Ryunosuke Tsukue in SWORD OF DOOM finds himself doomed to walk the path of demons in a downward spiral into madness and despair, SHURA is as bleak dark and hopeless a jidaigeki as was ever execrated and sealed from man and beast on celluloid. Unlike Ryunosuke Tsukue, however, who starts on the Great Buddha Mountain Pass and slowly cuts his way into his own private hell, Gengobe in SHURA starts in that private hell and plunges himself deeper in depths of the soul unknown. The movie opens with Gengobe hunted in pitch black by hovering lanterns held by unseen persecutors. He enters a house and finds a scene of carnage and mayhem, the floor strewn with mutilated bodies, limbs, others hanging dead from the ceiling. I told you it only starts there.
