Country: Japan (1974)
Director: Kazuo Mori, Shintaro Katsu
Starring: Shintaro Katsu

Review by: Charlie Prince
Rating: 3 out of 4 Stars

Honestly, I never thought it would be released in any legitimate format. The Zatoichi “the blind swordsman” television series had joined an elite list of drool-at-the-thought-of-a-release titles, up there with the lost Turkish “Kilink” films (one of which did actually, well, partially, come out this past year), and the lost John Ford westerns. Not all of the episodes were lost, of course, and intensely over-priced vhs copies of some of the early episodes (never getting beyond the first 40) would occasionally surface on ebay. I heard a rumor that the later episodes had once been legitimately aired on Hawaiian tv, and that terrible dubs of dubs of dubs existed among fans. But even after a hefty survey of every grey market source known –and after chasing down every single link in a Google search for “Zatoichi TV” — I had come to the conclusion that at least 25% of the episodes, including the all-important 100th episode of the television series (I won’t spoil it for you, but rumor has it’s a special episode) were just lost to us for good. And the other 75 or so episodes were doomed to crummy vcd or worse dubs. I figured even if they still existed, who would ever release these episodes? How big a market could there be — after all, how many of us have seen all 26 of the theatrical releases, such that we were starved for more and wanted to see all 100 hours of the TV series?

Well, apparently I underestimated Zatoichi fandom! To my utter amazement, Tokyo Shock/Media Blasters has begun the process of releasing the episodes on dvd with the currently available “Volume 1.” Now, admittedly, it is a bit disappointing that “Volume 1″ only had five episodes. Though, strangely enough, most of the references to the release online say there are only four episodes — I can only guess that is because they see the 250 minute runtime as four 60 minute episodes, but that’s not right, there are five 50 minute episodes. Again online retailers claim that Volume 2, which came out last week, will only have four episodes, and though my copy has yet to arrive, I’d lay odds that that will be five episodes as well. Luckily, it seems Tokyo Shock is intent on pumping these out pretty quick (Volume 3 is scheduled for a March 14 release). But still, there are 90+ episodes to go, and at this rate it’ll be a while before we get to the episodes that were previously unavailable, and even longer until everything is released (but I’m not complaining because, like I said before, I’m amazed and delighted that they’re being released at all).

Now if you haven’t heard of Zatoichi — well, first I envy you, because you have some wonderful films ahead of you. The Zatoichi series began in 1962 (in black and white) and was so popular that it spawned 25 sequels and a 100 episode television series — all starring Shintaro Katsu as the lovable “Zatoichi” — a blind master swordsman (and master gambler) who travels as a humble masseuse, but is often drawn into local conflicts with local samurai/yakuza hoods to help whoever they happen to be oppressing. The films are substantially similar, sure, and once you’ve seen a few they start to blend together the same way that the Shaw Brothers movies do, but the central character is so much fun you find yourself hoping that the series will never end. Shintaro Katsu was a dominating force across the Japanese film industry, and has many, many great films to his credit, but it is his Zatoichi character that he is best known for. In the last couple years, all of the Zatoichi films have been released except the 14th film (Miramax owns the region 1 dvd rights to that film and has no known plans to release it), and they can often be seen showing on the Independent Film Channel. There was also an American remake starring Rutger Hauer (”Blind Fury“) which was not so great (though not awful) and recently a far superior remake by Takeshi Kitano, where Kitano himself stars as Zatoichi. But until Media Blasters announced their new dvd plans, the 100 hour-long episodes had yet to surface. If you like samurai movies at all, I strongly recommend that you check out at least a couple episodes in the series.

Now, once the dvds were announced, several questions came to mind. First, what would the quality be like? The vhs and vcd copies that had surfaced over time suggested that the prints had not fared well. Luckily, the results are pretty good. These have not been digitally remastered at Criterion Collection levels for sure, but the image quality is good, and you forget the blemishes immediately. There are a few spots where the speckling of blotches on the image is distracting, notably including the opening of the first episode, but the majority of each episode is not noticeably more worn than most theatrical releases from that time period in Japan. There is a message that flashed as the Media Blasters dvd started, warning that the source materials were worn, and essentially that they’d done their best — usually a sure-fire sign that what’s coming will look awful, but the warning is unnecessary for the most part.

But the biggest question, of course, for anyone who had seen and loved the theatrical releases, was would the TV series be a letdown in quality and production values after seeing so many theatrical releases? After all, not many films make the jump successfully to TV. To that I have a definitive, fantastic answer — there is NO noticeable difference in production value. These tv episodes are essentially just shorter movies, and they’re just as great as the films. Honestly, if you were to watch a scene from a tv episode and a scene from a film and were asked to distinguish the two, you’d be hard-pressed. I remember a while back when I was watching the last Zatoichi entry, and how it was a little bit sad to think there would be no more Ichi-san. But now I’m faced with the opposite prospect — there are 95 more hour-long episodes to see, all chock-full of Zatoichi!

Going into this review, I wasn’t sure I would be able to, in good faith, recommend that hardly anyone see this TV series. After all, could the TV series be prioritized over the films? And not many people have seen all the films, so it would stand to reason that not many people would be interested in the TV series. But now I’ve got an answer to that — the tv series offers more bang for your buck. You want a taste of Zatoichi? You can get 90 minutes of Zatoichi for $18 bucks or so, or 250 minutes of equally good Zatoichi for $27. As a starter kit, the TV series may actually be the most efficient option. Secretly, of course, I’m petrified that the series won’t sell, and that Media Blasters would fall short of releasing all 100 episodes — a terrible thought. But let’s cross our fingers and hope — the TV series is an important and enjoyable piece of film history, and we should all think good thoughts about Media Blasters for bringing it to dvd.

::: Buy Season 1
::: Buy Season 2
::: Pre-order Season 3

For an excellent guide to the Zatoichi series as a whole, check out this breakdown at The Digital Bits (here).

::: Discuss this with others in the Movie Lounge Forum

Copyright Charlie Prince 2005.