YMMV / Battles Without Honor and Humanity

• Applicability:
  • The film's themes of the poor eating their own under unfair economic conditions are seen as case study in "trickle-down" economics by film academics.
  • The third film makes a point that in a time when two major world powers were manipulating other countries to fight for their respective interests, the larger yakuza syndicates were doing so with the smaller ones as well.
• Awesome Music: Say what you will about the later films, but the 2000 installment gave us the track Battle Without Honor Or Humanity, which entered pop culture after being popularized by its inclusion in the Kill Bill soundtrack.
• Retroactive Recognition: Naoya Makoto, who would later earn fame as the first Akaranger, appears in Police Tactics and Final Episode as a nameless Mook.
• Sequelitis: The first New Battles Without Honor Or Humanity trilogy is widely considered to be inferior rehashes of the originals, and the Region 1 Bluray doesn't bother mentioning them in the retrospective on the series. This opinion however didn't stop Arrow Films - the distributor of the original saga in the West - from issuing the sequel series in a limited edition boxset.

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