A very unusual and quite interesting homage (by american Eric Power) to the 1960's and 1970's japanese chanbara jidai-geki swordplay
movies like the iconical Zatoichi and Baby Cart series - made in cut paper stop motion.
Read more about the Zatoichi 27 film series and the 6 film Lone Wolf and Cub - Baby Cart series at my Shintaro Katsu page

Ichi & Itto

5 years in the making Eric Power made this 62 minutes short long movie by an enormous amount of paper cuts carefully animated in
stop motion technique (like the first South Park episode). The visuals are hypnotizing and the story bloody and gory.

A simple story that goes like this:

Japan in 1614, the war is over and the Edo Shogun don't want no samurai making trouble. Wandering samurai roaming the countryside
for work, without lords and work they're called Ronin. One of these are the very skilled swordsman Kazuo and he, just like his more of
flesh and blood looking colleagues Zatoichi and Itto Ogami, wanders the countryside in search for work.
He hears about the warlord Oshiro Osamu and the possibility of getting work ... if he finds his fortress ... and, if he does it alive?

On his dangerous quest for Oshiro's fortress he's accompanied by fellow swordsmen Hajime and Torasonuke and they walk on foot
through a countryside filled with dead and desperate swordsmen, and through a forest filled with deadly Ninja traps.
It's evil times and the blood apurts and the bodyparts ... or paper cuts ... flies. Will Kazuo meet a worthy swordsman for a final fight?
If you've seen an endless series of Zatoichi films you know the answer, and the victor can only be one.

The film presented in widescreen 2.35:1 with a japanese DTS-HD MA 2.0 stereo audio with english subtitles
Extras: Making Of featurette (11 minutes), Path of Blood: Original short film, original trailer, video game trailer, image gallery