Genre – Film, Japanese Live Action Drama
Total Runtime – 2 Hours 10 Minutes
Spoilers – Yes
A Blind Box DVD from Rightstuf, I know nothing about this work. Except that it’s live action and originated in Japan. The credits are in Japanese, and not subtitled, so… I have no idea what I’m getting into. These credits run over a sequence of bloody artwork in traditional Japanese styling. I mean, pre-war Japanese styling, not modern traditions. The first English to appear gives the title as “Sure Death 4”. I hope I don’t need to have seen parts 1-3. The film is a period piece set during the Tokugowa Shogunate. The exact year is not mentioned, nor is it all that important.
The Narrator
The opening scenes gave me the wrong impression of the piece, as I was asking whether this was somehow a comedy. The run of goofball sequences seemed to support the surmise. The narrator was lamenting the loss of the food in the lunchroom at the Edo police station where he worked while another police officer, outraged at not having gotten a promotion after having bribed the magistrate for one was trying to kill said magistrate. The killer succeeds before accidentally killing himself too while trying to take out the narrator as a witness. For failing to protect the magistrate, the narrator is put on half pay and is the only one punished, despite the station being full at the time. The narration stops at this point, but I’ll still call him the narrator, as I have a darned difficult time remembering Japanese names. I have a hard enough time with English names, and I’m theoretically fluent in that.
The Prettyboy Magistrate
The narrator gets henpecked by his wife and mother in-law for being on half pay, as the new magistrate arrives to take over for the dead one. The new magistrate picks on the narrator, having heard about the official circumstances around his predecessor’s demise. The comedy fades away at this point as the narrator goes to drown his sorrows at a drinking establishment in a slum village. I was unsure if it really was a serious work when the slum village gets harassed by a pack of glam rock samurai. This film was made in 1984, and these shogun’s retainers are so very 80s. After some reckless horse stunts endanger the poverty-stricken slum residents, there is a verbal altercation between an old samurai and the glam rock samurai. One of the horses throws its rider, runs around causing even worse confusion and mayhem, and when things settle down, the old samurai is found with a broken neck. The narrator finds a shuriken in the horse and mystery portion of the plot. No comedy from here on out.
Glam Rock Samurai
The magistrate dismisses the narrator’s report as nonsense, declares the death as an accident and states that no shuriken was turned in as evidence. The other police refuse to contradict the magistrate, despite having handled the weapon. After the narrator and other officers leave, we find the magistrate still has the shuriken, and throws it into the floor in front of his agent, hobo ninja, chastising him for having left it at the scene. Honestly, I don’t know if they ever even said hobo ninja’s name, so he’s keeping that nickname.
Hobo Ninja
Old samurai’s daughter offers what little funds she can scrape together to the local hired killers gang to take out three of the glam rock samurai she blames for her father’s death. Here we find out that the narrator is a member of this group, who are apparently Edo Avengers. Though they are still mercenaries, and most are insulted by the small sum. Only the narrator and toyman opt to take the job. Toyman’s nickname comes from his use of a top as a distraction device, though he does use a sword for actual killing. As Toyman is new, the narrator decides they should work separately.
The Toyman
The glam rock samurai are not exactly difficult to track down, and the narrator finds them in the red light district, where they are having a party. Toyman has also found them there and strikes first. Here we find he uses his foster children as accomplices/apprentices. Toyman decapitates the first of the targets, but leaves the narrator to be chased out of the red light district by the glam rock samurai.
While he moonlights as an avenger, the narrator’s day job is as a detective, and he is suspicious about the disappearing evidence. So he looks into the magistrate, whose mysterious and meteoric rise is notable. He finds that the magistrate started as a male prostitute before his rival for an opening in a kabuki troupe died suspiciously. Then as a member of said troupe, he caught the attention of then-temple magistrate Sakai, who offered him a job as a page. Now, while I can remember that name, it was so long between when he was first mentioned until he appeared in the film, that I kept inadvertently thinking of the Iron Chef of the same name. So Prime Minister Iron Chef couldn’t get the magistrate out of his kabuki contract. Fortuitously, the troupe leader was stabbed by a robber, and prettyboy magistrate was able to take on a new job in the temple, before moving on to the palace, then to his current role.
