This one grabs you by the collar in the first minute and never bothers explaining itself. It's a 500-year-old grudge match played straight: Kuroyasha Douki claws his way out of hell not for world domination but for a bloodline, and Kabuto is what's left of that line. Buichi Terasawa's DNA is all over it, the same taste for hard-jawed heroes and pulpy occult spectacle that made Cobra sing, only here it's Tensho-era Japan, demon sorcery, and a crow-tengu warrior swinging steel at things steel shouldn't work on. The four gods of North, South, East and West lining up behind one man is the kind of shameless mythic stacking modern shows are too self-conscious to attempt. Thirty-nine episodes means it breathes, monster of the week and all, and that's the charm. You watch it for the feeling that somebody drew every sword swing like it mattered.

Set in Japan's Tensho Era some 500 years ago, the story centers on Kabuto, who carries the blood of the Karasu Tengu, or Crow Goblin, and is bound to fight the forces of darkness. When Kuroyasya Douki, the Black Night Demon, somehow breaks out of his prison in hell, he returns to the world of the living seeking revenge on Kabuto's family line. The Black Night Demon wields sorcery and steel with merciless precision, leaving no one safe from his reach. Kabuto cannot fight this battle alone. The gods of the North, West, East and South unite behind him, and he fights alongside the holy ninja warriors Genbu, Suzaku, Seiryu and Byakko against Douki and his followers, including the Junin-shu. He also carries a talking sword forged by his own father, a fiendish blade whose help is far from certain. Kabuto must survive long enough to see his own sons born, in an action adventure about a struggle that carries on across generations.