A samurai walks into a fight with a dull blade and his own two left feet, and somehow that's enough to make you forget you're watching something from 1917. The gags land with the precision of someone who already understood how to milk a joke through pure physical comedy, frame after frame of a man getting exactly what his cheap sword deserves. Silent, no plot to speak of, just a guy getting humbled by his own incompetence, and it still works.

A samurai buys a sword from a merchant, only to find that the blade is dull. Eager to try out his purchase, he goes after passers-by he takes for easy targets, but the cheap weapon and his own clumsiness work against him. The lower-class townspeople he attacks strike back and leave him on the ground, and every attempt ends in defeat. The result is a four-minute comedy short built around one samurai's repeated failures.