A milestone has been reached. After 20 months of owning the Zatoichi Criterion Box Set, I've finally seen all 25 movies. This last one was a bit of a downer except for that fucking badass battle scene with all the rice. Slow paced movie. No battles until the final scene. And it ended with the traditional Zatoichi ending: Zatoichi walking away from the village and into the land. So yeah. I was expecting a lot more for the final film in the classic series. After this, they made a Zatoichi TV Series and then one more Zatoichi film decade or two later.
I think out of that box set, I really enjoyed about half of them. The other half were so and so.
For this last one, I've decided to make rice balls (Zatoichi's go to food). Served with Salmon and veggies and a bottle of Sake.
Zatoichi box set now sits proudly in my Japanese section.
