Zatoichi - The Blind Swordsman [DVD]

This is a great film series and Criterion Collection does a great packaging job with the films. However, I do have two complaints that prevents me from giving it a 5 Star Rating: First, the sparsity of Extra Features. I know putting 25 films is a lot of work and I have no problems with 3 films per discs, but where are the Audio Commentaries? At least the first two and Zatoichi Meets Yojimbo should have them. The two documentaries on the last discs are good, but I expect more from Criterion Collection. The second is the subtitles: I've noticed the qualities in Criterions' subtitling has gone down lately. Mostly, it comes down to them not subtitling the background dialogues in their foreign films. I first noticed this with their La Dolce Vita blu-ray and the same problem with the Zatoichi films here. Both Criterion and some fans might find them superfluous & unnecessary but I disagree: the background dialogues add atmosphere and color to the scenes. I wish Criterion would fix this in the future, but I doubt it. Probably this is a cost-cutting measure. Still the Zatoichi is a great collection.

My parents love Katsu Shintaro in Zatoichi and the opportunity to have all of his movies in one collection was perfect. The boxed set was exactly as advertised, the movies are digitally enhanced, so the picture quality is excellent. It is definitely a good buy.

Who doesn't like the Blind Swordsman? We have been watching the movies and enjoy the stories very much. We had seen many of them over the years but now we own them and can watch them whenever we like. They are a great entertainment value.

The quality of the images on these discs are really amazing and great. It is crystal clear, to the point of looking like a soap operas on some panning scenes. Really wonderful.The bad thing is the subtitles. One of, if not the main reason I bought this collection was because it said it had "New English subtitle translations". I had already seen every Zatoichi film before with older subtitles.Well these new translations are bad. They are riddled with errors and sometimes just flat out change what the people are saying in the films. I will give a few small examples.A person in the film will say "Ichi! so and so..." But the subtitles will say "so and so..., Ichi. What I mean is that the person will yell Ichi's name first, and then whatever he said, but the subtitles will have whatever he said written first, then a comma and Ichi's name. This is one of my biggest subtitles pet-peeves, because it is absolutely stupid and unnecessary. I understand that Japanese grammar is "backwards" if you will, compared to English, but doing things like that is just overcompensating. If the person says another person's name first, then I want the name to be first in the subtitles. When the name is within a sentence its obviously different, but they switch the order for no reason at all. This is done on many different films in this release.In the second film a man says "Take these 25 gold coins for now" but you can clearly hear him say ryo. Anyone who is buying a Zatoichi box-set knows what a ryo is. Strangely, in the other films in this same release, the word ryo is used. So why do they translate it to gold coins? On the 5th film and others as well, ryo is translated as gold coins. It alternates from film to film whether the subtitles say ryo or gold coins.Does this mean that the sources of the subtitles were different for each film? I dont know. You would think that Criterion would have hired a translator and things would have been consistent, since they advertise the subtitles as "New".Another example would be you hear Zatoichi say "But, .... so and so...." But in the subtitles, there is no But, and its just the sentence.Another example would be that in more than half of the films they translate yakuza as yakuza, but in many of them they translate it as "gambler".One of the biggest things is how they translate "-san". For example many, many people throughout all the films call Zatoichi Ichi-san. But they translate this as Master Ichi. This doesnt even make sense. It should be Mister Ichi. They even contradict themselves by translating other names with -san on them as Miss Saki or Mister So an So. So why is it when someone calls Zatoichi Ichi-san, they translate it as Master Ichi? This is just stupid. They also do this with other names, for example in the 9th film someone talking to an old man name Giju will call him Giju-san, and the subtitles say Master Giju. That is just one small example and it is done with countless names throughout all the films. This is just flat out wrong and the people who did the subtitles know it. There is a pretty big difference between Master and Mister in my opinion.Another example would be that a person will be talking to their brother or sister, and they will say Nii-san, which means brother, and should be translated as brother, but the subtitles say the persons name. Why? Why not just put what the people are saying in the subtitles? One particular scene comes to mind where a girl's brother is dying and she is yelling "Brother! Brother!" as he is dying, but the subtitles say the brother's name instead.This is even worse when throughout all the films people address Zatoichi as multiple different things, but almost all the time the subtitles say Ichi or Zatoichi or Master Ichi, and the people arent even saying his name. The also goes for other characters, they will be addressed as "Sensei" for example, but the subtitles will always say their names. One scene comes to mind where a woman is calling Zatoichi omae which would be translated as something like "Honey" or "Sweety" but it just says Ichi's name instead.Another example will be when people call Zatoichi Anma-san, which would mean Mister Masseur, but the subtitles will just say Mister, or sometimes even will say "blind man". The subtitles alternate between blind man or masseur when translating Anma, which makes sense, but I wish they would just stick with one.The subtitles text itself is also sloppy in places. For example a used where it should be an, and an used where there should be an a.The things I just mentioned might seem like no big deal, but when you add them all up, it can end up changing the whole mood and feel of a movie. Also, the things I have mentioned are very small compared to the outright wrong translations of sentences. Changing the subtitles to make the movie flow better can destroy the soul of the movie. I was expecting these "New" translations to be more literal.I was under the impression, that since it was 2013 when this was released, that the people at Criterion would realize people have a much better understanding of the "culture" and there is no need to dumb down the translations to such an extent. But obviously they didnt. Its even more strange because it varies from film to film. Some of them will be very accurate and on some of them the subtitles are very bad.I have downloaded and compared the subtitles on older releases of these films, and it seems that while some things actually are improved, many are made even worse and more dumbed down than older releases, which makes no sense. Notice how they dont advertise the subtitles for this release as "New and Improved" its just "New"...Also when I first put the DVDs in they were playing on a 2.21:1 aspect ratio, which made the picture look like a very thin strip. Luckily I knew it wasnt supposed to look like that and changed the aspect ratio on my TV, but there are some people out there who might not realize that and end up watching all the movies in a scrunched up picture.Another thing that makes absolutely no sense is that on the DVDs, one DVD will have 2 films on it, and every third DVD has 1 film on it. Why not jut put 2 films on every DVD? What is the point of this?My experience has disappointed me very much, and it makes me unable to trust Criterion. I would assume that all the other new restored releases by Criterion have subtitles this bad too, so watch out. At the same time, the truth is that these subtitles really are not much worse than subtitles on any other foreign movie, its just that since this release is rather new, and the subtitles are advertised as New, and it is coming from a company known for their high quality releases, I was expecting the subtitles to be better than average, and they weren't.

