G.I. Samurai

Plot

During a defensive exercise, a wildly mixed group of Japanese SDF forces with a tank, an APC, a patrol boat and a helicopter suddenly find themselves stranded 400 years in the past through a sudden time slip effect and under attack by samurai forces. Their acting commanding officer, Second Lieutenant Yoshiaki Iba, befriends and joins forces with Nagao Kagetora, the war leader of lord Koizumi. Seeing the SDF weaponry in action, Kagetora persuades Iba to aid him in his struggle for supremacy in feudal Japan.

In the meantime, however, Iba finds himself faced with the desperation of his men who want to return to their own time. Some make contact with the locals – one, Private First Class Mimura, even finds himself a consort who keeps following him – whilst others freak out, running away in a desperate attempt to return home, or rebelling against rules and restrictions and try to live as pirates. Finally, his force shrunk from 21 men to 11, Iba manages to calm his troops by telling them that by fighting history and thus creating a time paradox they might be able to return home. Iba joins Kagetora and fights by his side.

Finally, Iba and the members face Takeda Shingen's forces in battle. But their trust in their advanced weaponry costs them dearly: Shingen's forces outmanoeuvre them at every turn, the soldiers lose all their vehicles and major weapons, and five of them die on the battlefield. In a desperate attempt, Iba forces his way to Shingen's command post and kills him in a sword duel.

As Iba and his remaining men go to join Kagetora in Kyoto, the latter is put under pressure by his family and the Shōgun Ashikaga Yoshiaki to get rid of Iba. Reluctantly conceding, Kagetora intercepts Iba's group at an old temple. But as Iba prepares to kill Kagetora for his betrayal, Kagetora shoots him. The other soldiers are killed by Kagetora's archers, and Mimura's consort delivers the fatal blow to her lover.

Kagetora remorsefully buries Iba and his men with honors. In the end, only one of the members, Private Mokichi Nemoto, survives, who had left the group to help a boy and his family, whose father had been killed.

Cast

Shōwa period characters

Commissioned Officers

Sonny Chiba as Second Lieutenant Yoshiaki Iba (Commanding Officer of the brigade)

Kazunaga Tsuji as Ensign Shōichirō Ono (Commanding Officer of the patrol boat)

Non-Commissioned Officers and Enlisted Personnel

Raita Ryū as Sergeant Haruhisa Kimura

Shinichiro Mikami as Sergeant Goichi Shimada

Tadashi Kato as Sergeant First Class Hideo Shimizu (Pilot-In-Command of the helicopter)

Tsunehiko Watase as Leading Private Hayato Yano

Hiroshi Kamayatsu as Private Mokichi Nemoto

Jinya Sato as Private Osamu Seki

Kokontei Shinkoma as Private Kenji Hori

Jun Eto as Private First Class Nobuhiko Ken

Yoichi Miura as Private First Class Manabu Nonaka

Akira Nishikino as Private First Class Koji Kikuchi

Hiromitsu Suzuki as Private First Class Gō Nishizawa

Koji Naka as Private First Class Taisuke Mimura

Ryo Hayami as Private First Class Kazumichi Morishita

Takuzo Kadono as Seaman Toshishige Suga

Sengoku period characters

Isao Natsuyagi as Nagao Kagetora

Haruki Kadokawa as Sanada Masayuki

Hitoshi Omae as Kuribayashi Magoichi

Kentaro Kudo as Ishiba Takehide

Katsumasa Uchida as Asaba Yorichika

Goro Kataoka as Tategawa Katsuzō

Asao Koike as Koizumi Yukinaga

Shin Kishida as Naoe Bungo

Hirohisa Nakata as Kuroda Naoharu

Hiroshi Tanaka as Takeda Shingen

Hiroyuki Sanada as Takeda Katsuyori

Hiroko Yakushimaru as Young Takeda Samurai

Gajiro Sato as Foot Soldier

Mikio Narita as Kōsa

Mizuho Suzuki as Shōgun Ashikaga Yoshiaki

Masashi Ishibashi as Hosokawa Fujitaka

Miyuki Ono as Miwa

Masao Kusakari as Masakichi

Ryudo Uzaki as Ochimusha

Ayako Honma as Old Woman

Koji Iizuka as Shokichi

Maiko Ōtsuka as Mai

Kaori Taniguchi as Shokichi & Mai's Mother

Equipment

Initially, the producers approached the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force (JGSDF) for props and vehicles, but the army cut their support after reading that the soldiers went AWOL in the script. For that reason, old and sometimes out-dated equipment (like M3 submachine guns) had to be used. The tank featured in the movie was even built entirely from scratch.

The vehicles, including a tank Type 61 and a helicopter Sea King , continue to run despite there being no replenishing fuel supply in the 16th century – a logical problem which was resolved in the remake.

Adaptations

A film remake in 2005 was titled Sengoku Jieitai 1549.

A four-episode TV miniseries called Sengoku Jieitai: Sekigahara no Tatakai was aired in 2006 by NTV, directed by Kōsei Saitō.

Name of the movie in different languages

Japanese: Sengoku Jieitai

English: G.I. Samurai

French: Les Guerriers de l'Apocalypse

Spanish: Eclipse En El Tiempo

Croatian: Vrijeme je stalo u 5 i 18

German: Time Slip – Tag der Apokalypse

Norwegian: Tidsstorm

Russian: Провал во времени

Cantonese: Zin3 Gwok3 Zi6 Wai6 Deoi6

Polish: W Pułapce Czasu

Home video

In the UK, the film was bundled with Golgo 13: Assignment Kowloon and The Bullet Train in The Sonny Chiba Collection Vol. 2 Region 2 DVD set by Optimum Home Releasing.

In popular culture

The film is indirectly referenced in the Japanese light novel series Gate as research material for JSDF countermeasures against the Special Region's Imperial forces, and fire rams and ambush trenches (both of which appear during the battle against Shingen's forces in the film) are made use of by Zorzal's forces during the later Imperial civil war.