Blind Woman's Curse

Blind Woman's Curse

Trigger Warning: Sexual Assault

Also, some bloody photographs, which were too hilarious to exclude. But they are hidden.

"Japanese blind swordswoman revenge" is apparently a genre. I define "genre" as "at least two movies".


This movie is kosher

Well, this gets straight to the point. Two sides are swordfighting with gratuitious slow-mo.

Thank you, Tachibana Akemi. Now I don't have to call you "the woman" for half the review. She also says she has come to claim the life of the other side's leader.

The men all take their shirts off. I have a feeling that this will be less plot-heavy than Crimson Bat.

Is this a battle or a piñata party?

Someone yells as her to not kill her brother. Instead, Akemi slashes her sword at the girl's eyes, blinding her. A cat licks at her wound.(?) Then the cat leaps at Tachibana Akemi.

She wakes up. Going for the "it was all a dream" ending at the beginning?

Tachibana is not in a battle, that just a nightmare. She is in a much worse nightmare: a low-budget episode of Orange is the New Black,

More like Orange is the New Black Cat

She tells them that she is cursed by a cat that licked at a dead man's face.

Tachibana Akemi has a dragon head tattoo. She starts talking about how she is second in line for the Tachibana blood line.

Three Years Later?

A gang comes through town and pops balloons.  Oh, and they also assault people. Someone tells them that the Tachibana will never let them get away.  A fight breaks out.

Good. then I'll have something to write about.


The gang leader yells to pull back. Then he releases two balloons.

They float, Georgie. Is that reference too lazy.

I got to say I love how easy this movie is to write about.  People just spout exposition. The "good guys" say they are no match against Aozora's gang.

I hope there is a blind woman as promised because this movie is pretty bad.

Another man comes in and asks to sleep with a woman .

The girls agree to train together under Ane-san. Their backs all have tattoos that form a dragon when they stand together in a certain order. Why is this gang's method of identification so blatant?

Chie-chann is the head of the gang and gives advice. Her advice is to wait. okay.

Chie-chann goes to pull a blanket over one of the men who helped in the fight. She offers a reward, but he is offended.

Sexual assauk  is comedy. right/

There is a song telling me how to feel. Laziness in creating mood: now 46 years before Me Before You.

Ane-san invites the man who helped back to eat dinner. He says the meal is great, and Ane-san's father says he is a decent man. This movie has a strange sense of morality. "Yeah, you were part of a gang that terrorized villages, but you like my cooking."

His name is Tani-san, and he is an orphan because of course he is. Two people from the evil gang take care of two moles because they have the dragon tattoo. So the people with the dragon tattoos are working for the Tachibana? Seems a very poor choice of people to send as moles.

The Aozora(evil) clan send back the coffins with the moles. Ane-san says she is the most upset because she vowed that she would die with them. This movie's dialogue is so awful:

I miss the subtlety of Crimson Bat.

A deranged person comes into the Tachibana's meeting place. His name is Koji. he has blood all over his face. He crashes through the window and blinds himself.

Then she sees the black cat.

This is the first movie I've watched for this blog where I thought "What am I doing with my life?"


The Aozora vow to stop the Tachibana family. Suddenly, the title character comes in and and says "I wonder whether it will be that easy"

They ask "Who the hell are you?" I would be more concerned with how she got in. You know, considering the whole "gang war" going on.

She says she has come to help their boss, Dobashi. She had to "quiet" his subordinates.

One of the members of the Aozoras family swings his fist at her. She ducks, and he hits another man instead. If you want people to take this seriously, you should elevate your fight scenes above The Three Stooges.

We cut to to someone summarizing the plot:

\

The bad guy with the glasses assaults Chie-Chan. She leads him to the back room where another member of the family attacks him.


Carnival because why not? There is a freak show. Someone is exhibiting human limbs in a basket. This movie escalated quickly.

The Blind Woman is a knife-thrower at the carnival. I'm all for inclusiveness in sports, but there is a limit.

She asks for a volunteer and one of the gang members with a dragon tattto goes up. She removes her jacket to reveal the tattoo. I would question the logic of revealing that you have the mark of a gang in front of a group of spectators at a carnival, but I question the logic of volunteering to be the target of a blind knife-thrower more.

She misses each time by less than an inch. Not sure if it was skill or blind luck.

