Zipang is a light-hearted fantasy adventure from those wacky filmmakers in Japan.

The story concerns Jigoku, a master swordsman who travels with a motley little circus crew, and Yuri ‘the Pistol,’ a young female bounty hunter who takes it upon herself to bring him in for the reward. Jigoku’s group locates a fabled golden sword, the finding of which opens a long-shut portal to an other-dimensional world called Zipang, ‘the golden land’ written of by Marco Polo himself. One of the shogun’s ninjas snaps a picture of the sword (yes, some simple mechanical devices like pistols and cameras exist in this fictional Japan alongside earlier technology – it is never explained why) and the Shogun sends dozens of the blue-clad ninjas to steal all the gold from the fabled land.

The land itself, however, isn’t ready to be conquered. The golden god that rules Zipang is no pushover, especially when he dons his weird armor and his nearly-unstoppable henchmen back him up. But all ends that ends well: just before the golden god buys it in the end, he gets downright lyrical: “Against human love, even the gods fight in vain.” Amen, brother… (sniff) amen.

Zipang was a nice film. It never quite took itself too seriously, and things moved fast with plenty of action. The characters were pretty much likeable (well, that dog-boy with the circus was pretty annoying); even most of the villains were not truly villainous. The scenes of fighting and swordplay seemed well-staged.

The juxtaposition of relatively modern machinery (cameras, projectors, etc.) was odd, and didn’t seem to serve much purpose; I kept expecting such devices to play a pivotal role, or at least to be explained, but alas, nothing doing. They were designed interestingly, though, to fit in with the rest of the medieval-Japan scenery (sort of the same way that machinery in steampunk fiction suits the design sense of Victorian London). I also noticed that the characters sometimes had a modern way of speaking.

The playfulness of the script was always evident. None of the villains ever became too threatening, and even the fight scenes with huge body counts were filled with humorous moments. I also detected a few fleeting pop culture references to Jaws, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and even the Zatoichi films.

Zipang is a fun, light fantasy film with plenty of adventure and thrills. It’s worth finding a copy on DVD if you don’t pay too much.