Sword for Truth Anime Review

Quick Review

• Reviewer: Marc
• Review Date: 2003-08-03 (updated 2012-07-21)
• 0 stars out of 5 (?)

Sword for Truth is bad. If you want a breakdown, here: The art is ugly, the plot is mostly random, it's totally inconclusive but there's no sequel, and the whole mess is almost completely devoid of originality. The closest things it has to saving graces are heaps of poorly drawn gore and pointless sex. Yes, that's the good stuff.

Perhaps there are those who will enjoy parts of it, but unless you're a very big fan of ninja mayhem it's almost certainly in the must-avoid category.

Read the full-length review...

Full Review

• Reviewer: Marc
• Review Date: 2003-08-03 (updated 2012-07-21)
• 0 stars out of 5 (?)

Sword for Truth bills itself as the best ninja action since Ninja Scroll. The only way that could be true would be if it was the only ninja action movie since Ninja Scroll--which it isn't--and despite logic dictating otherwise, even that would be a questionable claim because of the implication that anything about this mess is worth watching.

In reality, Sword for Truth actually predates Ninja Scroll by several years, but while it has all the same basic elements as that "classic," it's at absolute best a miserably forgettable ninja hack-and-slash flick. Less charitably, I'd call it boring, ugly garbage.

Sword for Truth is so bad I can't even bring myself to spend much time insulting it. Here's your short-form laundry list: The animation is generally weak, the art is downright bad (the main character is particularly ugly), the plot is mostly random, and the whole mess is almost completely devoid of originality. As if all that weren't bad enough by itself, the story is full of loose ends and blatantly set up for sequels, but this is all you get. So, if it wasn't bad enough alone, it has no conclusion, either.

The characters consist of a wandering block of wood that passes for a hero, a generic princess, a big group of female ninjas who seem to be really good at getting cut to pieces, and a tragic assassin, who would probably be interesting if the series ever continued. Don't even ask about personality or character development--the only thing that could make me like the cast more is if they'd die faster to get it over with more quickly.

The only memorable features are the large volume of completely pointless sex and the extremely large number of severed body parts. Even splatterfest fans shouldn't get their hopes up, though; the violence has a surprising lack of blood, and doesn't feature any of the gory artistic detail that might've sparked some interest--just a lot of limb removal.

Actually, that's not true--the other memorable feature is that it had famed director Osamu Dezaki at the helm. Mainly that's memorable because of how terrible of a job an otherwise talented guy did with it; everybody has an off day, I suppose, and there wasn't much to work with, but you won't see this one bullet-pointed on his resume unless it's to point out the rare botch.

Overall, Sword for Truth is uniformly awful, both artistically and in plot. Unless you can't get enough of both violence and ninjas, it's definitely in the must-avoid category.

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Related Recommendations

Ninja Scroll is very similar, and much, much better. Those glutton for punishment might be interested in such anti-gems as Cybernetics Guardian and MD Geist.