A hunchback is under the same affliction as the deranged person earlier. We hear a meow.

There are things i can get through life without seeing. This is an example:

Four people walk outside. A man tries to urinate, but the black cat jumps down. He looks up and sees a corpse hanging. It's Noboku, the woman who volunteered. Four people walked outside, waited twenty-nine seconds, and it took a cat jumping down for them to notice a hanging corpse To be fair, three of them were drunk,

On the body is a note threatening to kill everyone with the dragon tattoo. This is the first and probably last time in my life I regret not having read The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. Because I can't make a reference.

Someone tears off the note and reveals her back is bloody and there is no dragon tattoo.

Akemi "confesses" that she has had a recurring dream of a black cat. she says that someone cursed her and everyone else with a dragon tattoo. Don't get tattoos, kids. Or else you might get cursed by a black cat and die.

The Tachibana find the skin of the woman with the dragon tattoo.

Hey, a relatable character

One of the Tachibana goes to a graveyard and finds the black cat. Then he follows it to the carnival. The carnival is right next to the graveyard? Is that for convenience or for marketing?

He walks around the carnival and finds some heads.

This guy is alive. He's alive. He's alive, You don't have to keep the suspense up. We saw him a few scenes ago.

Oh look, he's alive.

The Tachibana man finds the skin with the dragon tattoo and the deranged man attacks him. Luckily, the titular blind woman shows up. She uses her stick to break up the fight.

The blind woman starts stroking the cat and asks "Why did you do this?" I thought she was asking the cat at first, but the deranged man answers. He says he thought she would like it, but she says she doesn't want any help. You know, it is really inspirational when movies depict people with disabilities rejecting the help of other and doing things like assassinating key members of a gang who have a specific marking, skinning the backs of them, and putting the skins up as warning signs all by themselves. Independence is important.

I agree that there is a problem with people registering pets as service animals under "emotional support animals". It's a shame  because there are legitimate roles for emotional support animals. But, I believe that there a far more pressing concerns with service animal law loopholes. Where is this woman's documentation for the cat, and what purpose does that cat serve? Is "infecting people of a rival gang to attack people so that I can skin the tattoos of specific people in said gang off and send them as warning signals" a legitimate function of a service animal? Remember, this was released in 1970 in Japan.

Akemi find another corpse of a woman who had a dragon tattoo. At least The Crimson Bat had some plot twists, instead of "I'm going to kill all these people with the dragon tattoo." The note says "I will claim the dragon head soon." I hate it when movies spoil themselves.

At a market, there is tension between Akemi and an Aozora woman. We learn this from subtle dialogue,

The Aozora woman slips illegal drugs into the Tachibana clan's market and then calls headquarters, who alerts the police. The police come and arrest them.

At the Tachibana headquarters, Akemi wants to leave because she brings bad luck.

I would classify a rival gang planting drugs as "Intentional Sabatoge", not "Bad Luck", but whatever. One of the members wishes her good fortune, which is pretty inconsiderate given the situaton.

The Aozora ride in a van and brag about how the Tachibana have no hope. Thanks for the exposition. The guy from the beginning at the carnival confronts them, saying that they are using his name  under false pretenses to get back at the Tachibana. I missed that, but I don't really care about the plot right now. There is a fight, and the blind woman offers to join forces. They accept

The Aozora gang enter a bar at the market. The bartender (Chei-chan's father) ignores them, and that offends the leader, Tatsu. They threaten to force him out of business

Chei-chans' father says he knew Tatsu used to be in the Tachibana clan before he went off.


I didn't realize the first time I watched this that Tatsu was in the early scene with the Tachibana. So there was a betrayal at some point, I just missed it. The plot is really confusing.

A fight ensues. Tani-san (from the beginning fo the movie) now works at this bar and joins the fight.

Okay, if you want me to take your movie seriously, don't choreograph your fights like this:

Chei-chan comes and declares that she figured out who slipped the drugs into the Tachibana's merchant's bags. Chei-chan and Tani-san find the culprit and accost her. Tani-san asks whether she works for Dobashi. She says "Why bother asking if you know the answer?" That seems good enough for a confession.

As they go away, a flying knife hits her. This is why you don't hire blind knife-throwers,

Two Aozora police officers confront Chei-chan and take her away. Tatsu goes to her father and tells him that they took his daughter and he should come with them. He agrees and gets ambushed. Effective plan.

