Kingdom II: Far and Away (2022)

Kingdom II: Far and Away (2022)
Aka: Kingdom II: To Far Lands
Original Title: キングダム２ 遥かなる大地へ
Translation: Kingdom II: To Distant Lands

 

Starring: Kento Yamazaki, Ryô Yoshizawa, Kanna Hashimoto, Nana Seino, Shinnosuke Mitsushima, Amane Okayama, Takahiro Miura, Takayuki Hamatsu, Tôgi Makabe, Chihiro Yamamoto, Etsushi Toyokawa, Masahiro Takashima, Masaya Kato, Takao Osawa, Koichi Sato
Director: Shinsuke Sato
Action Director: Yuji Shimomura

 

At the end of the first Kingdom, former slave Li Xin had successfully helped restore Ying Zheng to the throne of the Qin kingdom, which occupied the far western end of what was China at the time. Li Xin still had the ambition to become a great general and was willing to join Ying Zhen in the latter’s ambition to unify China. There were several different plot points left open: talk of the Royal Chancellor Lü Buwei amassing an army near the border; what to do with the remaining military officers who had been on the side of Ying Zheng’s deposed brother, like Jie Shi; and finally, what the deal was with General Wang Qi, the hulking grandiosity of a man whom Li Xin looked up to.

This first sequel takes place several months after the events of the first film, kicking things off by an assassination attempt on the King of Qin (still Ryô Yoshizawa). The assassins belong to the same clan that had murdered Li Xin’s best friend, Piao, in the previous film (and whom all look like Voldemort form the Harry Potter films). At the last moment, Li Xin (still Kento Yamazaki) shows up and slays the killers. General Jie Shi (Masaya Kato, of Drive and Blood Heat) informs the King that Li Xin had spent the interim between the two movies hunting down the rest of the assassin clan and knocking them off. The question comes up of how the assassins gained access to the palace and all fingers point to Lü Buwei (Koichi Sato, of When the Last Sword is Drawn). But that will have to wait: the kingdom is now being invaded!

The culprits are the neighboring Wei Kingdom, who have brought in the last of their Fire Dragon Generals, Wu Qing (Yukiyoshi Ozawa, of the Rurouni Kenshin films) to lead an army into the Qin lands. They have set themselves up on a pair of large hills at the Dakan Plains. Li Xin joins the military, being assigned to a conscripted peasant infantry unit in the army under the command of Duke Biao Gong (Etsushi Toyokawa, of Midway and Sword of Desperation).

Li Xin’s 100-man unit is broken off into the “Go formation” of five soldiers who have to protect each other in battle. Li Xin’s formation consists of him; Bitou and Bihei, two men from Li Xin’s old village; a team leader; and a mysterious swordswoman named Qiang Lei (Nana Seino, of Attack on Titan). They report to Commander Fu Hushen (Ichi the Killer’s Kiyohiko Shibukawa), who in return reports to Commander Heki (Blade of the Immortal’s Shinnosuke Mitsushima). Heki is a friend of Lin Xin’s, having fought by his side while storming the palace in the previous film. Li Xin’s comrades are initially put off by his brash behavior, although they are a bit surprised when they see him talking to Heki without all the regular formalities reserved for a ranking commander.

At the battlefield, all of the infantrymen—the conscripted peasants—are sent into battle first, with the armed cavalry hanging behind for the time being. Thankfully for Li Xin’s unit, our hero is more strength and courage than humility, and his antics end up helping more than hurting. He outruns all the other soldiers and jumps over the shield-and-spear formation, causing all sorts of confusion behind enemy lines. By the time the other conscripts arrive, the enemy is too busy trying to wipe out Li Xin. Xin and his cohorts are initially successful…until the second Wei general, Gong Yuan (Tsutomu Takahashi, The Untold Tale of the Three Kingdoms), sends in the chariots. Only about 30 men or so from the 4^th regiment, Li Xin’s unit, survive that first day of battle and go into hiding from Wei scouts sent to kill survivors.

