Search - Samurai Gun - Lethal Influence (Vol.3) on DVD

TRAINED TO KILL

Sesho | Pasadena, TX USA | 08/03/2006

(4 out of 5 stars)

"In Samurai Gun Volume 3, Ichimatsu's missions are more oriented to those he likes, if you could say he likes ANY missions. But at least in these three episodes his prime objective is not killing, which he detests. Actually, he doesn't really detest killing. He likes it. You see, we begin to find out this volume that Ichimatsu and the other Samurai Guns were trained as agents from childhood under grueling conditions in which life was cheap. He's been trained to kill, and in the heat of battle, his rational mind loses out to his conditioning. He hates himself for not being able to control his own body and urges. In Episode 8 Ichimatsu and his fellow Gun, Sutekichi, must transport some important blueprints across a bridge held by hostile forces. In the next episode, the Guns are sent to obtain the secrets of a clan that makes itself rich from predicting crop yields, oblivious to the fact that this clan itself has kidnapped "Osei the Predictor" whose oracles are even more accurate than the clan's itself. Lastly, Ichimatsu is sent to the village where the Guns obtain most of their weapon techology to save it's knowledge from being sold to the Shogunate after a fierce gang war amongst the villagers.



I enjoyed this volume of Samurai Gun because it revealed more of Ichimatsu's motivations and his past. We knew that his family and his sister was killed in front of him when he was a kid and that he wants revenge. But in these episodes, he finally gets the name of the suspect and learns that he's almost impossible to get to. Only by continuing the fight against the Shogunate will he be able to draw him out into the open. I've become even more of a fan of the show's look, which crosses film noir with Italian Westerns. The bad guys could use a little work in terms of depth, but I think that is turning its own corner. Good show."