The father calls Tatsu  a bastard. Tatsu calls the father a bastard for humiliating him in public. Fair is fair.

The hunchback from before comes in to lick up the blood. Interesting.

This is supposed to be a torture scene, but I can''t take it seriously because she is half-laughing, half-crying

This had better be better than the Crimson Bat gambling scene, Spoiler: it isn't.

Tani-san accuses them of cheating. Then a fight breaks out.

The blind swordswoman comes out and fights Dobashi's soldiers. Because she doesn't like foul play.

Tani-san walks through a cell of half-naked slave women. He says this:

Thank you for point out that the villain is the villain. I couldn't have connected "half-naked women right outside the crime boss's lair" with "sex trafficking"  without that piece of dialogue.

So this fight should be pretty great, right? It's the head of the Aozora gang  against the guy who infiltrated the headquarters. Actually, it's all over in seven seconds and we see the fight through the bars.

Tani-san asks for a confession. Dobashi says he wanted to let the Aozora and the Tachibana fight each other and get them both killed, but the Tachibana didn't want to fight.

I would think that the crime boss would be better guarded.

Aozora gang members come in and capture Tani-san. Unfortunate.

Now  a torture scene. Lovely. the Aozora dunk Tani-san and Chei-chan in water alternatively.

Chei-chan's father enters the headquarters, and the men exclaim he is a ghost.  The father/ghost chops off someone head. Then the deranged man appears. What is this movie?

Dobashi decides that ghosts chopping off heads and deranged men appearing in the gang's headquarters aren't urgent matters and prepares to rape Chei-chan instead. He goes to rape her, but turns over the blind woman instead. Then they go back to the torture well and find the torturer in the well and a note "I took the girl."

The gang members chase after the deranged man, who is named Tsuyoshi

A woman brings back an unconscious Chei-chan from Dobashi's headquarters.

They also bring back the dead father. Who is not a ghost.

Tsyuoshi jumps around Dobashi's headquarters and gets stabbed.

Turns out the blind woman is a traitor to Dobachi. So she gets trapped

The blind woman stabs some soldier through the bars and causes them to fall into the water (?). Tatsu pulls a lever and the floor drops out, causing the blind woman fall and become entangled in a net.

This seems like a good plan, except one problem.

Seriously, don't trap swordswomen in nets.

The Tachibana hold a service for Chie-chan's father. they call for Ane-san to let them lead a charge against the Aozora. but Ane-san says no, she has to do it alone. Something, something, heroine's journey, dramatic conclusion, whatever. Ten more minutes.

The Tachibana give Ane-san a weapon. Then they pour her some tea and the music tells me this should be dramatic.

What makes it more dramatic? How about a song that comes out of nowhere with the Tachibana marching like this?

I can't take this seriously.

Remember the whole "I have to do this by myself?" thing? Well, forget that, because all the Tachibana go to battle. Also, the Aozora headquarters must be pretty well-guarded, right? I mean, Dobashi was in the dungeon when they weren't expecting an attack. The Tachibana just rescued two prisoners and killed off some of the Aozora men.

I must not be good with gang warfare strategy, because the Aozora are all casually on the top floor of their headquarters. We don't even see the break-in, it just cuts to the battle.


Ane-san challenges Dobashi to a one-on-one, but that doesn't really pan out as both gangs battle. And some of the shots are hilarious. Here are my three favorites: (2 and 1 are bloody)

3.

     

The face of battle

2.

That moment your glasses fall off before being decapitated

1.

The more important you are to the plot, the more blood you spill

I gave up on this movie a long time ago. But if I hadn't, this "final battle" would push me over the edge.


The blind woman comes out and says this:

What a coincidence. I've been waiting the entire movie as well. Which feels endless.

They decide to to move to a more cinematic location for the final showdown.

What a beautiful fake background

The blind woman tells Ane-san that she has been stalking her since she was blinded by her five years ago. She took up training to avenge her blindness.


Less than four minutes to go.

The showdown consists of them swinging their swords at each other while post-production "swish" sound effects tell you that they have missed. Finally, they lock blades

The blind woman listens to to her sword (?) and it drips water into a bucket.

