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The wild success of The Tale of Zatoichi demanded a sequel and star Shintaro Katsu was only too happy to reprise his role as the traveling masseur and blind swordsman. Star Katsu and director Kazuo Mori flesh out the enigmatic Ichi in this outing, creating a more haunted and less conniving character who prefers to keep his identity shrouded and his sword sheathed. Nonetheless the peace-loving swordsman is reluctantly and repeatedly forced to fight when he's attacked by a government goon squad, a gang of hoodlums, and an angry one-armed swordsman whose interest in Ichi is purely personal. This action-packed entry, which ultimately brings our hero back to the site of his previous film for the furious climax, practically revels in the concentrated bursts of Ichi's lightning attack.

The newly restored DVD features a small stills gallery, a fold-out insert with an essay by Tatsu Aoki (a self described "Ichi Freak"), and four collector cards. --Sean Axmaker

Description
Non-stop action, a deadly love triangle, and a mysterious one-armed samurai round out the second installment in the legendary Zatoichi series. When Zatoichi discovers the lord who has hired him suffers from a madness that -- if made public -- would bring ruin to his empire and the livelihood of the samurai warriors he employs, the blind masseur becomes a wanted man for the secret he now possesses. Attacked at every turn by the crazed lord’s samurais and hired yakuza thugs, Zatoichi manages to escape relatively unscathed. But in a final duel, masseur Ichi must face his old foe, the infamous one-armed samurai (played by Tomisaburo Wakayama, the brother of star Shintaro Katsu).