While it is clear prettyboy magistrate is the bad guy at this point, his exact plan is still unclear. So the narrator visits the temple where prime minister iron chef and prettyboy magistrate used to work. There he finds two sides to the establishment. One where the officials are offering prayers for the shogun’s recovery, and one where the temple serves as a high class brothel for ladies in waiting. We also find out that years ago, the shogun raped a maidservant in the temple, driving her to suicide.
But, toyman has caught up with the glam rock samurai again, only hobo ninja is there, and takes out the target first, stabbing him through the neck with a distinctive knife taken from the slum village. The narrator is once again forced to flee the raging glam rock samurai. Drama happens as toyman had been struck by a poisoned shuriken, but recovers.
Enraged glam rock samurai decide to avenge their two dead comrades against the only people they know to blame – the residents of the slum village. A cavalry assault into a peasant rabble breaks down into a wild melee. For supposedly elite shogunal retainers, the glam rock samurai manage to get all but three of their number killed during their attempted massacre of the peasantry. They do kill off a number of identifiable people from the village, including those you might otherwise expect to be recipients of a happily ever after. Outraged at the actions of the glam rock samurai, the same official who’d chastized the narrator at the start orders the remaining three executed. He also orders the slum cleared and the residents evicted from the area.
Toyman reveals that the contract isn’t complete, as the real killer of the old samurai was hobo ninja, who he’d seen break the old man’s neck. The narrator points out that there has to be someone behind hobo ninja. Toyman agrees before heading off. Hobo ninja returns to the remnants of the village where he faces off against toyman and his foster children in a protracted fight through the ruins. The fight ends with the death of hobo ninja and the mortal wounding of toyman, who survives long enough to finish his character arc with his foster children, then dies.
The narrator tells the rest of the Edo avengers that their mission isn’t over until they deal with the magistrate. They point out that their employer is among the many, many dead and they shouldn’t work for free. In retort, the narrator pays himself to take on the mission and heads off. Grousing about not working for free, the other members of the gang pay each other, taking on the job before arming up.
The magistrate and prime minister iron chef are at the temple with the same large retinue outside as previously. In the inner chambers, prettyboy magistrate reveals that he’s the younger brother of the raped maidservant, and by the way, the wine is poisoned. Naturally, prime minister iron chef assumes the whole scheme has been a plot to get vengeance on the shogun. Prettyboy magistrate reveals that no, he was a card carrying villain, and his sister’s death merely changed his view on killing those who were in his way. Sakai dies as the narrator arrives.
The narrator begins the final battle one on five as prettyboy magistrate’s bodyguards try to kill the narrator. The other Edo avengers start showing up, and one of the bodyguards raises the alarm to prime minister iron chef’s retinue outside. As they rush in, prettyboy magistrate reveals he’s gone completely around the bend, and ends up attacking them too. Battle continues until only the Edo avengers are left standing.
It took me a good deal of putting together context clues to work out some things, others were exposited later on, but a lot of my troubles stemmed from the goofball opening skewing my initial expectations. Being the first non-kaiju live action Japanese film I have watched, I am not sure what is a common element and what might be unique about the work. Taken in isolation, it was engrossing enough that at some point I simply stopped taking notes, I stopped side browsing the internet and just watched the movie. This did result in my screensaver kicking in once because I wasn’t giving input and I told VLC not to suppress it.
A piece of media that holds my undivided attention gets high marks from me. The cheap packaging and scant cover blurb did a disservice to the work. I don’t know if parts 1-3, or 5, or the TV series they are based on are any good, but 4 certainly did its job.
Production Code S01E4
I wonder what percentage of entertainment in ‘civilized’ societies revolves around honor culture fantasies and the violence that comes from that.
As a species we are not civilized.