 With three minutes remaining, you might have realized something. Remember the black cat? That was an important plot point that never went anywhere. Well, the cat jumps out at Ane-san out of nowhere and she slashes it in half. Plot point resolved.

Unfortunately, this causes Ane-san to stumble and the blind woman thrust her sword at her back. Ane-san surrenders and tells the blind woman to avenge her brother. But the  blind woman says she can't kill someone with a beautiful heart.

Well, the audience wasted an hour and a half of their lives on a meaningless movie.

The blind woman walks away. Movie over.

If you want to sample the vast genre of Japanese blind swordfighting female revenge films, watch Crimson Bat, the Blind Swordwoman. here's why:

Crimson Bat's script is like if someone took a stack of unrelated scripts, cut out the melodramatic subplots from each, and pasted them together.

Blind Woman's Curse's script is like if someone took a stack of unrelated scripts, put them through a paper shredder, picked up a handful of pieces, and pasted them back together in a random order.

Then they set the script on fire and ad-libbed everything.

The Undateables Season 1 Episode 3.

So, two bad episodes. Doesn't mean anything. I have confidence that this show can be good once it works out the rough patches.

I haven't mentioned this before, but the intro changes each time, showing random clips from the previous episode and the current episode.


The frst person is Sam, who is 27 and has Down Syndrome. He has never been on a date or kissed a girl.

He draws his ideal girlfriend

She seems really sketchy

His dad, Malcolm, teaches him to play saxophone. His mom died and now his dad has to teach him the "complex world of boy-meets-girl" Given that Sam is on a show called The Undateables, and Malcolm has also agreed to be on camera, I don't think he is doing a great job.

Sam has two friends. Andrew and Paul, who both have learning disabilities. We see their totally spontaneous and not scripted conversation,

Sam says girls only want one thing- sex. Andrew or Paul (don't know who is who yet) agree and say "and money." (See Fig. 1)

Fig 1

We are less than five minutes into this episode of Undateables, so it's time to change characters. Who is the target audience?

Hayden was born with Crouzon syndrome, which is a disfigurement of the skull. He has a twin brother, Ashley, without Crouzon Syndrome. Ashley has had lots of girlfriends.

I would love to see the behind-the-scenes of selecting applications for The Undateables.

Sam goes to Stars in the Sky, the learning disability dating service. Stars in the Sky differentiates itself from other dating sites in an...interesting way. It doesn't use photographs of clients. Lesson: Different doesn't always mean good.

I'm not in favor of objectification, but physical appearance is kind of important in dating. That may be shallow, but it is also the truth.

At the interviewing process, the agency asks about his interests. Instead of letting Sam say it, the narrator tells us that Sam is an actor who has appeared on television. Don't tell us that your reality show subject is an actor- it's self-evident.

20 year old Kali has only had one boyfriend- and that only lasted two months. But in teenage dating time, two months is like 61 days.

Kali has William's Syndrome, a genetic condition that gives her a distinct appearance and a learning disability. I have to give  The Undateables credit for teaching me about different disabilities.

Back to Hayden. I wonder how long these episodes would be if you cut out every time they remind you of the person's situation . A woman from Searchmate comes to help him. She says if women "get over his condition and see him as a person," he would make someone very happy. Yikes.

Sam has a blind date tomorrow, so he asks his father for some advice. I have some advice for The Undateables: These "spontaneous conversations" don't work when you have cameras shooting all around them. If you must have them, maybe just have one person shooting with a hand-held camera. Then I could at least pretend to suspend my disbelief

Hayden has never had a girlfriend, but his twin brother, Ashley, has had plenty. Thanks for the reminder. Ashley tells him that girls just care about what you look like inside. I thought girls just cared about sex? Or was it money? The Undateables has really inconsistent misogyny. How am I supposed to internalize this sexism if it can't keep the sexism consistent within one episode?

Carly is getting ready for a party, and hopes to catch the attention of a suitor. Given that a dating show is filming her, I think she will.

She meets someone named Jimmy. The narrator said that despite the height difference, Carly thinks they are a great match. For a show about how physical differences doesn't stop people from finding love, The Undateables sure likes to  point how physical differences can stop people from finding love.

Sam gets ready for his blind date. At the London Zoo. Which leads to the funniest line in the show so far:

All he's been told is to meet her by the penguins.

I hope sometime in a future episode, one of the subjects will be blind and they make a "blind blind date" joke. Maybe I should apply to be a writer on this show.

