Translation Results Requested Through Conyac Made Public

It's easy to imagine Zatoichi, the mega-popular blind masseur/swordsman, as a man on a continual personality-altering pilgrimage, since in a series of films stretching from 1962 until 1979, he was almost exclusively played by one actor. Shintaro Katsu's Zatoichi is a lover, athlete, drinker, gambler and killer. Moreover, in 1967, after fifteen films, Katsu started his own company, Katsu Productions, to make his own star vehicles. Twenty-five of the 26 entries of the film's official series are collected in the Criterion Collection's lavish new box set (only "Shintaro Katsu's Zatoichi," the second film Zatoichi film Katsu directed, is missing).
But while Katsu's Zatoichi did change, it was not an orderly progression, and you couldn't really call it a " character arc," because so many of the changes had to do with factors outside the scope of the stories.
The film franchise did generally get darker over time, especially after Katsu Productions took over. But many of the films nevertheless hew to a basic formula: Zatoichi stumbles into a new town, accidentally kills or witnesses the death of an innocent, falls in love with a woman he will eventually leave, takes on corrupt local baddies, and wanders into the sunset. He's a blind antihero, and is always haunted by guilt for his unabashed love of sensual pleasures.