I watched Beat Takeshi’s Zatoichi the other day and cranked out some art on the iPad using Adobe Draw. Takeshi had an incredible creatively fertile period in the 90’s and early aughts where he wrote, directed, and starred in a number of excellent movies in his own idiosyncratic style. He worked together with Joe Hisaishi before the composer exploded into popularity with Studio Ghibli and Hisaishi’s scores provide a lot of the emotional impact to films like Hana-bi and especially Kikujiro. Takeshi’s movies tend to be odd and darkly humorous, focusing on misfits and eccentrics. They’ll use some genre notes, like having a Yakuza or samurai protagonist, but then structure the plot around a vacation or a trip, focusing the plot around their personal life and relationships rather than a heist or battle. Here’s Takeshi as Zatoichi, the blind swordsman:
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