His date is Jolene, who also has a learning disability. She has a chaperone. Ugh. Luckily, the chaperone leaves.

Jolene doesn't get a text introduction,

The narrator tells us that learning how to make a girl laugh is a sure-fire to find love. Don't tell us how to find love, you are narrating The Undateables.

Hayden goes on a date with Charlotte on a fairground. The last time this happened, they got tarot cards read.

Hayden's condition makes him partially deaf. could have told us earlier. This leads to an awkward scene.

At the zoo, Sam forgot to bring money, so Jolene has to pay. The narrator tells us that Sam "might have to work on his gentlemanly conduct."

This is known as pay-triarchal norms.

They go on a carousel. Sam is going to commit a burglary to pay for their unborn child, then die and have to redeem himself in purgatory, right?

The narrator says Sam's lack of experience shows because he let Jolene leave without asking if he can see her again. Forgot to put that in the script?

Hayden and Charlotte are at quiet pub. Charlotte says "he's different and unique, and I think that's what makes him so nice." That's a useful heuristic. "Different and unique" means "nice".

Sam decides to call Jolene for another date. The next day. She acts surprised when she learns who called. This doesn't work with a reality TV show.

Sam wants to text Jolene asking whether they are lovers. His father tells him to text her about what type of food she wants. He says he "doesn't like the word 'sex'".

I watched an 11-minute episode of Care Bears and didn't cringe once. The sex line made me cringe. I'm regretting my promise to complete the series.

Carly is meeting Jimmy for lunch. Lydia is chaperoning. The chaperone is the creepiest thing about this show for me, which is strange because obviously they have an entire crew there.

They tell each other what their interests are. Are all dating shows this boring?

Sam waits for Jolene at a cafe. The narrator says that, if he goes through with it, it will be the first time he has asked someone to be his girlfriend.

Jimmy wants to move things "to the next level." So they walk up the stairs to the second floor of the restaurant.

(They don't actually do that)

They hug and Carly leaves

The narrator tells us that Sam is about to ask Jolene to be his girlfriend. Way to spoil it. They look in a window

Is the Where's Wally? brand struggling so much that they need product placement on The Undateables?

Sam asks Jolene if she would like to be his girlfriend. She says "No, I haven't found Wally yet."

She actually says "yes." What reality does this take place in? So Sam has a happy ending.

Hayden has decided not to see Charlotte again. So Hayden has a happy ending

Kali has decided not to see Jimmy again. So Kali has a happy ending.

The end

This episode was bad. But I think I've identified a fundamental, structural problem with the show. The show is called The Undateables, but all the people go on dates. So they aren't undateable. The entire show is built on a false premise.


Let's look at the tally.

Three bad episodes in a row is kind of discouraging, but sometimes great shows have clumps of bad episodes. Looking forward to the next episode.

Crimson Bat- Blind Swordswoman

I have a really bad feeling about this movie. I think I am going to regret it later. Imagine this:

Interviewer: How do you challenge yourself intellectually outside of school or work?

Me: I analyze and write about how media portrays the social model of disability across different cultures.

Interviewer: That's great! Can you give me an example?

Me: Well, there's a 1969 Japanese samurai revenge film called 'Crimson Bat- Blind Swordswoman'...


It starts with a girl running through a rainstorm and yelling for her mother not to leave her there. Already this movie is promising- the picture quality is awful and the dialogue is hilariously overwritten.

Mother: Please forgive me, my darling. I wish we could take you with us. Please forgive me for abandoning you I don't know whether I am doing the right thing or not. But I love him and I can't give him up. Please forgive us.

This is going to be fun.

There is a fire and a tree falls on her. If a tree falls in a movie and nobody has seen it, does it make a sound?

The answer is yes, a very poorly edited sound.

The girl wakes up and there are POV shots of total darkness alternating with shots of her face. This is a good, clever way to show blindness. It means that we don't need a clumsy narration or cue card to tell us she is blind.

The movie does it anyway.

For the first  2 minutes, I had no idea what language the subtitles were in. I had to Google a section and found out it was Dutch. So this Japanese movie is dubbed in English with Dutch subtitles. Okay.