I had read about this series of movies and when this collection came up I took a chance and am not disappointed.First the discs themselves, the DVDs are very good (I watched a few to sample the quality) with nice picture and sound. The BDs are really nice, beautiful picture and clear sound with no discernible background noise. The films are set up in groups of 3, the first 2 discs contain 3 of the films in DVD and the third disc contains all 3 in Blu-ray. The first 2 films are in black and white and the quality is wonderful (even in the DVDs). Good blacks and nice shading and contrast. The third film and those following are in color and it is vibrant in the 13 films I have watched so far. Criterion's explanation of the idea of selling the films in DVD and BD in the same package and not separately is on their website. I have notice that there is no increase in the list price of their BDs due to this and I assume it will continue until almost all DVDs players are replaced with BD players. They did justice to these films in both formats.There are 25 films from the original series, a 26th was done 16 years after the last one in this group and I do not know why they did not include it but whatever the reason it is not a great loss as it is available on the market. There was also a TV series that followed these films, done by the same production company, run by the star Shintaro Katsu, that did the last group of films and that is also available on the market. It would be great if in the future Criterion obtained the rights to the TV episodes and the final film, did restoration, and released them in another box set.The films are almost like an American TV western series (like The Rebel or Kung Fu) with the same basic plot for each one. Zatoichi is a blind masseur (who likes to gamble at dice and is a lightning fast swordsman) that travels from town to town and is on the hit list of every Yakuza gang he has ever crossed and eventually has to fight, usually a dozen opponents or MORE at a time and vanquishes them all. The acting is superb and the photography is wonderful. These are "swordplay" movies with underlying moral stories, not just a slice 'em up action pictures.I have no quarrel with the packaging. I always handle the discs carefully from similar packaging and have never had a scratch that cause a playback problem. The extras are also good and the hard cover booklet is great, the summation and assessment of the series at the beginning is spot on.Really well done, recommended.Updated 6/2014. I finished watching the rest of the set awhile back and finally am getting around to adding to my review. The second 13 films fit my original review, great picture and sound in both formats. Opinions of the acting and portrayal vary from person to person. The Zatoichi character seems to get a little meaner in some of the later films and there were some that were "bloody" where as the others have almost no indication of blood at all. I do not think I have ever bought such a great set of films in a single package. If you like this genre this is a MUST for you, you will not be disappointed.

This is a great box set. However I have the same issue as another customer with disc 6. Region coding error. My advice - this is a manufacturing error. Raise it with Criterion!

At first glance the set might seem pricey, but with 25 great movie, beautifully presented, this is by far the best purchase I've made in some time, if not the greatest blu ray I ever bought. The movies, in essence are westerns in Japan, with Kitanas replacing guns (you can clearly see the shift of influence from American western to Italian over the course of the movies), but all are highly entertaining and surprisingly humourous, although certainly not to everyone's taste, maybe not as high brow as Kurosawa, for those who enjoy a western or samurai movie, this is essential and again, considering the amount of movies, very reasonable compared to buying each individually. On a side note, issues with the coding on disc 6, have been dealt with effectively for anyone affected with, in my case, a replacement disc dispatched very quickly. High recommended..

I have been after this box set for many years looking on amazon and finally l have it, the box is very colourful and there is a nice book inside l will enjoy reading, Zato is a very lovable man and only the wicked need fear him, the storys all have people in need and are a joy to watch, not too much blood so if thats your thing try the Lone Wolf movies, but if you want touching storys buy this box set, l love it!

Very exciting DVD wonderful gift fora club members

A fitting last chapter of the Zatoichi saga. While it might not be the absolute best of the series it is definitely somewhere in the top 10. At 16 years after the last film, Zatoichi returns with the same freshness, the same ambiguous internalized morality and the same highly enjoyable swordsmanship fighting some of the best villains of the series - including Shintaro Katsu's own son. A pure fan pleasure.