Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.5
Audio		5.0
Extras		3.5
Overall		4.5

The Complete Lady Snowblood Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Dr. Svet Atanasov December 24, 2015

Japanese director Toshiya Fujita's "Shurayukihime" a.k.a. "Lady Snowblood" (1973) and "Shura-yuki-hime: Urami Renga" a.k.a. "Lady Snowblood: Love Song of Vengeance" (1974) arrive on Blu-ray courtesy of Criterion. The supplemental features on the disc include original trailers for the two films; new video interview with writer Kazuo Koike; and new video interview with screenwriter Norio Osada. The release also arrives with an illustrated leaflet featuring Howard Hampton's essay "Flowers of Carnage". In Japanese, with optional English subtitles for the main feature. Region-A "locked".

Lady Snowblood

Lady Snowblood

The film opens up with a short but very entertaining sequence in which a beautiful woman, Yuki Kashima (the legendary Meiko Kaji), confronts a group of men. Before she kills the last one, Genzo Shibayama (Hosei Komatsu), a wealthy and supposedly very cruel land owner, the woman announces that she is Lady Snowblood.

A series of flashbacks then reveal everything there is to know about Lady Snowblood. In one of them we see that she was born in a prison cell surrounded by female convicts. In another we are told that her family was wiped out by a group of thugs. Her mother was spared but was repeatedly raped. In Tokyo, she killed one of the thugs, Tokuichi Shokei (Takeo Chii), but before she could get to the remaining three, she was arrested and thrown in jail. Now Lady Snowblood is on a mission to finish what her mother started years ago -- find Gishiro Tsukamoto (Eiji Okada), Banzo Temura (Noboru Nakaya) and Okono Kitahama (Sanae Nakahara), and make them pay for her late mother’s misery.

Lady Snowblood: Love Song of Vengeance

The second film begins with a short prologue in which we are informed that the Russo-Japanese War has ended. More than 370,000 Japanese soldiers have died, but the victory has ensured that “capitalism would be the driving force of the Japanese Empire”. Then we are told that Lady Snowblood is still looking for revenge.

After an impressive beach fight with a group of soldiers, Lady Snowblood is finally arrested. Shortly after that, Judge Tanno of the Supreme Court announces that she is going to be executed for the crimes she has committed during the years. However, while she is transferred to a nearby prison, a few secret police agents 'rescue' her. A top government official (Shin Kishida) then offers Lady Snowblood a deal: If she helps him recover an important document from Ransui Tokunaga (Juzo Itami), a very dangerous "advocate of anarchism", she will have her freedom back. Lady Snowblood accepts the deal and immediately gets a job in Tokunaga’s home as a maid, but soon after that changes her mind. The government official goes berserk and orders the secret police to eliminate Lady Snowblood.

The exploitation overtones in the two films are quite obvious, but only the second is graphic enough to impress fans of the genre. This isn’t to imply that Lady Snowblood disappoints but it is clearly the better balanced and more sensible film.

The second film overflows with political remarks which suggest that it may have been intended to deliver a political message of some sort. Whatever this message might have been, however, it is clearly lost amidst the frequent violent fights, as the political jabs rarely seem coherent enough to make an impression. In other words, there is definitely more style than substance here.

The main attraction in the two films is obviously the beautiful Meiko Kaji. Already a star in Japan (after the success of the Female Prisoner and Wandering Ginza Butterfly films), the actress gets the lion’s share of attention in virtually every single sequence. In the second film, however, she is given only a few opportunities to truly impress (her lines are also far simpler).

Ultimately, Lady Snowblood and Lady Snowblood: Love Song of Vengeance should appeal to longtime fans of Meiko Kaji who have already seen most of her films on DVD and liked them, as well as newcomers curious about early Japanese exploitation films who understand well that style is everything in them. As long as expectations are realistic, these films can be a lot of fun to watch.

The Complete Lady Snowblood Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Presented in an aspect ratio of 2.37:1, encoded with MPEG-4 AVC and granted a 1080p transfers, Toshiya Fujita's Lady Snowblood and Lady Snowblood 2: Love Song of Vengeance arrive on Blu-ray courtesy of Criterion.