My honor violence is civilized, the honor killings of other cultures is not.
Given the contrast in tone/mood between the opening scenes and the rest of the film, I expect many a critic would say “it can’t decide what it wants to be.”
It made up its mind after the opener. Research shows that there are historical reasons for goofball elements in this series.
That sounds pretty cool.
Look like somebody either dumped or a “group” did subs.
https://www.opensubtitles.org/en/subtitles/4520991/hissatsu-4-urami-harashimasu-en
You can load srt text files with VLC.
I have subtitles – they just weren’t on the credits.
https://www.wfmz.com/news/area/lehighvalley/lehigh-county/allentown-area/fatal-shooting-in-allentown-following-altercation-between-drivers-on-hamilton-street/article_3833ba81-0425-4ebb-ac50-7571da84a2fd.html
Don’t bring a bat to a gun fight.
Wait, it was the Prius driver who was properly armed?
Ayup.
Bearded Spock universe. The Prius driver should have been swinging a bat for men’s slow pitch soft ball.
Armed?
In all honesty, if I drove a Prius…..
Not a confrontation between protagonist and antagonist, but I’ll see your bat and raise you 1 machete.
Well they’re shooting here in Allentown….
Stop it.
Can’t.
Prius driver was a pretty good shot
Baseball bat guy totes deserved what he got
You thought it was a comedy since everyone was dressed like MXC.
US men vs Mexico in yet another away game for the Americans in Texas.
I’m not the biggest fan of the rah-rah but I was struck by the fact that the Americans as is usual cannot summon the effort to even just mouth the words to their anthem.
The Mexicans of course were universally full-throating it along with about 75% of the stadium.
Nationalism, patriotism, and jingoism only gets people killed. “America” shouldn’t even have a kickball team, or any sportsball team for that matter, means as much to me as it would if it was the sponsored by corporations. Walmart vs Walmex , they can chant advertising slogans during the pre game bullshit.
“Nationalism, patriotism, and jingoism only gets people killed.”
If so, I’d rather it was them than us.
Nationalism, patriotism, and jingoism are all part of human nature. Channelling them into sports is pretty harmless.
Nationalism, patriotism, and jingoism only gets people killed.
Sure. Behaviors and drives that exist in essentially every human society/culture (and to a greater or lesser degree, every individual) ever recorded throughout history are just uniformly negative and provide no evolutionary advantage whatsoever either to individuals or lineages. They just get people killed. Good thing you are here to see through that in the face of the weight of all human history and identify the true nature of those things in the context of human society and interactions.
Or, less sarcastically, that’s a pretty facile dismissal of something that appears nearly universal in humans, humans whose ancestors are, almost by definition, a long long line of the most successful members of the species in an evolutionary sense.
From one who has almost the same reaction as you – the whole rah rah our team, WE did x,y,z bothers me to no end. But not to the point of being able to recognize that it must serve some function and provides some value or would almost certainly not have persisted over evolutionary timescales.
To be fair, we should be ashamed of a country that produced The Hyperbole.
/sarcasm
yo I got yo pickles
You got pickles?
R C – “Us” and “them” loses all meaning at the national scale, I have as much interest in the well being of some Disc golfing stoner in Cali as I do some drunk vato finishing concrete in Miami.
rhy – human nature does not equal moral, and promoting out immoral government and it’s actions through sportsball, while not that big of a deal is certainly not harmless either.
Putrid – fair enough, but just because it once had a use doesn’t mean we shouldn’t question it’s use in our times ( Chesterton’s fence be dammed)
Ted’s – I’m quite possible the best thing sliced bread ask anyone that knows me, I’m universally loved. I’m one hell of a guy
Tres – Thanks but I’m stocked up (they were on sale last week – $3.49 a jar, I damn near cried) but I appreciate the gesture.
Yeah, that is what is going on. 🙄
I finally found Claussen Hearty Garlic Deli Slices at a grocery store in Mansfield, OH. Last week my trip home had me driving down US 30 through the barren, desolate, wastelands of Richland county. While avoiding marauders and searching for guzzoline, I found a Meijer grocery.
