Samurai: Reincarnation opens with Chapter 'Hell' - Part 1 in which a narrator discusses an early battle between Christians and Shoguns that took place 350 years ago in which the Shoguns killed 20,000 Christians and then cut a lot of their heads in half so they could claim they killed 45,000.

After that factoid is announced, we go straight to a Samurai celebration party in which everybody is sitting quietly by a fire in their armor. The entertainment consists of a guy on stage doing some kind of tai chi with a sword.


Samurai Entertainer.

For a celebratory party, the action is extremely slow;
even with the inclusion of Christian head trophies hanging in the background.


Christian Heads.

It isn't raining, but there is lightning which periodically illuminates the decapitated heads. Finally, one of the heads supernaturally levitates into the air then suddenly flies straight into the bonfire, causing a shower of sparks.

When the sparks clear, we find all the samurai laying dead or unconscious for no apparent reason. The only person left standing is the guy who was doing the tai chi show. He just walks off the stage slowly as if everything were normal. He seems a little confused about his whereabouts. He pets one of the Christian heads:

Then he starts talking in horribly dubbed English. It is apparant he is possessed by a spirit and is not the same guy who was doing tai chi with a sword earlier. Now he is just a vessel for a ghost (this explains the "Reincarnation" part of the film's title. They get right to it.). He is a fallen Christian, mystically reincarnated as a samurai.

He begins crying and yelling (or wailing) about how he will avenge the fallen Christians - "As of tonight, I shall part with you, my brothers...So be it, I swear! Hear me in Heaven! From this moment on, I shall abandon you! There shall be no brotherly love! I shall do what you failed to do! I shall wreck a vengeance on the entire world"!

Chapter 'Hell' - Part 2 takes place at, "Kumamoto - In the Realm of Higo"; specifically at, "Taisho-Ji - Lord Hosokawa's Family Temple". The reincarnated samurai (I think his name is Shito) is conducting an occult ceremony.

Shito has a woman's body laying on the floor which he possesses with the spirit of Hosokawa's dead wife. After the possessed body stops writhing and moaning, their conversation goes something like this:

Shito:"I have come here to fulfill your pathetic prayer to be reborn in the world of the living".

Woman:"Oh, you ignorant fool" [laughs].

They go on and on, then Shito comments, "Your reputation for chastity is dimmed by having lived days of carnage with your husband". Days of Carnage!

Shito knows quite a bit about Lady Hosokawa because he also observes, "You were obliged to die in a most reluctant manner". This triggers a flashback scene about how Lord Hosokawa was pissed off at her because, once she became a Christian, she stopped letting him sleep with her; so he arranged for her to die in a fire.

So anyway, Shito brings her back as she was before:

Chapter 'Hell' - Part 3 consists of a master swordsman sitting in his samurai armor lamenting that he has, "Nothing to do but wait until age 62 to die of old age", since nobody can kill him in battle.

After an extensive rambling monologue, the master swordsman is approached by Shito and Lady Hosokawa; who are going around reincarnating people into a private army. When approached about the prospect of reincarnation, the master swordsman swings his sword then falls down for no apparent reason. Shito then reincarnates him.

Finally, to end everything on an up note, a guy with an eyepatch barges in and disrupts everything, then leaves.

Chapter 'Hell' - Part 4:

By this point in the film, I start realizing that all the chapters of this movie will be "Hell" chapters. Maybe it was intended to be a trilogy with this film being the "Hell" part. Whatever.

This chapter opens with a guy passing two women on a staircase. He says, "Wait", under his breath then murders both of them out of the blue:

Then we see everything as it was before. The murder only occured in the man's mind.
He is, apparantly, a misogynist:

Things go from bad to wierd fast as a veiled woman approaches from the left. She is laughing at the misogynist, "Ha Ha Ha!! Why are you always dreaming of killing females"? She opens her veil to reveal that she either has a ghost head or is wearing a ghost mask.

Then her voice booms, like an announcer yelling through a megaphone, "Why restrain yourself from sexual desire? The female skin is beautiful". Then she shows him her tits!

After seeing the ghost's tits, the misogynist tries to kill the ghost, but she is too fast for him. He ends the chase and proclaims, "All the aesthetic practice I've done could not put out the flame of my carnal desire". Then he stabs himself.

The ghost reveals herself as Lady Hosokawa before the dying misogynist. This is somehow significant, but I wasn't paying enough attention to pick up on any subtleties.

Chapter 'Hell' - Part 5:

This part is set in a secret Iga Ninja village:

A younger guy walks into the Ninja village with kids swarming all around him:

One of the kids asks, "Did you bring a rabbit"?
The dubbed English voice was that of an adult, so it was wierd to hear a kid talk like that.

The guy smiles and pulls a rabbit out of his shirt for the kids.

Everything is fine until the village is suddenly bombarded by flaming arrows. There's a big battle scene, but nothing worth saving video captures of. For a battle scene, it was pretty unremarkable.

Shito and his crew are still going around reincarnating dead and dying people, so of course they show up here. They approach the younger guy this time. When he asks why Shito chose him for reincarnation; Shito says he chose him, "out of sympathy" but doesn't go into any more explanation than that.

Suddenly, the guy with the eyepatch reappears!

Shito's crew charges the eyepatch guy on horseback, but he jumps straight up in a tree so they can't reach him.

Shito says, "When did you turn into a monkey"? Shito's crew thinks this is hilareous and everybody is laughing their asses off. They ride off with some parting words, "We'll meet again in the future".