Li Xin and Qiang Lei get separated from the rest while they fight off Wei soldiers. That takes us to the middle portion of the film, where we learn that Qing Lei is a member of the shrouded-in-legend Shiyuu clan—they were mentioned in passing earlier in the film. The Shiyuu clan is a clan of Amazonian assassins best known for training tactics that echo what we saw in films like Azumi and Naked Weapon, where potential recruits are trained from a young age until they reach a point where they are forced to kill each other until only one is left. I find that approach to training very costly and inefficient. We learn that Qiang Lei had a best friend who watched over her in that clan. On the day of the bloodbath, the friend gave Qiang Lei sleeping incense and slaughtered everybody, only to be murdered by the head of the clan out of fear and jealousy.

Li Xin and Qiang Lei are eventually reunited with the others, at which point Li Xin has the idea to storm the hill where General Gong Yuan is stationed and take him out while the chariots and most of the fighting is still occurring on Dakan Plains. As they desperately fight through garrison after garrison as they make their way up the hill, they eventually find assistance from Commander Fu Hushen and his cavalry when Duke Biao Gong finally gives the order to ride. And as Li Xin will soon learn, there is a lot more to war and leadership than bravado and strength. There needs to be strategy, sacrifice, and forethought into one’s actions, especially if the goal is to make the enemy retreat with as few casualties as possible.

Viewers may be surprised to see both the King of Qin and He Liao Diao (Kanna Hashimoto, still wearing that stupid owl costume) pushed to the sidelines for most of the movie. They only get the short “Meanwhile, pack at the palace” scene, with He Liao Diao looking worried for Li Xin. Also, the awesome mountain chieftain, played by Masami Nagasawa, is nowhere to be seen. The emphasis placed solely on Li Xin and his growth as a soldier as he starts working toward his goal, first by getting real-world battle experience. New characters are introduced like the Bi brothers and Qiang Lei, all three of whom will be in the next film. Qiang Lei is an especially important character in both the manga and the movies—I don’t know how many of them Japan will make—and she is pretty cool, what with her swordplay abilities that are better than Li Xin’s. Her techniques border outright on the supernatural, to be honest.

The vast majority of the movie revolves around the Battle of Dakan Plains, which plays out in stages. The first stage is the initial clash between the infantryman and the Wei contingent at the foot of the hill. That’s followed by the chariot attack and the separation of our heroes from the rest of the army. The fight at the front lines continues the next day—how are there any peasant conscripts left at this point?—while the heroes ascend the first hill. Then the cavalry arrives, some of them fighting on the front the line and the rest accompanying our heroes up the hill. And then there is a final showdown between Duke Biao Gong and General Gong Yuan.

As it stands, the film is a very much about the action, which is expertly choroegraphed by genre veteran Yuji Shimomura, also returning from the first film. The action is mainly swordplay and spear jabbing. The choreography is done very much done in the sort of Lord of the Rings epic battle way instead of balletic kung fu way, although there is a little bit of that when Qiang Lei fights off some soldiers in one sequence. The assassination attempt at the beginning is also done in a more drawn-out kung fu manner. But the battle sequences are very well staged and as the film drags on, you can feel the exhaustion and desperation of the characters as they hounded on all sides by the enemy. There are two separate climaxes: Li Xin’s climax on top of the first hill, and then the showdown of generals. The latter feels quite truncated, although there is a lesson in the entire sequence for our main hero about fighting smarter, not harder, among other things.

The Kingdom manga has been running for about 17 years or so now. I’m not sure how long it will run: I guess it depends on how many different battles that the King of Qin had to wage in order to unify China. This film seems to cover events from chapters 47 to 71 of the manga. But as there are more than 800 chapters now, that’s really not a whole lot of material when you think about it. That also means that Li Xin’s growth as a character is limited. The first movie depicted him as a plucky slave who happened to be self-taught swordsman. He is now a foot soldier despite his first-movie heroics, which is plausible: there is no way for him to become a general overnight, no matter how good his swordplay is. He will have to make his way up the hierarchy and learn valuable lessons along the way. And that will take us to the third film…