After the credits, a gang chases after a man. He brilliantly escapes using the clever trick of ducking into the weeds, waiting for the gang to pass, and then running the opposite way. It's so sophisticated, it could be in Looney Toons or something.

The gang finds him. He didn't anticipate the gang turning around.

He also didn't anticipate the titular swordswoman to conviently be in that specific place. I kind of thought we would see her training to swordfight after she was blinded. But what do I know? Maybe the crippled masters would have been better if they just cut out the training scenes and made them kung-fu masters off-screen.

The swordswoman immediately takes the side of the man. The gang tells the swordswoman that the police are looking for the man. The swordswoman reacts rationally and fights them all.

The blood effects are hilarious. Each time she hits one of them, the movie cuts to red paint splashing on a blank canvas.

This is called "cutting-edge" modern art.

The swordswoman kills the gang. Then she asks whether the gang was telling the tuth that the man has a bounty on him.

She just killed an entire group of people who were trying to capture someone for whom the police are looking. And she did initiate the violence. It's a good thing that the man isn't a legitimate criminal.

Two people come and see the carnage. Turns out one of the men isn't dead. He has to stay alive long enough explain the plot to the new woman. She vows to get the reward before the blind woman. MOTIVE ESTABLISHED.

The blind woman and the old man are at a house, and she insists he takes a bath. She playfully tugs at his sleeve and tears it, revealing a tattoo. He angrily accuses her of seeing the tattoo, but she reminds him that she is blind. Awkward.


The blind woman asks how old the man is. The man says "Let me 'see'..about 53,"

Nice passive-agressive use of the word "see".

She tells the old man and the audience that her grandfather had raised her. Flashback to her and her grandfather talking about a newly-wed couple and how she won't get married. Gang member are waiting at the house, You can tell the main one is the villain because he is wearing an imposing hat.

Also, his name is Devil Denzo, Kind of a give-away,

The main character's name is Oichi. Thanks for telling us.

Exposition time- her grandfather says that Oichi's mother is running a brothel up north to Takasaki because a traveller told them two days ago. Also she had run away with a gambler at the beginning.

The gang members tell the grandfather that he "knows too much" and has to die. I'm glad they aren't using cliché motivations.

After a brief fight scene, the grandfather dies and Oichi finds his body.

End flashback.

Oichi says that he wasn't her grandfather. Okay. His name was Osake.

The gang members come in as the old man escapes to Takasaki

Takasaki is the home of the gang. It turns out that the tattoo of the old man is actually a sign of the gang. The person who saw the dead bodies tells the rest of them that the blind woman killed everyone.

Oichi goes by boat to visit Osake's grave. She spouts some more hilariously overwritten dialogue.

"There's no one to take care of me now? I only wish to god they had killed me as well.  What have I got to live for?"

The gang appears. This is known as "on-demand service". How many years after Osake died and the gang just hangs around his grave waiting for his goddaughter?  Oichi accuses them of murdering her grandfather. Danzo does the rational thing and decides to kill her.

Now it's time for another intense fight scene where she kills everyone easily, right? The plot says no, because we are only 22 minutes into a revenge film. She just flails around wildly and falls. one of the gang members goes to kill her, but a man randomly comes out of the weeds to tackle him. What is it with this movie and people hiding in convienent places?

The savior folds his arms and says he doesn't like what the gang is doing. he calls them cowards for trying to kill a blind girl.

See, this is ableist. Why should gang members not kill someone because she is blind?

The new man kills all three of the gang members but can't kill Danzo because it is only 24 minutes into a revenge film.

The next part is dumb. The new man decides to teach her how to fight. But she already fought well when she rescued the criminal. So she just forgot? Why?

Oh well, training time. with poetic snow? I love how seriously this takes itself. The man throws some sticks at her and she slashes them

He says he will throw the next one silently, but there is still a sound. Is it too much effort to NOT put in a post-production sound effect? Or did they forget to read the script?

It would be awesome to see the training she does over the next few months. The movie doesn't do that. It just has a voice-over telling us that she made a lot of progress in the next few months. The next scene shows her successfully  deflecting the attacks.

Lesson; Hard work pays off, but jump cuts pay off more..

 The next scene is in an inn, The man says he has nothing left to teach her. Then he gives Oichi a sheathed sword. But he says that she is just to use it as a walking stick and never to draw it.  That's telling Pandora to use the box as a stepping-stool.