I tried to relieve them of their pickle inventory, but it seems some n’er do well had beaten me to it, as there was a sale.
doesn’t mean we shouldn’t question it’s use in our times
Quite true – there are many evolutionary successful strategies that may not scale at all well to modern social systems. But those modern social systems tend to develop a lot more quickly than our evolutionary timescales, so one is going to have to deal with those human traits that are, for all intensive porpoises, fixed on the timescale we’re talking about. As Rhy says, channeling those into sports and the like might actually maintain some of the benefits – community building/bonding – while avoiding the truly destructive behaviors that might otherwise manifest between groups. So coming off as holier than thou/better than the troglodytes (believe me, I know from personal experience, the little frisson of self-satisfaction that comes with the sense of superiority) might not really be the best approach.
I attempt to cook with UCS, a dramatic reenactment:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBQAwLuuDo0
Hopefully he has seen this classic Japanese film:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJ1TOratCTo
Neither of them appear to be wearing cooking gloves.
OK, I laughed.
Also, such gloves are *worse* at preventing food borne illness. It’s COVID mask security theater writ large.
What matters is cooking certain foods enough and washing your hands. Take it from me- I spent 2+ years eating African street food. Only got sick from eating a papaya I couldn’t refrigerate.
People just leave them on too long rather than using them at the appropriate times.
I saw a guy this morning walking down a street in Ohio masked up and wearing disposable latex gloves.
That was a broken mind.
Darn it.
I think I hurt my ribs laughing.
Maybe someone like that should wear leper’s bells to announce their coming among us “germy” folks?
Hand washing doesn’t work. The continued existence of diseases proves its ineffective. QED.
The most famous act of honor violence in Japanese history:
***
The story tells of a group of samurai after their daimyō (feudal lord) Asano Naganori was compelled to perform seppuku (ritual suicide) for assaulting a powerful court official (kōke) named Kira Yoshinaka, after the court official insulted him. After waiting and planning for a year, the rōnin avenged their master’s honour by killing Kira. Anticipating the authorities’ intolerance of the vendetta’s completion, they were prepared to face execution as a consequence. However, due to considerable public support in their favor, the authorities compromised by ordering the rōnin to commit seppuku as an honourable death for the crime of murder. This true story was popular in Japanese culture as emblematic of loyalty, sacrifice, persistence, and honour (qualities samurai follow called bushidō) that people should display in their daily lives.
***
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forty-seven_r%C5%8Dnin
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtok_fCpauU
That’s a different movie.
Life of a mediocre samurai:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQY3dbUsVgE
alcohol, violence, poverty, homelessness…been there, done that…
Yeah, not a plan for greatness.
Music
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nW3OrLHj0lQ&list=RDnW3OrLHj0lQ&start_radio=1
Nice!
Very nice.
Girlfriend did not like it. Too much whoo-whoo on the guitar.
I don’t think she understands…
Huh… seems that “SyFy” has been removed from my cable plan.
OTOH I have no idea when this happened because the channel has sucked for years. OTOH fuck Spectrum up the ass. Tired of these games.
Sadly, Spectrum is my only option for Internet. I don’t give them money for any of their other “Services” which I realized I never used, but can’t give up my information superhighway.
How about Elon? His service is not terribly fast, but it might be an option.
Not terribly fast would cause withdrawl symptoms on par with disconnection.
Most of SyFy programming is split between the streaming channels Comet and The Asylum. Comet is not only streaming, it is over the air in some places.
I have Comet on cable.
I’m seriously on the path to dump cable tv next year. Amazon and Pluto has tons of streaming sci-fi stuff.
Movie suggestion for RJ – Rawhead Rex
This is the only Irish horror movie I know of. I watched it at a bar in Chicago after being bribed with a cold can of PBR.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rawhead_Rex_(film)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06YwV1KRQWk
The PBR was good. I bought a burger and fries to go with it. That’s how they get you…
I probably read the short story because I have read most of his stuff but I have no memory of this one.
