Azumi
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| Azumi | |
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| Directed by | Ryuhei Kitamura |
| Produced by | Mataichiro Yamamoto |
| Written by | Yu Koyama, Isao Kiriyama |
| Starring | Aya Ueto, Shun Oguri, Hiroki Narimiya, Kenji Kohashi |
| Distributed by | Bogeydom Licensing |
| Running time | 142 min. |
| Language | Japanese |
| All Movie Guide profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
Azumi (あずみ) is a manga (Japanese comic) series created by Yu Koyama. It concerns the title character, a young woman brought up as part of a team of assassins, charged with killing three warlords that threaten Feudal Japan with an agenda of war and bloodshed.
Azumi was adapted into a popular and extremely violent action film by Ryuhei Kitamura in 2003. A sequel, Azumi 2: Death or Love, directed by Shusuke Kaneko, followed in 2005.
Since the movie was produced by Mataichiro Yamamoto, the movie will soon be distributed to the US by his company, Urban Vision Entertainment, on their label AsiaVision. The film is scheduled to a limited nationwide theatrical release beginning in July 2006 with a DVD to follow on November 21, 2006. Azumi has been broadcast on television in the UK, on the Film4 channel.
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[edit] Azumi
After the Battle of Sekigahara, a samurai is tasked by the Ieyasu shogunate to raise a band of assassins to finish off Toyotomi's allies and other ambitious warlords, to prevent another civil war.
Azumi, played by Aya Ueto, is discovered as a 7-8 year old girl weeping next to the body of her dead mother by the samurai master Gessai, played by Yoshio Harada, and his entourage of young students. Azumi is raised in the martial skills of samurai and shinobi sword fighting, and the art of assassination. Azumi and her fellow classmates, now at young adult age, are constantly being told about a "mission" they must accomplish, though they have no idea what this mission is yet.
Prior to setting out on their mission, their master orders his students to "pair up" with each others' best friend and proceed to kill each other, thus out of 10 students only five will remain to proceed with the mission. Questions and internal conflicts begin to arise amongst Azumi and her comrades as it seems their mission even prevents them from saving a village of mostly women and children from being masacred at the hands of a group of bandits, as their primary mission is to kill the warlords Asano Nagamasa, Masayuki Sanada and Kiyomasa Kato. Aside from the warlords, Azumi must also deal with a narcissistic mercenary, "swordsman in white", whose sword has no handguards as he claims to never have had to defend against attacks.
[edit] Azumi 2: Death or Love
Immediately after the final events of the first film, Azumi and her remaining friend are stalked by the men of a warlord she recently assassinated. Upon escaping, they are out-numbered and "out-gunned" and must join forces with a local resistance and a group of ragtag freedom fighters in order to kill the remaining warlord and bring peace to Japan. To make things even more complicated for Azumi, she must also confront her emotions in regards to a fighter who bares a scary resemblance to her deceased schoolmate and friend Nachi.
[edit] Azumi (manga)
Azumi is set in an age of turmoil, where groups of girls are raised as assassins by a group called The Fathers. These assassins are the secret weapon that The Fathers must use in this lawless time. The story concerns the group but is mainly focused on one of these female assassins, Azumi.
