They both decide to leave for the north where a band of bandits have been spotted. On their way, they will meet Renge, a young orphan girl who lives in the middle of the forest. She will decide to follow the two heroes to retake her sword that was stolen by the bandits. The sword was given to her grandfather before he died. The three heroes finally find the bandits hideout. Kakugyo, a powerful sorcerer and the bandits' leader don't want to cooperate with the demand of Suikyo and decides to keep the secret of the sword for himself. Meanwhile elsewhere, three female aliens from another planet are searching the region for the Makaraga, a destructive biological weapon banned from their homeland.

Review: Mixing Fantasy and Sci-Fi, Moon Over Tao is probably without a doubt the best movie from the Japanese director Keita Amemiya. He is also very well known for his other B-movie classics such as Zeram, Hakaider and Ninja Robot. Amemiya probably had a bigger budget for this movie than any of his other movies and it is easily noticeable. The movie has very rich colors, the landscape and scenery is beautiful and the special effects are especially effective in this movie contrary to his past work. It is easier to take MOT seriously compare to the other movies from Amemiya, which I found very B-movie stylish and cheesy. It's true that the movie may start slow and the story takes some time to really kick in, but it's all a build up for the long finale that I would say is very gratifying. Even if this fantasy movie may look like a kids movie, it is totally not the case and the last 45 minutes are especially very bloody.

If you like anime style characters then you will probably fall in love with the three main characters. With possibly the exception of the small girl Renge that I found annoying on some part but in general was tolerable. All the characters were dressed in bright colorful clothes that really gave them a manga style look. Their acting was not that bad too. Even though some parts were maybe overacted, especially by Hayate the samurai, it was still pretty campy and fun. I was also surprised by the presence of Kei Tani (the old ninja master in Samurai Fiction), who only had a very small supporting role in the character of Tadaoki, the Lord of the Hans. His performance was short but great. As for Yûko Moriyama, who is also very well known for her role of Iria in the Zeram movie series, played her part marvelously as the role of the three female aliens. For the Evil Sorcerer, we didn't have the chance see him that much, but he was still a memorable villain.

You know that if you have an evil sorcerer, a monk and a samurai in the same movie you are expecting some serious kick ass action fights scenes. I would say that even if the swordfight choreographies were in general very simple, they were also very good. But at the same time, don't except too much in the fighting. Most of the fights happen very fast and are very short but some of them are also very bloody. Those who are wondering if the fights are realistic or not, I would say that most of them are on the realistic level but they also used wires to enhance some of the special attacks.

Certain characters also use magical power, like Suikyo the monk, who uses his special powers to make objects fly right were he wants. Most of these magical moves were created with CGI effects; most of these 3D effects were generally very effective for a low budget movie. What I was very surprised by was how violent the movie was. The beginning doesn't give any clue about it because the beginning is almost bloodless and the ending is complete total carnage. The violence was of course again unrealistic because of the fact that they used an over abundance of blood and fake body parts. In a way, it was overkill, but cool nonetheless. Again, it gave it a great anime feel to the movie.