Trama

Danger, vengeance, anger, loyalty, pain are the basic elements of this story, where the worst aspects of the human soul are described together with the growth of the main character, the young Sasuke.

Sasuke is a boy who belongs to the Sarutobi clan fighting with the one belonging to the Tokugawa Shogun. During 17th century Japan and the Tokugawa Shogun wins his battle and sentences his surviving rivals to death. In a terrifying chase, Sasuke's father is injured and, to save his life, pretends to be a vagabond. His mother is not so lucky and is instead killed by Tokugawa's followers, the Hattori. Sasuke then finds himself having to escape to save his life as well and in this escape he joins his father who, under the guise of a vagabond martial arts master, will initiate him in the ninja art without revealing his true identity. In the long journey that the boy will undertake, however, the Hattori will not be the only enemy. As a path of initiation, in fact, Sasuke and his father will encounter a thousand obstacles and strange characters, sometimes dangerous and sometimes willing to help them escape. The atmosphere of each episode is quite dark, the colors used always seem to tend to gray and black out of respect for the rather dramatic plot of the series. And so the lines seem almost made with ink and this technique, so adult if you will, although we find quite childish faces and details in the characters, gives a special pathos to the whole story. This is still a cartoon different from the others. Even in the childish features of the drawings, created by the master of the genre Sampei Shirato, the plot is very realistic and faithful to historical veracity. In a purely male world dominated by the law of the strongest that is always devoid of mercy, the series forgets that it is a product intended primarily for a young audience and puts on screen images that are often even bloody, where blood abounds and master Shirato gives scientific explanations (absolutely true) to the various ninja tricks that, little by little, he teaches his son.