Season 1 Episode 2:  Zatoichi befriends a young boy named Tarokichi, who is the son of a wealthy merchant. Zatoichi generously agrees to take the boy to his father after learning that that the boy’s mother has died. Zatoichi and the boy soon find themselves being pursued by greedy Yakuza who aim to steal the boy and claim a reward for his return. The martial arts in this series, is really some of the best ever dne for a television series. The stories are creative and rich in character developement and plot detail. Its is masterfully directed and never takes you out of the moment. Great stuff and well worth your time. In many ways the TV show is better than the original movie. Please Enjoy!

Season 1, Episode 1: While traveling, Zatoichi meets a kindly stranger named Tatsuso. They travel together to Ashido Village, home to a copper mine, where corrupt government officials and a ruthless Yakuza boss named Yasaburo terrorize the locals and slowly run them out of their businesses.  Zatoichi learns that his traveling companion was once known as Tatsuso the Sword-Thrower and together they help a young woman named Oshin to protect her business.
This classic Japanese Television series is the product of Daiei studios that made some 25+ Zatoichi movies before bringing a condensed version of the Zatoichi stories to television. One may wonder if the quality of the series dropped off with a smaller budget, hour long episodes, and the demand for a new story each week. And amazingly, the Zatoichi television series is just as good as the film series that preceded it. In fact many may prefer the television series.
Since each episode is reduced from 85 to 55 minutes, you get to the climatic fight a lot sooner. Also since the plot has to be simplified to accommodate less characters, the films are easier to follow. Zatoichi movies usually have several plot lines that converge at the climax while the television shows usually have only one. And with exception to the absence of fountains of blood pouring out of Ichi’s victims [ something only seen in the later movies ] the production quality is every bit as good as the movies. There are some episodes that reuse plots from the movies, but by the last few Toho films they were already recycling some of the earlier film plots. The series lasted for 100 episodes before the character was retired. This is a wonderful series, I’ll soon be posting more of these. Enjoy!