Sword of the Stranger and 2D Power

Producer Masahiko Minami and director Masahiro Ando of studio Bones created Sword of the Stranger as a desire to show the strengths of hand drawn animation in an action film. This is a particularly interesting goal to put forth considering hand drawn animation shrinks in relevance every year. Advances in technology have rapidly eaten up one of the strengths that traditional 2D animation had over “live action” — the ability to create its own seamless reality. This desire to show-off traditional power also sounds like a shout for relevance within the entertainment industry, what with the most talented young blood flocking to video games instead of sweating away at a traditional animation studio. Even for those new talents for who the money is a secondary motivator, the toys they could play with in the video game industry while being a creator must be a massive tractor beam ripping talent away from traditional animation.

Perhaps I’m leading myself down the wrong path thinking about the things said in the staff commentary, but the impetus of creating Sword of the Stranger maybe feels a little like some animators flexing their muscles to show animation still lives. Motivation can be a great thing. It’s not that 2D animation will be going away anytime soon, but traditional animation is like the people standing on a platform waving goodbye. They’ll continue to do their thing, but are clearly left behind. A lot of this is me reading in between the lines of how they described their thoughts on creating Sword of the Stranger, and how Ando in particular seemed occupied with the purpose and place of hand drawn 2D animation.

So why did I start with my train of thought on the staff commentary before talking about the movie itself? I think Minami’s and Ando’s desire to create a definitive sword fighting movie with animation shines throughout the entire work.

The fighting sequences in Sword of the Stranger are glorious. Nothing gets in their way. Ando’s dedication to the combat scenes attempts to pair everything else down to best serve the joy of watching a sword fight movie. Where some action movies stumble is to include unnecessary things that clutter a simple story with a bunch of junk. Ando shows remarkable focus for a first time director in not letting elements that do not fit bloat the straightforward film he was making. What characterization gets shown serves to put the actions of the characters into motion. It’s a story of men who speak through acts and he lets their actions speak for and describe themselves. There’s nothing to belabor or inner conflict to experience. A breath speaks. A familiar backstory tells (a kid is being hunted and a lone swordsman helps him). It’s like the best tricks of every sword movie and buddy action flick you think you’ve seen carefully arranged in a row. What results is extremely fun to watch. Well worth the view for action fans. Fans who don’t particularly care for sword fights or action flicks, but enjoy anything that is “well done” may enjoy Sword of the Stranger in spite of that action-eww bias.

Release Notes

-This is a Bandai Entertainment release. I’m happy to finally have an anime Blu-Ray release that is freaking worth getting it on Blu-Ray. It looks really good, though that just might be the hallellujah! finally! a good looking anime Blu-Ray talking. The 5.1 Dolby Digital mix was fun with a lively, but not distracting sound mix.

-The staff interview extra was an intersting thing to watch. I often find staff interviews worthwhile, though sometimes they can be over-long, which is not the case here. The extra was edited pretty well, cutting out some of the meandering that can happen in some of the barely edited interviews we often get as an extra. Minami (producer), Ando (director), Kazu Wakabayashi (sound director), and Naoki Sato (music) sounded like they actually had something to say about the project beyond the things they’re supposed to say about their collaborators and could vocalize it in front of a camera. Very little of the deer in the headlights staff interviews can often produce. I think all four said something interesting about the process of the Stranger project.

-There is also an interview with the Japanese actors. Don’t know how good/bad the one here is since I skipped it. I tend to skip actor interviews, since most of them know less about the show than the viewer. At the time of interview, they may not have seen the finished product.

-Ocean has done a great job with this and the last anime feature they’ve gotten to dub (The Girl Who Leapt Through Time), at least from the perspective of the voices and the acting. I can’t make any judgments on translation. In seeing clips during the staff interview, it took me a while to notice just how familiar the tone of Stranger in Japanese sounded to me after having seen the movie in English. It took me a few clips to realize that I actually hadn’t heard this yet in Japanese, so familiar the tone.