during the heian period of the medieval japan era, the imperial court at heian-kyo had not only officials among the ranks but also onmyoujis, men who were basically mediums who could mediate affairs with those from the other world. they could do what most wizards can do... they can bind spells, put curses, predict the future and fight supernatural beings.
minamoto no hiromasa is a young, brave but pretty naive samurai serving as an official in the court. one day, another higher official noticed a strange-looking gourd growing from his family plant and thus asked him to approach the mysterious onmyouji, abe no seimei on his behalf. although unwilling, hiromasa made the trip and was constantly surprised by seimei's powers... doors that could open by themselves, servants made from little pieces of paper... a young, sweet girl transformed from a butterfly... despite all these, abe no seimei, a freelance onmyouji who didn't really like working for the court befriended this samurai and decided to help him.
eventually... the emperor's newly born son was cursed and the head onmyouji, doson could do nothing about it. seimei was thus approached and he managed to lift the curse but he realized that something was going on behind all these... as things move on.. they realized that dosun was planning to take over the city and kill the guardians of the city... later on as they found out, the two guardians were seimei and hiromasa... but seimei was late and hiromasa was already shot with an arrow...
i've always been very enchanted by things like that... wizardry... supernatural... sorcerers... and thus this movie is really my cup of tea... perhaps having studied jap history and sai from hikaru no go wearing the same costume... i can relate better. hahaa...
ito hideaki is minamoto no hiromasa.... he did the role quite well... hiromasa is a very pure-hearted person... and always see seimei in awe cuz seimei always does a lot of tricks (often trick him too.. haha).. and he really loved one of the princess, sukihime and it was so sad when sukihime died....
nomura mansai is abe no seimei and he probably does it better than anyone else could have. abe no seimei is a man of mystery, poised, arrogant, confident and couldn't care much less about anything (even though he knows everything) especially politics. he knows what is to be done all the time and he knows how to do them well. his friendship with hiromasa is probably the thing he values most in his life...he cried and told hiromasa that he is the only person he cannot bear to lose. okay. this is the thing about japanese. they always make friendship between men go a bit overboard and make it seemingly.. gayish. and nomura mansai's slightly feminine look makes it worse. haha.. but i believe that nothing funny is going on. it's just very very very strong friendship yeah? accept it. but nomura mansai is really a great actor.. critically acclaimed in his field, the kyogen, a kind of japanese theater... his poise and elegance fully suited the character well since seimei is a high status person in the society 1200 years ago.. and he really portrayed seimei's arrogance well.. he rocks man.
japanese have a thing about names... in the movie... seimei mentioned something about how a name is also a kind of spell.. since spells simply binds itself along with something else.. and a name binds itself with the person. a similiar idea was in clamp's xxxholic too.. on how a baseball bat.. which given a new name.. can cut through metal.. and they have the art of putting life into paper too.. just like how seimei could transform so many servants from paper (he even had himself in paper.. when fighting with dosun.. dosun thought his sword had cut him.. but it was eventually just paper)... the idea came out in spirited away too.. the birds made from paper....
i especially love the part where seimei found the curse on sukihime.. and realized that dosun wanted to kill hiromasa.. he was so angry and he drew a spell on a paper.. chanting "o, soundless buddha of woe... may you reap what you have sown"... and shot an arrow with the paper.... crossing miles before hitting straight through dosun's pet who had been spying on them....
cool.
listening to: myself
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