Three For The Kill, Again!...and again, and again...

~The television in my apartment is set on "bilingual mode", which will pick up the English audio track of any bilingual broadcast. Usually, I watch the nine o'clock news which is broadcasted and translated live, and there are usually a couple of American movies every week.

As for everything else, there's really not much worth watching...much like American television, actually. The channels that I get are full of bizarre game shows, overblown romances, outlandish cooking shows, and rather prosaic nature documentaries (which are probably as close to nature as most Tokyo-dwellers get). There is one Japanese show, however, that I watch on a more-or-less regular basis: a samurai drama called "Matamata, Sanbiki ga Kiru" (Three For the Kill, Again!).

The reason I watch this show is the same reason that my Dad used to watch JAG: it happened to be on at the same time he happened to feel like watching TV. In my case, "Matamata, Sanbiki ga Kiru" happens to be on around the time I get up and am going through my standard startup sequence for work. Also, the main samurai character actually reminds me of my Dad, which I find vaguely amusing.

As best I can tell, the show is a spinoff of a movie called "Sanbiki ga Kiru", hence the addition of matamata ("again") to the name of the television series. Unfortunately, I was unable to find much information about the show, despite my best online sleuthing efforts. But fear not, o loyal readers, for you I went through the trouble of actually filming the best part of yesterday's episode. Please forgive the abysmal quality of this video, as it was made by recording the TV screen with my camera:

^ I just love how the ninja girl appears out of nowhere with a series of back flips. Ninja attack!

I honestly have no idea what's being said in the show. I can sometimes understand the odd word, or perhaps the basic gist of an individual sentence. However, the meaning of the conversations elude me (although I'm sure they involve much talk about honor/loyalty/discipline/rice). Fortunately, after (un)extensive research, I deduced that each episode follows roughly the same sequence, making individual episode plots redundant:

1. The main character (a samurai lord, wearing purple in the above video), is meeting some important people, discussing apparently serious matters with them. Although for all I know, they could be discussing haiku or the market price of squid.
2. A friend of the samurai lord is walking down the city streets on an urgent errand. He is attacked by thugs and fatally wounded.
3. The samurai lord is furious, but remains cool and detached. He visits some other, less-important samurai, and intimidates them into revealing who attacked his friend. The perpetrator turns out to be another powerful samurai who may be too strong to confront.
   
4. The hero goes home for dinner. While he is ruminating on his dilemma, his wife prepares Japanese tea and makes light conversation. Something she says gives the hero a sudden realization and/or inspiration.
   
5. Ignoring the tea, he storms out of his house and arrives at the villain's hideout, challenging him directly. A small army of minions appear and prepare to attack.
6. The hero draws his katana and goes into "battle stance" with his "glare of death". This is the cue for the battle theme music (with the violin) to begin playing.
7. The samurai battles dozens of warriors at once. His fighting style involves walking casually, then suddenly unleashing a lightning-fast slash or two that invariably kills somebody, then going back to walking. Wash, rinse, repeat. Occasionally, he throws out a "glare of death", which scares the pants off of the thugs.
   
8. Halfway through the fight, the hero finds himself somewhat pressed. At this point, his loyal ninja henchmen materialize and easily slaughter the remaining enemies.
9. The villain is either mercilessly butchered or escapes to fight another day, cursing the hero.
10. The plot skips forward to the next day, where it turns out that the injury of the hero's friend was not life-threatening, but was merely a flesh wound. Smiles and laughs for everyone!
    

That, in a nutshell, is the plot of the show. I've seen this same list of events happen a dozen times. And I'll watch the same thing happen again, because hey, that battle theme music is kind of catchy. ~Oyasumi!