The animation doesn't move like a samurai film, it moves like someone excavating a myth. This isn't the legend you've memorized, it's Musashi stripped down to the man who had to invent himself, told through a collage of paintings, photographs, and sketches that feels less like anime and more like a historian's fever dream. You watch to understand what "The Book of Five Rings" actually cost to write.

Miyamoto Musashi stands at a crossroads between legend and history. Remembered as a great seventeenth-century swordsman, he is surrounded by so many tales that it is hard to tell fact from fiction. Researcher Kiichi Inukai sets out to find the real man, tracing his path from an ordinary soldier, to the creation of his distinctive two-sword style, to the writing of The Book of Five Rings. Along the way, the film asks what led Musashi to adopt and perfect fighting with two blades. Produced under Mamoru Oshii, this documentary-style action movie mixes a wide range of animation techniques with sung rokyoku narration to offer a fresh portrait of the man behind the myth.