The art is lovely, and some of the CG effects (particularly slow pans through a heavily wooded forest) are effective, but only for the viewer who is willing to practically stop-frame the motion to study its subtlety. A blurb says, “From the creators of Blood: The Last Vampire,” but any viewers expecting a dynamic, suspenseful horror fantasy like that featurette will be severely disappointed.

The story may make sense to the average Japanese who is knowledgeable about late 9th century history, but there is little background information; and what there is confuses more than it explains. (The character called Masakado cannot, of course, be the Masakado because he had been dead for a century by then. This raises the question of whether this Masakado is a descendant, an imposter posing as his descendant or reincarnation, or — since this tale is a fantasy — a genuine reincarnation. Fine; but who was Masakado?) The protagonist is a young noblewoman named Kintoki who escapes assassination by her uncle in a family coup, and is taken to the royal court by her supporters who call her the Kai Doh Maru. The term is never translated.

Since Kintoki is the only heir to her faction of the nobility, she is raised as a boy. After five years in the capital, she is 17 and has attached herself to four handsome knights of the royal guard; a situation roughly equivalent to D’Artagnan joining the Three Musketeers. Although she considers herself just one of the boys, and the personal protégé of Lord Raiko, their leader, it is obvious to the four that her feminine emotions are emerging even if she does not realize it yet; and they (especially Lord Raiko) are not sure how to handle this. Then the knights get swept up into the deadly intrigue threatening to destroy the capital city. Kai Doh Maru ends on a cliffhanger roughly equivalent to watching Col. Custer and the 7th Cavalry riding toward Little Big Horn.

There is a half-hour “making of” extra, which is almost insultingly fatuous. It boils down to little more than, “Well, we decided to make Kai Doh Maru, so we began production and we worked on it until it was finished,” and “We have found that skilled animators can make a better film than unskilled animators.”

Kai Doh Maru can be recommended to serious students of traditional Japanese art, design art and CGI technique; and to those familiar with Japanese history or who are willing to do a little research to find out who the Minamoto and Fujiwara clans and their supporters and enemies were. It is much too slowly paced and cryptic to satisfy as light entertainment.

Noir © A.D.V. Films.

Noir. V.1, Shades of Darkness. V.2, The Hit List. V.3, The Firing Chamber. V.4, Death Warrant. V.5, Terminal Velocity. V.6, Cloaks & Daggers. V.7, The End of the Matter.
TV series (26 episodes), 2001. Director: Kouichi Mashimo. V.1, five episodes/125 minutes; v.2, 4 & 6, four episodes/100 minutes; v.3, 5 & 7, three episodes/75 minutes. Price & format: DVD bilingual $29.98. Distributor: A.D.V. Films.