Yojimbo anime series#

The Yabusame itself is more comparable to a Culverin, as it has a very high bonus versus artillery combined with a good range and strong ranged resistance (50% to be precise). This juxtaposition exists also in Yojimbo, and it is how I would say the two works are so closely connected.The Yojimbo can be trained at the Stable and Monastery with the Atonement Home City Card.Īt first glance, the Yojimbo might seem as a superior version of the Yabusame, but in reality, it plays more like a highly improved, mercenary version of the Cavalry Archer. What is on the surface a very violent album and film, is actually a pretty introspective piece when you concentrate on this parallel, and perhaps less pronounced, current that runs through the work. Elsewhere, the hurt caused by a lover’s departure results in the (perhaps not entirely earnest) offering of a song (“Sing Along”), while the creative process itself is further considered in songs like “Remember to Breathe”, “All Said And Done” and “Fastest Horse in Town”. Songs like “A Good Look”, “Make Art Not Friends”, “Best Clockmaker on Mars”, “Last Man Standing” and “Mercury in Retrograde” reflect in different ways on the challenges of staying true to what makes your art meaningful.

This is underlined by the theme of art, music and creativity that runs through the lyrics alongside the violence, but is less emphasised in the film’s visuals. It is there to bring catharsis, while also exploring the problems that it depicts. Just like in Yojimbo, the violence in Sound & Fury isn’t meant as something to celebrate or emulate. “Dedicated to the lost souls and the victims of senseless violence around the world.” “Get beyond love and grief: exist for the good of Man.” (Musashi Miyamoto) At the very end of the film, after both the end credits and the post-end-credits chapter have finished, we have two screens of text: Stugill’s Sound & Fury (both the film and the album) does something very similar. All in the safety of our cinemas, or homes. By going through that bloody journey with Mifune’s character, a sacrificial offering of sorts, we just like Kurosawa are able to lessen the burden of some of our baggage, perhaps able to cope with our own problems better. In fact, on the contrary, it very much rejects the kind of violence that it depicts.īut outside of that fictional world that Kurosawa depicts, on our side of the silver screen, as the audience, that violence is valuable as it gives us something a catharsis. Unlike most of Kurosawa’s works, Yojimbo is not a didactic film. There is no celebration at the end of Yojimbo, only death. This seems very much like Yojimbo to me, a film where Kurosawa finally appears to go “fuck it” and gives up trying to find the kind of humanist solutions to society’s problems that he had been investigating for the previous two decades, and creates this superman character for Mifune who simply goes in to a corrupt world and violently takes care of all the bad guys. And while the images in the film don’t directly reflect those of the lyrics, the film certainly seems to emphasise this idea of violence as the ultimate solution for making things right.

Yojimbo anime series#

The song lyrics are pretty horribly subtitled in the Netflix release, often totally changing the meaning from what I think is actually sung, but having listened through the album a dozen or so times in the past couple of days, I would say that the album (and the film) basically bring forward a series of problems on global, social and personal levels, and then repeatedly offer visions of violence as a solution to them. While the surface story (or stories) in Sound & Fury, as much as I can decipher it, doesn’t really follow Yojimbo, I think I can see the influence. It’s quite similarly bonkers and open for interpretation as Sound & Fury. That one is built around music by her husband Neil Young, who also stars in the film with the band Promise of the Real.

Although in terms of content and style it’s a very different beast, it made me think of an earlier music related film that Netflix released last year, Daryl Hannah’s Paradox. I watched Sound & Fury last night and I must say I enjoyed the trip and would love to see more of this type of album tie-ins.