Azumi

Azumi is set in a war-torn feudal Japan, where the Tokugawa shogunate seeks to prevent wider conflict by eliminating the warlords who keep the fighting alive. To that end, a master trains ten orphans from childhood in the art of the sword, and Azumi grows into the most gifted of them. When the time comes to put the training to use, the pupils are ordered to pair off and kill one another, leaving only the strongest to carry out the mission. Azumi and the survivors set out to remove the leaders of the provinces, a task that proves far more dangerous than expected. The film is based on the manga by Yû Koyama.

Ryûhei Kitamura directed, from a screenplay by Isao Kiriyama. It is the third of the thirteen features he has directed in chronological order, arriving between Jam Films in 2002 and Godzilla: Final Wars in 2004. Aya Ueto plays Azumi, with Kenji Kohashi, Hiroki Narimiya, Takatoshi Kaneko, Yuma Ishigaki and Yasuomi Sano among the forty credited cast members. Toshiaki Nakazawa, Naoyuki Sakagami and Mataichirô Yamamoto produced.

Released in 2003 and running 128 minutes, the film blends action and adventure with drama, romance and thriller elements. On IMDb it holds a rating of 6.7 from roughly 16,000 votes, while on TMDB it stands at 6.9 from a much smaller base of 376 votes. A critics' rating of 6 out of 10 from 32 reviews places it in similar territory to those audience scores.