Oshima adopted a decidedly unorthodox approach for his one and only anime, a spirited adaptation of Sanpei Shirato's popular manga epic about the struggle of a young samurai warrior to avenge his father's death. Out of respect for the unique artistic and textual qualities of Shirato's celebrated graphic novel, Oshima restricted his production to filming the drawn pages themselves and matching the images to the film's layered music, sound and voice tracks. An inspired follow-up to Diary of Yunbogi's powerful montage of still images, Band of Ninja offers a totally novel and effective mode of adaptation and a fascinating meditation on the relationship between the comic book and the cinema.