What if Toshirô Mifune was a little bit more of a churlish bastard – but what if that didn’t make you like him any less? You might get something like Hideo Gosha’s jidaigeki action film SAMURAI WOLF!

It’s a fun, contemporary take on some of Kurosawa’s best movies and the tropes they codified, with a wandering ronin taking on the cause of the underdog and finding more of his own humanity in the people he’s aiding – but also being kind of terrified of that discovery. Hired to aid a valuable rural shipping outpost deliver 30,000 pieces of gold for the regional shogun, Kiba Okaminosuke is challenged by the roving clans bandit clans who claim the nearby town, a shadowy ronin with far fewer scruples than Kiba himself, and the affection of a blind widow with some skeletons of her own.

Get tickets to “HIDEO GOSHA: WANDERING RONIN” (Aug 2023 at the Trylon): https://www.trylon.org/films/category/wandering-ronin/

SAMURAI WOLF was shown at the Trylon with support from the Japan America Society of Minnesota https://www.mn-japan.org/

Follow us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/trylovepodcast and email us at [email protected] to get in touch! Buy tickets and support the Trylon at https://www.trylon.org/.

Theme: "Raindrops" by Huma-Huma/"No Smoking" PSA by John Waters. Outro music composed by Toshiaki Tsushima from the SAMURAI WOLF soundtrack.

Timestamps

0:00 - Episode 238: SAMURAI WOLF (1966)

2:25 - The Patented Aaron Grossman Summary (under exclusive license from AG Enterprises, LLC)

4:40 - A shaggy-dog version of YOJIMBO

18:25 - Kiba’s spin on the wandering ronin archetype

25:14 - Sanai and the corruption of desire

32:25 - The ending and running from growing up

45:34 - The Junk Drawer

52:46 - Good Grief, Give Me a GIF!

1:01:20 - Cody’s Noteys: Awooo, Try-wolves of Love-don (wolf-related movie trivia)