Nobody talks about this one. A kid raised as an assassin discovers his entire life is a lie built on his father's broken promise, and the film doesn't flinch from what that means, the person you become can't just unbecome itself because your past finally makes sense. The synth score hits like a wound opening, and the animation moves between brutal precision and fever-dream abstraction, refusing to let you settle into comfort. This is 1985 anime swinging for themes that still feel dangerous: identity, blood, the Ainu, what you owe to the dead. It's a film that knows exactly what it is, and it costs something to finish it.

Jiro's world shatters when he discovers his mother and sister slain in their home. Falsely accused of the killings, he flees his village and falls in with a priest named Tenkai, who sends him to kill a rogue ninja named Tarouza and then trains him as an assassin. Years later a hidden truth surfaces: Jiro was a foundling, and the ninja he killed was his real father, who had served Tenkai until he gave up his mission after falling in love with an Ainu woman. Jiro also learns that the Shogunate means to recover the lost treasure of Captain Kidd and use it to cut Japan off from the world once more. Guided by clues his father kept secret, and joined by the female ninja Oyuki and a slave named Sam, he sets out for Russia and America in search of the treasure, hoping it will let him take revenge on Tenkai, whose minions are never far behind.