The teacher tells Oichi that she should settle down and get married, facetiously saying even he would marry her. Oichi takes this as serious and runs off to get him some wine. The man decides to take off without saying goodbye. Usually alcohol takes longer to destroy marriages.

A drunk man tries to assault Oichi. Oichi draws the sword/stick and kills him. Is it a chekov's gun if it "fires" in very next scene? Then she goes back to the inn and finds her prospective husband has left.  A maid comes in and says she is surprised that Oichi is still there. They exchange some more hilariously over-written dialogue:

"He isn't a bad man, he's the nicest man I've ever met. And stop saying I'm blind. It doesn't make any difference.  Or isn't a blind woman supposed to fall in love?"

Have I mentioned that I love this movie?

Cut to a woman with a pink bow in her hair she just accepted a man's (clearly pre-pubescent) daughter to work at her brothel in order pay off his debt. This movie could take lessons on creating subtle villains from Care Bears.

I think it is Oichi's mother, because she runs the brother

Suddenly the beggar  from the beginning of the movie appears and talks to the little girl, named Oyoni. He asks her for some water and cries about her predicament. The next day, the villains come to collect Oyoni. We are halfway through this revenge movie, by the way. Kind of late to set up the act to be avenged.

The begger runs after the gang members carrying her away and asks oyoni where she thinks she is being taken. The gang beats him up. not sure what his strategy was, but it wasn't that well-thought out.

They bring Oyoni back to the brothel and the plot gets...confusing. It's like all the plotlines converge at the brothel. This is probably me being racist, but I honestly am having trouble identifying characters.

1. Oyoni comes back

2. The female and male villaind from the beginning run the brothel. They talk about the beggar with the tattoo.

3. the samarai (teacher) comes and drinks some wine.

The begger and Oichi talk on a hill. Oichi asks why the beggar is so upset about this one girl. The beggar says she is his daughter and that twenty years ago, he ran away from the police and hid her for safety. Oichi says that, if she was in his shoes, she wouldn't want to see her daughter in case she was ashamed.

You know, when I picked up the DVD case of a movie called Crimson Bat, Blind Swordswoman, I was not expecting an intricate plot with so many characters with backstories.

The movie reminds us that the villians are evil. They are gambling. After chasing a beggar for a reward (who we know is not a criminal now), and running a brothel that accepts underage daughters as debt payments, shooting dice doesn't really make them more unsavory.

One man tells another that the main villain woman is desirable because she is a good gambler. What is with this movie and promoting alcohol and gambling as positive relationship values?

Oichi enters the brothel.

Q: Why is Oichi a great gambler?

A: She never rolls snake-eyes.

Is a joke that the gang does not make. The bartender asks where Oichi is going, because she is blind. Oichi asks "Aren't blind people are allowed in?"

The female villain says she has something to settle with Oichi. Remember her motive? "I will not let that blind bitch get a hold of that reward." I can apply a lot of adjectives to this movie, but "predictable" is not one of them. For some reason, I thought the confrontation in this revenge film about a swordswoman would be a lot more Hamlet and a lot less Guys and Dolls.

I mean, she wouldn't know if the dice were spotless.

Surprisingly suspenseful music plays as they gamble. By far more intense than any of the fight scenes. we are about 2/3s through the movie, So hopefully the climax will be an actual swordfight and not something like roulette.

The male villain enters and the samurai recognizes him. he asks to play with Oichi alone because she is doing too well. Oichi asks to see the dice box. this is the plot of the Twilight Zone episode "The Prime Mover", except Oichi isn't telekinetic. The female villain tosses her the dice box and Oichi throws her sword at it, pinning it to the ceiling. Then she throws a ring up, which lands around the sword and causes the box to fall. As it falls. she slashes it open to reveal two hidden dice.

Why was the most impressive swordplay saved for looking inside a dice box?

She accuses them of cheating and cashes in. The gang learns it's lesson about cheating and let her go.

not really, they chase after her. The female villain finds her first because it would be less dramatic if a random gang member found her.

The confrontation is honestly...really underwhelming compared to the gambling scene. The villain waves her flail around and doesn't try to attack Oichi until after she trips. The flail hits a tree and they run away.

The samurai comes to see Oichi. Oichi says she has changed in the past half-hour of film. The samurai asks whether she has found her mother, and Oichi says she doesn't want to meet her because she is evil. Now we need a new plot for the final half-hour, right?

