Gisaku is a Spanish animated film about a seventeenth century samurai named Yohei. After defending the world against a demonic army led by the villainous Gorkan, he travels to Spain, where he spends 300 years meditating in a cave. After waking up in the present, he befriends an orphan boy named Riki and discovers that Gorkan is on the move again.
Tropes in this movie:
- Animesque: The movie has a very anime-influenced art style.
- Author Tract: Don’t be distracted by the adventure story: this film was intended to educate everyone about how awesome Spain is.
- Bad Boss: Gorkan has a tendency of killing his minions for failing him or annoying him.
- Cat Folk: Linceto the humanized lynx who joins the team.
- Everything's Better with Samurai: The film is set entirely in Spain, with a samurai protagonist apparently for the hell of it.
- Insufferable Genius: Moira is very intelligent and she'll let you know it. She improves by the end of the film.
- King of Beasts: Gisaku becomes an impressive red lion at the final battle.
- Ms. Fanservice: Moira, who wears scarily short shorts and is always depicted as thrusting out her breasts at the camera.
- Plot Coupon: The magical stones.
- Product Placement: The film was originally made with the aim of bringing Spanish culture and locations closer to Japanese society, so a large number of Spanish locations were thrown at the audience.
- Ridiculously Cute Critter: Gisaku looks like an a cute lion cub.
- Secondary Character Title: Gisaku, while playing an important role in the climax, is little more than a pet for most of the film. Yohei is the actual protagonist.
- Sequel Hook: The end of the movie shows Moira grinning at seeing a Gisaku statue on an icy cavern with malicious intentions, implying a second movie is going to be made.
- Set Right What Once Went Wrong: At the end of the film everyone travels in time Riki travels to prevent the death of his parents, Linceto to become a lynx again and Moira to be less of a jerk
- Shout-Out: A poster of El Cid: The Legend, which was made by the same studio, can be seen on the wall in Riki's room.
- Sole Survivor: Both Yohei and Gorkan, as both of them were the last survivor of their battle.
- Suddenly Voiced: After being nothing but a pet for most of the film, Gisaku becomes capable of speech after eating all remaining stones.
