Samurai X: Trust and Betrayal's story concerns itself with a cold blooded and skillful retainer of a rising Shogun. There's some political intrigue yet most of it will require some extensive background knowledge of the era but its main focus is on the retainer's realization of his actions and how he has lost his way despite his original, noble intentions of saving people.
Most of this comes from a woman who he is initially cold to, but slowly cracks his stalwart emotional wall. Sadly the contrast between the extreme violence and the rather feeble attempts at building a romance comes across as idealized, convenient (given some of the plot arcs that follow on) and frankly pathetic given in how the relationship develops from dialogue that is frequent to long awkward pauses, cold stares and tone-deaf writing. I do hope that this is not the writer's idea of a romance because most of the story concerns it.
The dissonance also grows stronger given the violence is not used as a metaphor to say anything meaningful about violence. It's violence for violence's sake. It's not dispassionate, it's not in any way juxtaposed with the romance to illustrate the different sides of life that are integral to a society, it is perfunctorily added for the sake of 'oohs' and 'aahs' as opposed to 'that's grim, this guy is a dick'. In other words the violence isn't used to distance the audience from the character. It is heavily stylized, connoting the actions as graceful and admirable rather than his internal conflict.
One could argue that this story is that of redemption but you would need something to redeem yourself for. Amir in Kite Runner had to redeem himself for his betrayal, John Marston had to redeem himself for being a nuisance to America's industrialists and the swordsman here is redeeming himself for killing people? That motivation is so unbelievably hollow and atypical that it dredges the tone for the whole film.
If there is one saving grace to this for me, it would have to be the rather fluid artistic direction. Bar the obvious visual spectacle, this is like watching Spartacus, flashy but ultimately piffle.
