January 22 movie: Zatoichi and a Chest of Gold. Zatoichi Madness continues with the blind swordsman helping a bunch of farmers rescue their stolen tax money. Zatoichi is starting to head into superhero territory: this is his most heroic and altruistic purpose in the series so far, he also rescues a little boy, and when the farmers suspect him of stealing the gold and beat him up, he doesn't fight back. But just so you know he's still Zatoichi, he sneaks into a bathhouse with a lady, then picks his nose while sitting in the bath with her. Ew!
The violence level has gone way up. We think that he killed more people in the totally gratuitous opening credit sequence than in the entire first movie. Also this is the first one to establish a time frame for the series: Zatoichi visits the grave of someone who died 3 years previously, which is marked "1842." Well I'm sure it said something else, I doubt Japan used the Western calendar at that point, but that's what the subtitle said. The plot focuses on a corrupt government official and there were a few things we didn't understand, probably because we're not familiar with 19th century Japenese politics. Still this was a good entry in the Zatoichi series.
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