Ah yes! Maybe after Summer of Strange wraps up.
Also I found a horrible Godfrey Ho directed anime I have to inflict in everyone.
Sleep is for the weak!
Sleep helps me stop being weak.
Good Night, RJ.
Good night sir! See you tomorrow.
Get up and get busy! Glibmania 2025!
😈🥑☕️
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ds_43MdYiuQ
🎶🎶
You’re right, Avocado are the devil.
Good morning, Sean, U, and Ted’S.!
Morning, How goes?
So far, so good. My boss gets back from his vacation today, so I guess I really need to finish writing up the Board meeting minutes from last month. My oldest sister’s birthday was yesterday, so I’m going down to her house (south of town) after work to deliver her gift – a plant I actually managed not to kill/let die in the two weeks since I bought it.
How are you?
I’m not sure.
I want a do-over where I go back to bed and try starting the day over. It’s just too late.
The Pepper plant is… budding agressively. I wonder what color the flowers are going to be.
😃👍🌼
https://www.fox29.com/news/district-council-33-create-strike-fund-seeking-food-water-donations
Donations?!? I wouldn’t piss on those fuckers if they were on fire.
Who are these people? I’m feeling too lazy to follow links right now.
Philly .gov workers
Yeah, No.
They can get a real job.
Note – I would love for my policies to be implemented, this fake job of mine to go away and real jobs return to where I am.
That’s going to require a lot of good commies.
That’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make.
Yeah, I’m not “donating” to government-sector workers.
Hmmmm…. Donate to disgruntled pubsec union members who’ve closed down a city pool and halted trash pickup during a heat wave? Or donate to TX flash flood relief? Gee, that’s a tough call! 🤔🙄
Yeah, the choice between rescuing little girls and paying leeches not to work is a tough call.
-In a bombshell FBI memo leaked to Axios and published Sunday night, officials said they’ve reviewed more than 300 gigabytes of Epstein evidence—and haven’t found any vast human trafficking or sexual blackmail operation.
https://www.axios.com/2025/07/07/jeffrey-epstein-suicide-client-list-trump-administration
Epstein killed himself, no more prosecutions, no blackmail ring…
Bull. Fucking. Shit.
I don’t believe them.
I wouldn’t even believe them if they released all the “evidence” now given the amount of time they had to scrub it.
And the evidence won’t be released either because CP so you’ll just have to trust us bro. A truly pathetic coverup that makes me wonder if Trump really is on the “list.”
I think both outcomes were equally improbable and impossible to the human brain at the same time.
Like UFOs, the camps are now divided into their hardened belief structures.
Schrödingers Pimp ?
What was Ghilaine (sp?) Maxwell convicted of?
Trafficking minors to nobody.
The charges and conviction against her were solely her acting as a pimp just for Epstiens sick perverted wanting if young girls, no one else.
If I remember correctly.
suh’ fam
whats goody
TALL WFH CANS! (after 5 pm of course)
You’re fixing the poop stack on the double-wide?
3 full days of safety training. 8 hours per day.
Kill me now.
That doesn’t sound very safe.
I have heard from a reliable source that the links will appear a bit late this morning.
Just one more nail in coffin of the Epstein saga it seems. I mean, why else would the links be late!
I want to joke about anonymous sources… but all my phrasing came out wrong.
That source does seem reliable.
Anyone think that Diddy was a fed? Why is it Jame Comey’s nepo shyster who keeps trying these caes?
While we wait…
Get sprayed by a giant penis in NYC
https://www.breitbart.com/local/2025/07/06/phallic-new-york-sculpture-astounds-offends-and-sprays-observers/
No.
Spent the night in Virginia Beach and about to go out to Busch Gardens with bro, SiL, 12, 10 and 4yo. Never been to an amusement park with the boys before, with expectations of a highly entertaining day.
Away we go! Hope y’all had a fun weekend. My first kinda official vacation in, uh, several years, certainly.