Japan Synopsis
カムイの剣
A young boy named Jiro finds his mother and sister murdered in his home. Falsely accused of the crime, he flees from his village and meets a priest named Tenkai, who has him kill a rogue ninja named Tarouza. After fulfilling that task, Jiro undergoes training to become a master assassin. Many years later, Jiro finds out that he was an orphan and his real father was Tarouza, who had worked for Tenkai until he aborted his mission when he fell in love with an Ainu woman. The young ninja discovers that the Shogunate was to retrieve the lost treasure of Captain Kidd and use it to once again isolate Japan from the rest of the world. Using the clues that Tarouza had kept secret, Jiro – along with the female ninja Oyuki and a slave named Sam – travels to Russia and America to search for the treasure in hopes of using it to extract revenge from Tenkai.
Titles With Overlapping Themes
Films and series that share thematic tags with The Dagger of Kamui. Number on each card indicates how many keywords overlap.
Other Titles From Madhouse
Animation + Action in Japan
1178 Japan titles in our catalog blend the Animation and Action genres. Below: the top-rated of them (excluding The Dagger of Kamui itself).
The 1984–1986 Japan Window
In the crowded 1984-1986 Japan release window, The Dagger of Kamui sits at #74 of 91. The leaderboard below contextualises its neighbours.
The 1980s Japan Landscape
Catalog density by release year across the 1980s in Japan, 280 titles in total. Highlighted year (yellow) is when The Dagger of Kamui premiered alongside 33 others.
Position in Catalog
Released alongside 33 other Japan films in 1985.
The 635th Japan title from Japan we index (earliest catalogued entry: 1899).
Our Japan catalog contains 4,579 titles in total (2,908 films).
Audience Engagement
17 audience reviews — more than 30% of Japan films in our index.
Popularity sits at the 27th percentile among Japan films.
Thematic Fingerprint
Tags on The Dagger of Kamui, grouped by how common each theme is across the full Asian catalog. Rare tags are more distinctive signals.
- shogunate · 5
- shinobi · 1
- treasure · 8
- based on novel or book · 288
- revenge · 210
- murder · 155
Reception Benchmarks
Ranked #3,942 of 4,579 Japan films indexed here (14th percentile by TMDB audience score).
Rating is -1.0 points below the Japan average of 6.9/10.
Among Japan Animation productions specifically: #2,313 of 2,532 (top 91%).
Production Details
| Primary Country | Japan |
|---|---|
| Original Language | Japanese |
| Production Companies | Madhouse, KADOKAWA |
| Runtime | 2h 12m |
| Release Date | March 8, 1985 |
| IMDb | tt0088983 |