Anime Review: Kaze No Yojimbo

Review Kaze No YojimboWritten by WarpshadowRating good

One thing that a good mystery needs is a few hidden pieces but too many and the show stalls until the writers give out some more information.

At first glance the town of Kimujuku looks like a normal out of the way place trying to recover from the closing of the local coal mine. A closer look will show that it is a town with a lot of secrets and a simmering cold war between the Ginzami and Tanakura syndicates. Enter George Kodama, a drifter looking for a train conductor named Genzo Araki. He doesn’t get the answers that he is looking for and so he decides to stick around. As the local bosses find out that he is a strong fighter who might be useful to their plans.

Kaze no Yojimbo is billed as a remake of a movie by Akira Kurosawa although there are significant differences in the setting (19th vs. 20th century) and that of making a movie into a 26 tv series. There is a good deal of dark secrets to make the show interesting but those take a few volumes to really make the show move. Until then the show moves about rather poorly as the cast keeps I’t cards too closely to their chests so to speak, to make the characters feel anything more than wooden. This is a show that requires patience of the viewer, perhaps more than most people have.