Tao no Tsuki is a Japanese Sci Fi movie. I happily went to see it because my favorite Japanese actor, Mr. Masaki Tachi (in Japanese they say it the other way around, it feels strange saying it English-style) is in it! Unfortunately he's not famous.

There's a wandering monk who writes really nice Kanji characters and in so doing can control things (and people) around him, by writing the kanji on an object or a piece of paper he plops on the person (talk about the power of the written word!). He's the guy up there who looks like he holding a spear with a blackened tip. But it's really a large brush, that's ink on the tip.

There's a stray young samurai who is sent with the monk by his lord. The samurai has a self-repairing sword sharp enough to cleave stone.

There's a young girl living all by herself in the woods who owns a dagger that I could not figure out the importance of, possibly given to her by her father.

There's the evil villain (the guy in white) who uses the power of the written word just as well, if not more so, than the wandering monk. The evil villain appears to be after the samurai's magic sword, but I'm not really sure. He gets visions through a little white blob that looks like a petrified brain (more on this later).

Now for the secondary characters that I paid attention to:

There are these two mysterious alien women who come to earth with some weird object in their hands which appears to have the curious ability to yank anything made of steel into its service.

There's this third alien woman who is scarred, seemingly half-insane and after the object. Careful consideration never quite revealed which side she was on, as she killed one of the other two and seriously injured the other. In the end she took the other's place to stop the monster.

There are the bandits who work for the evil villain (my actor is one of them).

Now for the story (inasmuch as I could figure it out):

Eh-hem. Once upon a time, there was this huge dangerous flesh-eating monster. And this group of amazons finally got it under control and imprisoned it in a moon. Well, the moon blew up and the monster's... brain, I think, fell to Earth where it eventually wound up in the hands of the power-mad evil bad guy.

So, the amazons went a-looking for it. There was a difference of opinion on the subject, however. One young amazon broke with the others, and was willing to kill over who got to use the tool to stop the monster. (I think.) 　　

��Meanwhile, the signs and portents bring the wandering monk to visit the lord (who is wondering about these signs and portents himself) from whom he collects the samurai with the magic sword. The two of them head off in certain directions for reasons I did not understand. In the woods they have a brief encounter with this little girl and continue on their way.

Anyway, in the night the aliens come. The commotion attracts the girl, who witnesses the fight and the mortal wounding of one amazon. While the other two's battle takes them away, the girl goes to the injured amazon and through mind-to-mind contact is given a mysterious tattoo and the tool that will lock away the monster. Then the amazon dies.

The other good amazon is critically injured, but she has a "pet" which takes care of the wound. The renegade amazon has no such "pet", but her injuries do not kill her. She finds, to her fury, that the case she managed to capture does not contain the object. She has no way to locate it. 　　

The next morning, the girl is fiddling around with the object and activates it. It sucks the swords out of the hands of a group of bandits (one of which is my actor) riding by before she turns it off. The bandits come to investigate and (like most obnoxious villains) Tachi particularly gets to harrass the girl and steal her dagger until the samurai and the monk arrive to help. 　　

Tachi gets a lot of work in. In the ensuing battle he successfully manages NOT to get killed by the hero, though a number of his fellows do. He uses a grenade to stun the heroes and get away. Unfortunately his boss decides that this bright boy deserves to die, and has him hung. (waaah!) 　　

The good amazon meets the white-haired one in battle and neutralizes her at last, then goes on her way. 　　

Our heroes walk right into the enemy's camp, where the man-in-white considers the wandering monk his big problem, the samurai an annoyance, and the girl virtually non-existent. The heroes keep almost getting away, but during battles the evil bad guy realizes that the little white blob reacts to the presence of blood. So he grabs one of his own men and cuts the guy's throat. The blob pulses, then suddenly drains the life force of our evil bad guy, aging him. Dropped into a puddle of blood, it "hatches" into the lovely red critter pictured way below. 　　

Let me see. Somewhere in all this the other good amazon arrived and ended up critically injured, again, but this time there is no little pet to help her. So, she died. But they got the tool and the monk tried to use it to stop the monster, not realizing that only the girl can use it, cuz she has the magic tattoo! (you following?) The monster pursues him over the hill where he uses his brush to throw barrels of sake at it in an attempt to slow it down. This maneuver succeeds because the monster likes the sake and drinks it all, then falls asleep. While it's asleep, they attempt to use the tool, but the evil monk's servant, who has decided his master became the monster, stops them. He shouts and wakes the monster, then ends up eaten by it, with the tool in his hand. (uh-oh!) 　　

The renegade amazon wakes finding she was tended by the other amazon's pet. She learns of the other's death from mind contact with the girl. She takes up the battle for her dead... whatever the other woman was to her.

In the midst of what happens next, the villain (looking all wrinkly) arrives again and disrupts things spoiling everyone's plans before he bites the big one for good.

Our heroes retreat to the stockade while the former-renegade amazon distracts the monster. They set up two of the huge crossbow weapons to fire and use to immobilize it, plus a whole cart FULL of grenades, intending to blow it up. It is a LOVELY explosion. However, it really only delayed the inevitable. The larger pieces of the monster simply came back together, and almost everyone except the girl wound up buried under rubble. Since she was moving it came after her. The samurai wound up smashed as he tried to stop it. Then the monk, from the rubble he was pinned under, saw the tool embedded in one of the monster's smaller fragments that had remained on the ground. The only thing he could do was scrape a kanji into his palm (written word) allowing him to blast the piece towards the little girl. She activated the tool.

Suddenly, every sword in the armory (and the samurai's sword, I think) began to shudder and shake. The metal came off and into the air to whirl about the monster and then encase it, whereupon it shrunk to a mysterious blob (fate unknown, perhaps dead this time). 　　

The samurai died of his injuries, leaving his things to the girl. The amazon took the tool with her and returned home. I believe the girl and the wandering monk went off together. They paused only to leave a note for the samurai's lord, along with some relics, explaining what had happened. The last thing we see is the lord and two others marvelling at the relics. The death of the samurai doesn't seem to distress them at all. But then, they say the way of the samurai is death.

And that's the story of Tao no Tsuki. Many things left out, largely to a lack of understanding on my part.