The eyepatch guy says to himself, "Something strange is about to happen".

I stopped keeping track of the Chapter 'Hell' divisions at this point. Just trying to watch the movie took all my energy.

About this point is where the whole subplot started in which Shito is sowing discontent among the Shogun's people. They are living in a feudal system in which they pay taxes to the shogun in exchange for permission to farm the land he owns. So Shito starts cursing the land by occult means. He is chanting over a fire while one of his crew is dropping snakes into the flame.

Shito: "Wheat will whither and die".
"soil will rot".
"Ameeeeen".

At this point, the scene shifts. The guy with an eyepatch is visiting the greatest swordsmith in the world who is living in exile on a mountaintop with his step-daughter who plays the flute.

Eyepatch drops in and requests, "a sword that can cut evil demons".

The swordsmith repeats, "A sword that can cut evil demons". He becomes philosophical and comments, "Evil will always thwart evil" and Eyepatch's only hope is, "a sword that was fashioned by me - one with an evil soul".

The step-daughter objects, "Please! My father has used all his strength on his last sword"!

Eyepatch says he needs the sword, "to kill Musashi" (Musashi is the reincarnated great samurai who had nothing to do besides wait to die at age 62). Musashi is also this girl's real father!

When the girl objects that Musashi is already dead, Eyepatch tells her, "He is back as a ghost. I saw it with my own EYES!

Eyes!! Plural! He is the guy with the eyepatch! He only has one eye. The translator must have been just listening to the dialogue and not paying much attention to the movie's action, which I would totally understand.

Suddenly the house shakes violently.

Eyepatch:"Do you keep a sword in the house"?
Swordsmith:There is none".
Eyepatch:"Not even a short sword"?
Swordsmith:"There is none"!!

Musashi is approaching until his daughter starts playing the flute,
which makes him emotional and he leaves:

The greatest swordsmith in the world agrees to forge the sword. "To destroy that sort of evil spirit, I'm sure that only I can make such a sword" (because he is personally so evil).

This is followed by completely unneccessary footage of the forging process. Two guys pounding metal by fire light. It goes on forever.

The action goes back to Shito and his crew. Shito is talking to the younger guy, telling him he is "too young to be a fully matured spirit of the darkness".

Then he gives him a gay kiss and asks, "Do you understand"?

The younger guy apparantly didn't understand, because in the next scene, he is approaching a young girl who is playing the flute next to a river in the sunshine.

He begins accosting her, and tells her, "I love you"!

She responds, "Alright! Just go away"!

He decides to stop accosting the girl and lets her run away; then he begins to cry.
The guy with an eyepatch appears and states, "I see there is still some sense left in you...more or less".

The younger guy is crying like a girl now and lamenting that, "I feel tormented"!
He asks Eyepatch to please kill him.

As Eyepatch is about to cut off the younger guy's head, the younger guy starts singing. This singing affects Eyepatch on some undisclosed level, promptinmg him to stop and declare, "You must go on living".

Back on the mountaintop, the sword is finally finished, then the master swordsmith dies. He last words were, "If you encounter God, God will be cut. If you encounter an evil spirit, the evil spirit will be cut. This is the greatest sword I ever made".

Eyepatch responds, "I am truly gratified".

All hell is breaking loose in town. The farmer's are rioting. They don't want to pay taxes on lousy farmland and they are rising up against the local magistrates.

Lady Hosokawa takes another form and is telling the head magistrate, "Oh look, my lord! A deer"! Under some magical influence, the magistrate sees deer instead of angry townspeople and he starts shooting them all with arrows. So if the villagers didn't think highly of him before, they think a lot less of him now.

The scene shifts to a mass crucifixion with angry farmers protesting. It is not clear whether the magistrate still thinks he is crucifying deer, or if he is now crucifying a different group of villagers.

Something possesses one of the female villagers to take her shirt off and go into a frenzy (I couldn't get a good video capture because she was moving around in such a frenzied manner). Then the crosses begin to glow:

The shit hits the fan and Shito convinces the villagers to burn down the shogun's castle.

When they all run off, Eyepatch is cremating the dead on a bonfire when he is challenged my Musashi. Musashi wants a one-on-one dual on an island beach. Eyepatch accepts the challenge, despite protests from Musashi's daughter. "It is, perhaps, the way of the sword; and that is the path I have chosen".

The next day, Eyepatch meets Musashi on the beach:

The greatest swordsmith in the world's step-daughter plays her flute; hoping to discombobulate Musashi again:

When he hears his daughter's flute-playing, Musashi declares, "I have no room in my heart for tender emotions. Listen to the flute as I smash your skull into thousands of pieces".

This dialogue is followed by a great (and by "great", I mean "boring") sword battle on the beach with flute music in the background. Eyepatch wins.

The rest of the film is mass chaos. Farmers are burning the shogun's castle. Mass carnage is everywhere. Lots of fire and killing. The estate's Lord is fighting for his life and is getting along fine. He is a great swordsman.

Shito is egging everything on. He fights the estate's Lord and reminds him this is all to avenge the massacred Christians.

Eyepatch shows up to put an end to this nonsense once and for all. Shito tries to tempt him with immortality, but Eyepatch declines; stating, "I do not believe in anyone having eternal life. Above all, I cannot allow you to exist".

When Shito declares, "I intend to turn this entire country to ashes", Eyepatch slices his head right off.

Shito catches his own head and it is still running it's mouth, laughing about how Shito will return again.

Then the camera fades out and it is finally over.