A series of films depicting Goemon Ishikawa, a famous 16th-century Japanese outlaw hero who fought against samurai warlords.
Warlord Oda Nobunaga seeks to unite a fractured Japan. A young man trained in the arts of ninjitsu is manipulated by a ninja master into attempting to assassinate the warlord before he completes his task.
[Period covered: 1582-1594]. As the film opens, the warlod Nobunaga Oda rides to Iga Ayanokuni shrine. He is asked if he thinks he has destroyed all the ninja who opposed him and answers that he suspects that there may be more. A servant brings water and tests it first. The paige dies and we hear gunshots as two ninja flee the scene. His suspicions confirmed, Nobunaga oversees the execution of captured ninja and decides that, in the future, he needs a much crueler method of execution. The daimyo Hideyoshi comes to visit.
[Period covered: 1595-1600] We last saw ninja Ishikawa Goemon, as he was about to be boiled alive. But a good ninja is both hard to find, and even harder to kill. With the help of the enigmatic Hattori Hanzo, Goemon lives to skulk another day, and sets his sights on bringing down the warlord who tried to turn him into soup – Toyotomi Hideyoshi. And as always, in the background, the suble hand of Tokugawa Ieyasu is pulling strings as he plots to rule all of Japan!
[Period covered: 1614-1615] Tokugawa Ieyasu is now the ruler of all Japan. But one last loose thread must be tied up before his domination is complete -- the destruction of the Toyotomi clan, now beseiged in Osaka castle. Ieyasu's ninja are the only ones who can penetrate the fortress, but unfortunately for Ieyasu, Kirigakure Saizo and the other Toyotomi ninja can just as easily get out. As armies of samurai maneuver for battle, the fate of the nation will be decided by a desperate struggle in the dark!
[Period covered: 1616] On May 8th, 1615 the summer campaign of Osaka has reached the climax. This film takes place immediately following 'Ninja 4: Mist Saizo, Last of The Ninja'. Staying one step ahead of the Shogun’s forces, “Mist” Saizo tries to save the Sanada Clan, and avenge the death of his lord by assassinating the first Tokugawa Shogun. Following the first four films in this remarkable series, more previously unknown Ninja skills are shown to the world for the first time. The action heats up as Saizo single-handedly attacks the Shogun’s Palace!
[Period covered: 1637-1651] This is one of the most complicated plots of any of the Shinobi no Mono films! This film tells the story of Saizo’s son, Kirigakure Saisuke, who after seeing his father die at the Battle Of Shimabara, grows up to be an expert ninja. Before he dies, “Mist” Saizo tells his children Saisuke, and Yuri that they are not really brother and sister. She, in fact, is the daughter of the late lord Sanada Yukimura, and must be saved from the shogun’s forces. In the chess match of spy versus spy, can Saisuke defeat the shogun’s chief strategist, Matsudaira Izunokami at his own game? Showing many exciting ninja tactics, it is not to be missed.
[Period covered: 1616] Kirigakure Saizo returns for the final time as he sets out to assassinate Tokugawa Ieyasu in order to avenge the death of Lord Sanada Yukimura. But first he must contend with Ieyasu’s own ninja group led by the powerful Fuma Daijuro, who has a score to settle with the men of Iga that dates back 280 years to the war between the Genji and the Heike at the Battle of Dan-no-Ura. Tremendous fighting and great plot twists highlight this exceptional look into the lives of the mysterious ninja of Japan.
[Period Covered: 1570-1573] Towards the end of the Tenmon Era, Shogun Ashikaga`s powers were weakening by the day and many were there who planned to overthrow him. It was the beginning of the Sengoku (Warring States) period. Three men attack a gunpowder maker in a farmhouse, the first chopping off his arm with his sickle-&-chain weapon, the second blinding him with sword, the third giving the killing blow. His son Kojiro Kosume escapes the attackers as everything he has known up to then explodes into conflagration. He grows up & enters the start of the Tokugawa Era, intent on avenging his father.
The Shinobi-no-Mono series was so successful that Daiei Studios dipped into the well one more time, making the best 60′s B&W ninja movie ever seen in the otherwise color-dominated year of 1970. Issei Mori directs Hiroki Matsukata as the reluctant leader of a small band of spies charged with kidnapping a noblewoman from a heavily ninja-proofed castle. The finality of the air slowly began to fill like smoke, and in all that had become dark the loyalty of the Ninja who dared to go shone like light as they entered a world shrouded in mystery. Things do not go as planned in what is possibly the darkest and most fatalistic of the already noir-ish 60′s fare. Both the decade and it’s distinctive style of shinobi cinema went out on a high note with Mission Iron Castle.
