Princess Blade (DVD)

In a post-apocalyptic future, Japan has become a monarchy again and the ruling family regularly calls upon the help of the House of Takemikazuchi, a family of highly-trained assassins, to suppress the activity of the rebel factions. When Princess Yuki, a talented member of the assassin clan, discovers that her own mother was killed by a man high up in the new ruling class, she vows to take her revenge. However, when she is wounded in battle and nursed back to health by the rebel Takashi, she finds herself making an unexpected alliance in order to carry out her plan. Shinsuke Sato's The Princess Blade is, in some respects, a standard Japanese action adventure with a lot of swordplay and repayment of blood debts; but it differs in that it stretches the formula in interesting ways. Its moody angst is turned up to full power and it has a twilit elegiac quality, a sense of the sadness of things, which is at once very Japanese and very stylish. Actors ‏ : ‎ Hideaki Ito, Yumiko Shaku, Shirô Sano, Yoichi Numata, Kyûsaku Shimada