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Count Hiromasa (Hideaki Ito) has just made the acquaintance of Seimei
(Mansai Nomura), a Yin Yang master at the court of the Mikado (Ittoku
Kishibe), by whose wisdom and magic he is deeply fascinated and met
Sukehime (Yui Natsukawa), a mysterious woman he has nevertheless fallen in
love with, when the the court of the Mikado and indeed the whole empire is
threatened by curse after curse, as rivalling wizard Doson (Hiroyuki
Sanada) and rivalling Count Motokata (Akira Emoto) have joined forces to
wreak havoc and make the world where humans and demons coexist on a large
scale..
First, it's the Mikado's baby son who is possessed, but Seimei manages
to drive the demon out of the baby and into the immortal Aone (Kyoko
Koizumi), only to exorcise her later.
Count Motokata tries to immediately turn the tables on Seimei and have
him arrested for black magic, but his guards are of course no match for
the Yin Yang master, plus Seimei is (of course) under the protection of
the Mikado.
Next the Mikado himself is threatened by an evil spirit, who turns out
to be a woman he has once wronged, who in turn turns out to be Sukehime -
and now it's Hiromasa's love to her that lets her find her peace.
Ultimately, Doson revives the spirit of a warrior king, Sawara (Masato
Hagiwara) and lets himself be possessed by it to bring destruction to the
empire, and he even kills Hiromasa, who would be instrumental in saving
the empire - however, Aone the immortal reminds Seimei that she was made
immortal to protect the empire and that he has to now transfer her
lifeforce into Hiromasa to save it, even if that means her death.
What follows is a big martial arts and magic battle, which Seimei can
only decide for the Mikado's side when he goes into the netherworld and
reconciles Aone and Sawara, who were lovers a long time ago, and this way
leaves Doson without his most powerful ally ...
Yin Yang Master is an elegantly filmed and nice piece
of fantasy cinema in which state of the art CGI-effects and old fashioned
narrative and direction can peacefully co-exist. As nice as the film is
though it fails to leave a lasting impression, somehow it lacks an
original storyline and/or imaginative setpieces to remain into one's
memory for too long. That said however, the film's still good
entertainment.
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