REMOW announced on Thursday that the Samurai Detective Onihei: Blood for Blood live-action special based on Shōtarō Ikenami‘s Onihei Crime Reports in Edo (Onihei Hankachō) novel series is streaming in the United States on the “24/7 Samurai – Shinobi” FAST channel.
The company describes the feature-length special as a “gripping tale of justice, betrayal, and redemption set against the backdrop of Edo’s criminal underworld.” It follows the Samurai Detective Onihei: Lawless Love film in the series.
Ikenami serialized the story in Bungeishunju‘s Ōru Yomimono novel magazine from 1967 to 1989, and Bungeishunju published 19 volumes for the main story. Later paperback reprints divide the story into 24 volumes. The serialized novels inspired the first live-action television adaptation in 1969, as well as three subsequent series and a 1995 live-action film. The novels also inspired a television anime adaptation that premiered in January 2017, and streamed on Amazon Prime Video‘s now-defunct Anime Strike channel. Tubi TV added the anime with an English dub in April 2021.
Onihei Crime Reports in Edo, Sentarō Kubota and Takao Saitō‘s manga adaptation of Ikenami’s novels, launched in Comic Ran in 1993. Saito passed away in September 2021 but the manga continued per the final wishes of Saito. JManga once partially published the manga in North America.
The historical novel series depicts Heizō Hasegawa, who metes justice on wrongdoers and supervises the crackdown on arsonists and robbers in Japan’s Edo period (1603-1868).
Source: Press release