Ninja Scroll

Plot Summary

As the movie opens, the lord of a clan in Japan known as the Yamashiro clan has discovered gold in his land. However, he does wants all the gold for himself and does not inform the government about this find. Instead, he orders the head of his ninja team, Himuru Genma, to kill all the chiefs of his clan in order to keep the gold a secret. After the mission is complete and all the chiefs are dead, Genma orders his team to kill Jubei Kibagami in hopes that the whole ninja team would wipe each other out and would leave no one alive that knew about the mine. This does not go according to plan since Jubei kills all of his team and waits for Genma before beheading him.

Five years later, Genma has resurrected and formed a deadly group of ninja known as the Devils of Kimon. These deadly ninja work for the House of Toyotomi who want to overthrow the Tokugawa shogun. Genma informs the lord of the house where the secret mine is in order to fund the expensives for this mission. Meanwhile, government spies are also trying to find the location of the gold mine. As the Devils of Kimon are extracting gold from the mine and shipping it back, a storm causes the shipment to crash near the village of Shimoda, a village in the territory of the Mochizuki clan. Genma and his team poison the village and wipe them out, causing people in the surrounding area to believe the area has been plagued and stay far away. That night, the Mochizuki ninja team are dispatched to Shimoda village to investigate what happened.

On their way to investigate though, most of the ninja team are slaughtered by the stone golem ninja Tessai with his giant boomerang. The only survivor of this attack is the Kunoichi Kagero, who Tessai abducts and begins to rape. Jubei sits in the shadows and criticizes Tessai for his behavior and is able to inflict pain on the behemoth of a man by stabbing his eye out. Jubei tries to assist Kagero with her mission and wants to accompany her, but she promptly refuses. Later on that same night, Tessai bombards Jubei and wants revenge. When things seem bleak, Tessai's stone skin begins to crumble as he died soon after.

The next day, Jubei encounters Dakuan, a spy working for the Tokugawa shogun. Dakuan explains that Tessai was a member of the Devils of Kimon who are a team of supernatural ninjas who will now hunt Jubei and kill him to avenge Tessai. Dakuan implores Jubei to help with the mission to recover the gold from Shimoda but Jubei wants no part of it. As a result, Dakuan poisons Jubei and claims that he will die in a day unless he helps. For his work, Dakuan will give Jubei the antidote and gold. Having no other choice, Jubei convinces Kagero to let him join her on the mission to get to Shimoda and defeat the Devils of Kimon.