Steineded How sad is this?

Dynamixor The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Jenna Walter The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

Sarita Rafferty There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

Phil Hubbs Following on from the first film we see our female assassin hunted down by hired ninjas for her handy work. She is on her way to complete the mission set out in the first film and assassinate 'Sanada' (her finale target), along the way she meets up with a group of bandits who assist her but this also allows spies into the equation. This is the basis for the plot very simply laid out.I must say I got the feeling this film may have been one big long film that was cut into two on purpose, the whole thing filmed in one go. The continuity is very good with both plot and certain actors returning and you do get a fairly epic feeling in the scope of things. Aya Ueto in the lead is still cute as hell while Tak Sakaguchi seems to be in every modern Japanese flick with any hint of action.To be honest the film isn't entirely different from the first in the terms of what happens. Its more sword slashing, blood spurting and many similar yet nicely created characters, it also visually appears identical to the first hence why I think it was all made at the same time. Not exactly worthy of an epic award but certainly well made with some grand action sequences to please the eye.Like all Japanese Samurai/ninja films it has a lovely period feel to the proceedings with small segments of fantasy or myth. These do add to the charm of the film but also take away from it. The story is based on a manga comic but there are so many of these adaptations from Japan you do get a strong sense of deja vu half the time.The main plus points in this film (like many other films from the land of the rising sun) are the characters. Big, bold, colourful, exciting, athletic and overflowing with emotions whilst the flash of their Katana's glint in the sun at you. The plot is pretty much the same old search for revenge, truth or justice motif with nothing really new to offer in terms of action but it does the job well.7/10

trashgang This is still a real good example of Asian flicks so it's not for everybody but if you can understand their way of living than you really will enjoy this flick. It goes further were part one stopped and their are some flashbacks but overall the story is much better than the first one. But you will need a paper to wrote all the names down to understand who is who. Again they used CGI for some scene's to fill in the blood or the more gorier (funny) parts that reminded me of one of the traps of Cube. But when the red stuff flows it sputters like they use to do in Asian flicks. It clocks in at almost 2 hours but still you keep attracted to the screen. Nowadays it's easy to find the DVD and it's so cheap that you have to pick it up.

gandalf_a_1999 A great looking girl as a killer assassin, my type of movie, a superb follow up to the first. The first I gave a 10 as it developed more of the rather small storyline (take out the 3 warlords to prevent war. This movie continues the last part of the mission: search and destroy Sanada.A surprise is the bandit Ginkaku (a lookalike Nachi from the first movie) played by the same person as he had such a small role in the first movie, whom Azumi feels instantly attracted to.Azumi is as inhumanly fast and deadly as in the first movie, very few foes lasting a second or two before you see the blood spurting or body parts flying. I would say shes like a blur but that credit goes to Kunio.A large flaw I found was the lack of guards around Tenkai which was laughable, the only reason I can see for this is Sanada had his forces around him isolating him from his troops which makes no sense. Surely at all times there would be a large guard around someone of his importance, even if they weren't expecting an attack, comeon. Though of course some nice action sequences would need to be changed.As has been said, watching this before the first will leave you lost, though you can watch it purely for the action sequences. I had to rewind a few scenes to follow the killing spree.This movie kills so many action movies, with a few lengthy boss fights throughout the movie, not just waiting for the last fight.Thoroughly entertaining.

dtjaunt I loved the first "Azumi" movie. I've seen Ms. Ueto in a variety of her TV appearances and I've seen my fair share of samurai and ninja flicks. I have to say that this movie was much weaker than I'd expected.Given the movie's cast and set up in "Azumi", they should have been able to do a much better job with this movie, but instead it was slow, plodding in parts, and sprinkled with very poor, unconvincing, and wooden acting.When they bothered to reference the first movie, they did so in a manner that was pretty loose and weak. In "Azumi", the title character is the best of a group of superior killers. In "Azumi 2" she seems somehow diminished and less-impressive.That's not to say it was a total loss. There were a few decent fight scenes and some over-the-top characters. Unfortunately, the movie suffers overall from the simple fact that Shusuke Kaneko and Yoshiaki Kawajiri are not Ryuhei Kitamura and Isao Kiriyama. The latter two truly captured the "manga" feel in their screenplay whereas the former never quite "got it."