First off, the writing is terrible and sounds like something I would have came up with if I was 13, and was into nothing but pointless violence and pointless sex. That's all that happens in this movie. There's a very generic story that they have in there as well, but it ends up being less of a full story, with scenes jumping between each other, not flowing very nicely or having any kind of a good transition between them. The whole thing is presented sloppily, and it's really more of an excuse to have a bunch of blood, gore, and naked ladies.
Also, I should mention that the pacing is completely fucked. This movie is 49 minutes long, and if I had to guess, about 35 of those minutes are dedicated to dialogue and exposition. 5 minutes are dedicated to sex scenes, and the remaining 9 minutes are dedicated to action. The main villains that they introduce are usually killed off within the first 30 seconds of their introduction, thus giving the viewer very little time to even process what's going on, yet the movie just continues.
The characters are really not good at all. The main character, Shuranosuke is virtually unbeatable and therefore, all of the fights end up becoming super boring to watch about halfway through, since it's just him wrecking house the whole time. The other characters are very generic or one-dimensional... and everybody's dialogue is written rather poorly.
The quality of the animation ranges between "Good for a 1990 TV series", and "Wow, that was really embarrassingly poor". The art style leaves a bit to be desired, but it's fine, for the most part. Thing move pretty good, for the most part, too... however, there are a few parts where the animation just looks really stiff and unrealistic. The art is passable, though, and is probably the most well-accomplished part of the whole thing.
Audio is pretty decent. The sound mix is dated, even for the time, and it just feels cheesy and doesn't work very well. I watched it in Japanese, and the voice acting was decent, but nothing spectacular. The soundtrack was also pretty middling.
Overall, Sword for Truth is pretty bad, but there also ends up being some pretty silly moments in it, and some decent art that makes it somewhat bearable. Still, I wouldn't recommend this cheap Ninja Scroll knockoff to anybody with half a brain.
I give it a 3 out of 10.
