Shurayukihime
The scenes of this film do not appear in chronological order. Each paragraph below represents a passage of the film in the order it appears.
In 1874, a baby is born in a women's prison as snow falls outside. Her deathly-ill mother names her Yuki (snow).
A woman blocks the path of several men and a rickshaw, and kills them using a sword concealed in the handle of an umbrella. She tells the last man to die, Shibayama, that her name is Shura Yuki-hime. She appears in a poor village looking for a man called Matsuemon, the leader of an underground organization of street beggars, and asks him to find four people for her, having killed Shibayama for him.
In 1873, a teacher, his wife Sayo, and their son are attacked by four criminals. One of the criminals, a woman named Kitahama Okono, holds Sayo while the three men – Takemura Banzō, Shokei Tokuichi, and Tsukamoto Gishirō – murder the teacher and his son and rape Sayo. Tokuichi secretly takes Sayo far away to work for him. Sayo bides her time, kills him with a knife, and is sent to prison for life.
In the women's prison, after the baby is born, Sayo tells her story to the women inmates who helped deliver the baby. She has seduced a prison guard to conceive the child. She tells the other women to raise the child for vengeance, then dies.
In Meiji 15 (1882), the child Yuki trains in sword fighting with a priest called Dōkai.
Yuki, now twenty, finds Banzō's daughter Kobue. Kobue is a prostitute, and her father is now an alcoholic wreck with gambling debts. At a gambling house, Yuki plays cards with Banzō, who is caught cheating. He is about to be killed. Yuki persuades the owners to pardon him, then leads him to a beach and kills him herself.
Learning that Tsukamoto Gishirō has died, she visits his grave. She slashes the flowers and then the gravestone. Matsuemon and his friends notice that Gishirō died just when Yuki started trying to find him – three years ago.
A reporter named Ryūrei Ashio sees Yuki attack the grave and follows her. He questions her past, but she tells him to stay away from her. However, Dōkai tells Ashio Yuki's story, then persuades him to publish it. Ashio writes and sells the story (which, on the screen, is told using frames from the original comic). It is revealed that Dōkai planned this to get Kitahama Okono to reveal herself.
Okono sends men to kidnap Ashio. They torture him for Yuki's location, but he refuses to tell them. Yuki enters Okono's estate and kills several of Okono's men and is fired upon by Okono. While Yuki fights and kills Okono's men, Okono hangs herself. Yuki slices Okono in half before her heart can stop beating.
Yuki learns that Gishirō is still alive, having faked his death when he learned of Yuki's mission. She finds him at a masquerade ball and kills him, but the dead man is not really Gishirō. Ashio and Yuki find and follow the real Gishirō, who shoots Ashio. Wounded, Ashio grapples with Gishirō and stops him from shooting Yuki as she swings on a lamp between balconies. Yuki stabs through Ashio into Gishirō's chest. She then cuts Gishirō's throat, but as he dies he shoots her. He falls over a railing and onto the ground floor full of guests.
Yuki, wounded, stumbles outside. Kobue suddenly appears. She stabs Yuki, then runs away. Yuki falls on her face in the snow.
The film ends with Yuki opening her eyes the next morning.
murder, cult, violence, flashback, good versus evil, revenge