The following text appears inside the leaflet provided with this Blu-ray release:

"These new digital transfers were created in 2K resolution on a Scanity film scanner from new 35mm low-contrast prints struck from the original camera negatives. Thousands of instances of dirt, debris, scratches, splices, and warps were manually removed using MTI's DRS, while Digital Vision's Phoenix was used for small dirt, grain, noise management, jitter, and flicker.

Transfer supervisor: Russell Smith.
Film scanning: Imagica, Tokyo.
Colorist: Sheri Eisenberg/Colorworks, Culver City, CA".

These films were initially released on Blu-ray by Arrow Video in the UK. Both were sourced from dated masters and while they looked rather good it was easy to see various inconsistencies and source limitations. On this upcoming release the films look notably healthy and a lot fresher. This is hardly surprising, however, as both are sourced from new 2K restorations. In terms of detail and depth the improvements are quite dramatic; fluidity is also substantially better. Contrast and brightness are also better balanced. In fact, there are segments with some pretty substantial improvements. The most dramatic changes, however, are in the area of color reproduction. There are entirely new color identities (and nuances) that change the atmosphere of select sequences and as a result the viewing experience is different. You can see what type of improvements are made if you compare screencaptures #4, 15, and 24 and screencaptures #8, 1, and 17 from our review of the Region-B release. Overall image stability is excellent. My one and only minor criticism pertains to the very light crushing that pops up during some of the darker footage. It is not distracting, but it could have been avoided. My score is 4.75/5.00. (Note: This is a Region-A "locked" Blu-ray release. Therefore, you must have a native Region-A or Region-Free player in order to access its content).

The Complete Lady Snowblood Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Lady Snowblood and Lady Snowblood: Love Song of Vengeance arrive with Japanese LPCM 1.0 tracks. Optional English subtitles are provided for each film. When turned on, they appear inside the image frame.

I really liked the lossless tracks on the previous release of these film. Depth, clarity, and dynamic intensity on the two tracks included on this release are equally impressive. However, it appears that some additional cleanup and rebalancing work has been done because some of the uneveness from the previous tracks is missing. The English translation is excellent.

The Complete Lady Snowblood Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Lady Snowblood

• Trailer - original trailer for Lady Snowblood. In Japanese, with optional English subtitles. (3 min, 1080p).

• Kazuo Koike - in this brand new video interview, writer Kazuo Koike explains how his Lady Snowblood manga -- which inspired Toshiya Fujita's films -- was born, and discusses some of the more surprising explicit elements from the original story, the nature of the young female assassin ("beautiful on the outside, a demon on the inside"), the Meji era and some of the socio-political overtones in the story, Kazuo Kamimura's drawings, etc. The interview was conducted exclusively for Criterion in 2015. In Japanese, with optional English subtitles. (11 min, 1080p).

• Norio Osada - in this brand new video interview, screenwriter Norio Osada discusses the film adaptation of Lady Snowblood, the time period in which the story is set (it is during Japan's transition from the Edo to the Meiji period), his interaction with Toshiya Fujita and the director's working methods, how Kinji Fukasaku endorsed his script, Meiko Kaji's character, etc. The interview was conducted exclusively for Criterion in 2015. In Japanese, with optional English subtitles. (22 min, 1080p).

Lady Snowblood: Love Song of Vengeance

• Trailer - original trailer for Lady Snowblood: Love Song of Vengeance. In Japanese, with optional English subtitles. (3 min, 1080p).

• Leaflet - illustrated leaflet featuring Howard Hampton's essay "Flowers of Carnage". (Mr. Hampton is a frequent contributor to Film Comment, Artforum, and Bookforum, as well as the author of Born in Flames: Termite Dreams, Dialectical Fairy Tales, and Pop Apocalypses).

The Complete Lady Snowblood Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Style is everything in Toshiya Fujita's classic films Lady Snowblood and Lady Snowblood 2: Love Song of Vengeance. Quentin Tarantino has credited the first film as a major inspiration for his Kill Bill saga. I actually think that the second film is a lot more effective, but both are great to see late at night. Criterion's upcoming Blu-ray release is sourced from new 2K restorations that are quite wonderful. Fans of Meiko Kaji should not miss it. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.