In the next scene, the beggar sneaks into the brothel to rescue Oyoni. He just scampers across the top of the building and gets in through a floorboard. okay. because he is wearing a black hood, he is unrecognizable. That's how it works.

The beggar grabs one of the prostitutes and asks where Oyani is, claiming she is his daughter. The prostitute says "In the back somewhere." The beggar climbs up the wall with some sort of hooks attached to his hands because it looks cooler than going through the door. He finds Oyoni and goes after her, but a dart hits him. Honestly, what did you expect?  It's Danzo, the head gang member from the flashback near the beginning of the movie.

Uncle Noheart was more subtle.

Okay, the plot comes together. Denzo is the Leader of the gang. He killed Yosake because he knew about Danzo's "Early days." That's the same reason he sent the gang to kill the beggar at the beginning of the movie.

Denzo says he had to kill Oyoni after trying to assault her. That...escalated. Denzo kills the begaar. That escalated.

The gang walks down the hallway and trip a blind man yelling for a massage. Comic relief?

Oichi meets her mother- the woman with the pink bow who runs the brothel. This movie is confusing. I thought it would just be mindless swordfighting. Oichi says she has brought something that may interest the head of the brothel. It's her stack of gold that she won from gambling. She asks to buy back Oyoni with 70 gold pieces. But her mother says that 20 gold pieces is a poor profit she might be able to get 100-200 in the future. oichi asks for 2 or 3 days to raise the money.

When Oichi's mother asks why she is so invested in Oyoni, Oichi tells the story of the beggar who hid his daughter and then learned she was to be sold to a brothel. her mother starts crying, and Oichi says it was almost her story, because her mother left her when she was young.

Her mother says she will think about it. Her mother asks for her name and what villiage she is from, and of course they are related.

But they don't tell each other that. Instead, her mother asks how she became blind and Oichi tells her about the tree that fell on her. Right before they confess to each other...someone comes in yelling about two dead bodies. priorities.

Oichi and her mother run and to the warehouse. her mother tells Oichi that it is Oyoni and the beggar, Oichi says "Well, at least you had a few moments of happiness"

Oichi asks who killed Oyoni. she spouts some vague attempts at philosophy to make this movie seem good. She asks why people have to do bad things to each other. . Why don't they see things the way they could be? Well, because some are blind.

Also, she does a tirade against her mother being a prostitute

Oichi threatens her mother unless she talks. Masagalo and her mother worked together. Who is Masagalo? Oichi raises her sword and...the samurai comes in to reveal some plot information.

He knows who killed Oyoni and the beggar, and it is the same person who killed her godfather and tried to kill Oyoni. The samurai reveals that it is...Devil Denzo.

Um, we already knew that?

Alright, more reveals. 20 years ago there were three criminals: Denzo, Yasoke, and Nahi. Nahi was the beggar. Yasoke was Oyoni's godfather. All three had playing card tattoos.  Devil denzo turned the other two in for a reward.
Nahi went to prison, but Yasoke escaped and raised Oichi. Denzo had already killed Yasoke in the flashback, and he killed Nahi in the past scene.

Not going to lie, I didn't see this coming. And it makes sense. And it was satisfying. Why does a movie called Crimson Bat- the Blind Swordswoman have a good plot?

The samurai says he had arranged to meet denzo that night, but that oichi can take his place. Her mother tries to go after her, but the samurai stops her and says she is lucky her daughter didn't kill her. Damn.

The gang members decide to go and kill Oichi samarai goes up and kills most of them. Denzo runs to kill Oichi, but she deflects the attack and they have a showdown.

Eh, not as good as if they were gambling


We only have four minutes left

They do that thing where they run at each other and it is obvious one of them got pierced through the stomach, but you don't know which one unless you look at the title of the movie.

Blood drips onto the ground. Oichi does some swordfighting and she throws Denzo onto a tree.

\

The samarui narrates that Oichi left the village with her sword, cane, and a lot of lonliness. When she left, her sightless eyes were filled with tears. The end.

I enjoyed this movie. It took itself seriously enough for me to be invested, but not so seriously that it was ridiculous. the plot and writing was composed of almost entirely cliches, but they were cliches that worked. Not sure why she is a crimson bat, however.