Samurai, The (Onmitsu Kenshi)-Volume 7 (1962)

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General		Extras
Category	Martial Arts	None
Rating
Year Of Production	1962
Running Time	70:10 (Case: 66)
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Sadao Funatoko
Studio Distributor	Senkosha Productions Shock Entertainment	Starring	Koiichi Ose Toshiyuki Katsuki Fuyukichi Maki Bin Amatsu Ken Mishima Tamotsu Ohtake Ryuji Ishikawa Jun Haichi Tadashi Tanemura
Case	PUSH-26
RPI	$24.95	Music	Hirooki Ogawa

    This is the seventh volume of The Samurai, but it's really the third volume of the second storyline. The first four volumes made up a completely different storyline. You'll find my review of The Samurai Volume 5 discusses the second storyline — please refer there for the background to the story

    The three episodes on this disc are:

7. The Face Stealer (23:48) - Mission Impossible's peeling off of fake faces was stolen from this episode (honest!).
8. The Mysterious Pilgrims (23:40) - is the lord one of the disguised pilgrims? Or is he still in the litter?
9. Hide and Seek Death (23:42) - Lord Saranobu is safe because he is close to his enemy's own castle...or is he?

    Attrition is really wearing down both Genkaru's Koga ninja, and the Ega ninja led by Tombei The Mist. At the end of Episode 9 they both decide they need reinforcements, and so must visit Ninja Country. Cue the next disc!

Video

    This series is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1. It is not 16x9 enhanced.

    The image is fairly soft, but it still looks sharper than the first four volumes. There's some grain, but that's a minor issue. Shadow detail is poor. There is no low-level noise.

    This is black-and-white, displaying quite a decent range of tones from true black through to a solid white. They manage quite a reasonable tonal balance, even with occasional variations in brightness.

    We have film artefacts to sell wholesale! Pretty much every conceivable film artefact can be seen here, with every frame affected. Even so, the picture is not that hard on the eyes, because the vast majority of the film artefacts are small.

    This disc, like all discs in the second storyline, shows some nasty film artefacts one frame adjacent to many of the film splices — I've discussed these in more detail in my review of Volume 5.

    There is no significant aliasing or moire, and no shimmer, except on the menu, and no MPEG artefacts on this disc.

    There are no subtitles.

    The disc is single-sided and single layered. There is no layer change to worry about, and no problem, given the limited amount included on this disc.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    The soundtrack is provided in English Dolby Digital 2.0 mono. The soundtrack contains crackle and hiss, but it's not too bad.

    The dialogue is clear enough, and fairly easy to understand. It's a horrible dub, by normal standards, but the show would be wrong without it.

    The music is written by Hirooki Ogawa — it is an interesting combination of instruments, with quite a bit of percussion of various kinds.

    This soundtrack uses your centre channel speaker, but nothing else.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

    Emptiness, a lack of fulfilment...there are no extras.

Menu

    The menu is static and silent, listing the episodes, and allowing selection and playing of one at a time. The background to this menu is blue.

    This disc is not available in Region 1.

    A second season of a classic TV serial, presented in poor condition on DVD.

    The video quality is quite poor, but we wouldn't recognise it otherwise.

    The audio quality is poor, but adequate.

    There are no extras.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall