[Anime Classics]

Release Info

Released in 1985. Produced by Kadokawa Shoten, Madhouse, Project Team Argos, and Toei Animation. Animation by Madhouse.

Plot Summary

A young boy named Jiro finds his mother and sister murdered in his home. Falsely accused of the crime, he flees from his village and meets a priest named Tenkai, who has him kill a rogue ninja named Tarouza. After fulfilling that task, Jiro undergoes training to become a master assassin. Many years later, Jiro finds out that he was an orphan and his real father was Tarouza, who had worked for Tenkai until he aborted his mission when he fell in love with an Ainu woman. The young ninja discovers that the Shogunate was to retrieve the lost treasure of Captain Kidd and use it to once again isolate Japan from the rest of the world. Using the clues that Tarouza had kept secret, Jiro - along with the female ninja Oyuki and a slave named Sam - travels to Russia and America to search for the treasure in hopes of using it to extract revenge from Tenkai.

My Thoughts

At 2 hours and 12 minutes, Dagger of Kamui is the longest movie featured on this site. In the North American dub, this movie was also known as Revenge of the Ninja Warrior. The story is like Game of Thrones - lots of characters die. It's dark and gory, as a movie about ninjas should be. For a 1985 movie, the battles are pretty awesome. It wouldn't surprise me if Ninja Scroll was inspired by this movie.

I would recommend Dagger of Kamui to you if you enjoy 80s anime. It spends a great deal of time focusing on building the story and developing the characters. If you don't have an appreciation for 80s anime, then you would find it boring.

Buy From Amazon

You can buy this movie from Amazon. It goes for around $15-25 (US).

Download

The Dagger of Kamui can be watched or downloaded from Archive.org (Internet Archive), or downloaded via torrents from Nyaa. These sites are the best, safest, and most dependable resources to get anime for free.

Watch on Archive.org

Notes

• To cast the videos to your TV using AirPlay or Chromecast, press the button. This button becomes available when you start playing the video.
• The playable video is English dubbed. If you want the subtitled version, click “SHOW ALL” to find the “MKV” video file for download - as shown here. Then, with VLC Media Player you can select the Japanese language and English subtitles.
• Archive.org tends to be slow. Downloading The Dagger of Kamui from Nyaa is better. Additionally, Nyaa most likley offers a higher quality video, or even a Blu-ray quality video.

Download from Nyaa

Notes

• If you don't know what torrents are, YouTube has tutorials. Be mindful that torrent downloads aren't instant. Depending on your Internet speed and number of seeds, it could take up to 24 hours for an anime to download.
• If you need a torrent client, these are the best (they're all free).
• The majority of video downloads from Nyaa are in “MKV” format, and less commonly in “AVI”. If you need a good video player to play these formats, VLC Media Player is the best (and it's free). It's available on every OS, including iOS and Android.

Is the MKV too big?

If you download a large Blu-ray quality MKV from Nyaa, it is possible that your computer or phone/tablet isn't fast enough to play it at full speed. In this case, you can use HandBrake. It's a free video converter; use it to shrink down the video. If you need help using HandBrake, YouTube has tutorials. Another option is to use Plex (mentioned below) because it automatically downsamples large videos when it streams them to your TV.

Playing on your TV

The easiest way to play MKV and AVI videos on your TV is with Plex. It streams movies from your computer to your TV through your Wi-Fi. It's a free app. Install it on your Windows or Mac, then install it on your set-top box (Apple TV, Roku, Fire sticks, etc.). Just note that Plex will only detect these movies in an Other Videos library because the “Movies” library doesn't detect rare/obscure anime classics. If you need help, YouTube has tutorials.