Shinobi - Heart Under Blade or Kouga Ninpouchou Basilisk - The Live-Action is a 2005 Japanese >ninjutsu romance film directed by Ten Shimoyamaand written by Kenya Hirata. The story is an adaptation of the novel, The Kouga Ninja Scrolls by Futaro Yamada, which depicts the clash between two ninjaclans, Iga and Kouga, and the fated love between Gennosuke (Koga) and Oboro (Iga). The theme song of this movie was the number one hit, HEAVEN, byAyumi Hamasaki. This movie won both best actor and best new actress awards at both the Kinema Junpo Awards and Yokohama Film Festival in 2006 according to the Internet Movie Database.

On February 6, 2007, Funimation Entertainment released the film in the United States. The contents of the DVD is a 2-Disc Set with the main movie available in Japanese and a new dub from Funimation themselves. The 2nd Disc contains Special Features and making-ofs. All of the films are subtitled in English.

Also a manga and an anime called Basilisk are based on the same novel, and bear the same character names as in the novel and the movie. Although their characters in the film are highly altered from both the original novel and the manga/anime series.

Plot

Set immediately after the Japanese Sengoku period, Iga and Kouga, two clans that produce powerful ninja for warlords, have been waging a vendetta against each other over hundreds of years.

Around 1614, Tokugawa Ieyasu, the ruler of Japan and the founder of the Tokugawa Shogunate, perceives the threat posed by the ninjas. Attempting to consolidate his reign, he deliberately stirs up the feud by inviting the clans to choose their five best warriors to fight to the death (see the list below). Designated as the leaders of the two clans respectively, Kouga Gennosuke (Joe Odagiri) and Oboro (Yukie Nakama), who have secretly married, are unwillingly embroiled in the political plot. Hence, they have to make a difficult decision.

Initially, being peaceful and knowing the preciousness of life, they try their utmost to prevent this meaningless and brutal fight by questioning the shogunate's motives. After the deaths of all their comrades, however, they gradually accept their fate.

In the last fight, Kouga Gennosuke chooses not to defend himself and allows his lover Oboro to kill him, thus letting the clan of Iga "win". Meanwhile, Ieyasu sends his armies to exterminate the ninja villages. To accomplish Gennosuke's hope of saving them, Oboro implores Tokugawa Ieyasu not to destroy the villages and, as a show of her sincerity, blinds herself, thereby destroying her most powerful weapons, her eyes (which possess the power to destroy an enemy from within the minute they make eye contact with her, a technique called "Piercing Eyes" (破幻之瞳 "Hagen no Dō" lit. "the pupil of annihilation").

Moved profoundly by Oboro, Ieyasu withdraws his armies and issues an injunction to protect the ninja villages. According to the movie, the ninjas of the villages live on peacefully.