Ninja Scroll returns to US cinemas in a 4K remaster
Yoshiaki Kawajiri's 1993 samurai thriller is back on American screens in a new 4K presentation from HIDIVE, Sentai and Iconic Events Releasing.
Ninja Scroll is back in American cinemas this week in a 4K remaster. Yoshiaki Kawajiri's 1993 samurai thriller screens on 4, 5 and 7 October in a run presented by HIDIVE, Sentai and Iconic Events Releasing.
The film follows Jubei Kibagami, a masterless swordsman who is pulled into a conspiracy after he rescues a poison-tasting kunoichi, Kagero, and becomes the target of the Eight Devils of Kimon — a team of superhuman mercenaries in the pay of a shogunate plot. It remains the film Kawajiri is best known for, and a fixture of the hand-drawn action he returned to across a long career at Madhouse.
What the 4K run actually offers
The presentation is billed simply as Remastered in 4K. The film was animated at Madhouse, and the re-release artwork credits it to Yoshiaki Kawajiri, Madhouse, FlyingDog, TOHO and MOVIC.
The run is limited to three dates: 4, 5 and 7 October. Tickets and showtimes are listed on Iconic Events Releasing's event page, while Sentai's store and the HIDIVE streaming service carry the company's wider anime catalogue.
Our opinion
Repertory anime screenings have quietly become one of the most reliable cinema tickets going, and Ninja Scroll is close to a perfect test case. Its pleasures are physical: the weight of a sword swing, the silence before a kill, and grain that a 4K pass can either honour or scrub away. Anyone who has only seen the film on a laptop is getting the version Kawajiri's team actually drew.
The commercial logic is just as clear. A three-night run costs a distributor very little and turns a catalogue title into an event; Sentai and HIDIVE get to remind audiences they own one of the defining action films of the 1990s, and cinemas get a title that a remaster flatters. The only open question is whether the audience turns out on a Sunday, a Monday and a Wednesday. On this evidence it should.