😎 .  Ah yes, so a few days ago I had the pleasure of watching the anime ‘Sword of the Stranger‘ and what a show that was, being a single standalone movie (as in no, there isn’t a series) i honestly didn’t expect that much from it (as they tend to often lack character development and seem rushed) but i was never happier to be wrong. In fact i can that was the best full length anime movie ive seen since Princess Mononoke.

Okay, so when i initially pressed that Play Button the first thing i noticed was that the animation quality was remarkable, i actually stopped watching and looked up the year it was created, 2007 Awesome! It itself being one of the best years for anime (at least in my opinion ; You can check the full list of 2007 Anime here), a side note though, i will admit when the action gets fast paced.. As in very fast paced i noted a slight but noticable distortion (not sure if it was just my copy or it was the video itself).

During the first few minutes i was thinking, hm, is this gonna be afro samarai all over again? Due to the fact that we started with a similiar ambush scene and where one skilled samurai eliminates them all. And by eliminate I mean he completely and utterly decissimated every one of them. Me being a huge fan of samurai anime was almost instanteously hooked, i mean those guys were at the pinnacle of ‘badassness’, the blood and gore was a bit much at times but i loved every ticking second and every single limb that was decapitated.

Unfortunately that samurai was NOT the centre of the show, in fact he was not even the best fighter in the team he was part of. When I realized that i said yeaaa.. This is gonna be gooood. But the scene ended and there was the main character, this helpless little boy, sigh,  who apparantly was foretold in legend to be born every 100 years whose blood could turn the drinker immortal. Now the king of the neighbouring country (the Ming) decided to claim immortality for himself and sent his ‘elites’ (who i refer to as the badass fighters) to capture and extract the blood from the boy.

The boy in turn after escaping from his persuers at the temple where he stayed he went on his way heading to another temple in the west. During his journey he met a young man who agreed to accompany him to the temple, this person although his appearance said otherwise turned out to be one of thhe best swordmen in the region who previously was somewhat of a mercenary, but after a scarring event during his last war he resolved to quit and sealed his sword.

Upon arriving at the temple with the boy, it turnes out that monks really don’t have balls after all (you need to give it a watch to understand) and the boy was captured. Then of course finally came the rescue scene, well it was actually pretty much a huge fight scene but God did i enjoy it, i actually replayed certain scenes in there over and over again just because of its sheer awesomeness.

Ah yes, the ending… That ending… Was perfect, as stephen was saying in his post that some anime just stop and not have a real ending; this was definitely not one of those. Even if the movie itself sucked (which it didnt) i wouldve added +7 to my rating just because of the end.

so overall ill give it a 8.4 (waitt… 8.6-7 is 1.6.. So did the movie suck? Before u even ask.. Lets leave my horrible math alone 🙂 and just accept the awesomely high score

Animation : 9
Storyline : 7.5
Characters : 8
Music : … Honestly i cant remember.. But i know i didnt think it sucked so will give the benefit of the doubt andd 8!

Definitely a must watch, heres my advice (preferably in this order) Get it, Love it.. Buy it!

Ps. As to what i mean by ‘get it’… >.< the world may never know.