| Average |
8.5 |
| Animation |
9 |
| Sound |
7 |
| Story |
8 |
| Character |
8 |
| Value |
9 |
| Enjoyment |
10 |
| Stranger is a martial arts tale of self sacrificing heroism. This premise is far from original, as are the characters. It is nonetheless solid, and combined with all the dramatic brutality one could ask for from Samurai action, the complete package is a joy to watch.
A wandering nameless warrior of exceptional skill stumbles upon a child pursued by a foreign expedition. The nameless warrior reluctantly protects the child as we learn more about the expedition and the main characters. The premise can easily be lost in a sea of ronin/samurai stories, but it shapes into a story that is more complex than expected from its setup. The Chinese expedition chasing the child gets tangled up in the local politics of feudal Japan and events spiral from there.
While the politics of China and feudal Japan are thrown in to complicate the story a little, Stranger is still an action movie at heart, and the storytelling is fittingly straightforward. There isn't any avant garde futzing with chronology or anything equally confusing. It's just good old fashioned plot development. The same can be said about the characters. The nonchalant ronin and the petulant child eventually bond, and develop just as you would expect them to.
The emphasis of these characters is self sacrificing virtue. Going against the world if need be, to save an innocent child. To highlight this, the film not only shows such heroism, but points out with most of the supporting cast that most will not have the courage to uphold those virtues under extreme pressures. The simplicity of the main characters doesn't hamper their intended purpose. The admiration they inspire is like the admiration a child may hold for the hero of a bedtime story. It's simple, but compelling.
The music is primarily the orchestral stuff typical of epics. The drum beats and the flute solos, along with a theme probably inspired by western Chinese or middle eastern music give the soundtrack its distinctive Asian flavor. The music is never jarringly misused. It melds nicely with the setting and the scenes. The weirdest bit about the sound is the Chinese. Half of the Chinese expedition speaks perfect Chinese, while the other half speak it so poorly that it sounds like some other language entirely. These characters aren't supposed to know Japanese (this is shown several times in the film) but many dialogues they have are done in Japanese. I would understand if all of it was Japanese, and they leave it to the viewer to imagine that the language the characters are actually speaking is Chinese the way most Anime and video games would do. As it is, it's almost random what they decide to use Chinese for and what they "dub" (essentially), into Japanese.
To be fair, as a feature film, Stranger does not look spectacular. Most of the mundane animations, the backgrounds, and the characters look no better than a TV series. The action scenes though, are very much above par. The choreography is not only fast paced, but exceptionally elaborate and well thought out. Some of the acrobatics make the scenes a tiny bit more flowery than what is ideal, but all the visceral brutality of Samurai action is in full force.
Stranger isn't out of this world in any way, but its briskly paced story, compelling heroism and gorgeous action scenes make for a great Samurai Anime flick.
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