Episode 1: Tragedy In The Hidden Valley:
A powerful ninja steals a jade stone called "The Dragon Stone" in hopes of keeping it out of the hands of his enemies. He happens upon a rival ninja clan that wants it back as well as upon a mercenary ninja known as Jubei Kibagami. Jubei turns down an offer to act as a bodyguard for personal reasons but soon realizes more is going on than meets the eye. As Jubei travels, he comes across a small village that is later attacked in hopes of retrieving a woman known as "The Light Maiden". The gal is the only one who can use the power of the Dragon Stone and is therefore sought after by both sides of the battle. Jubei decides to take on the mission of delivering the stone to the maiden, which puts him in harms way.

Episode 2: Departure:
The maiden, Shigure, sets out to find her heritage, not having known her past made her so sought after by various ninja clans. Jubei ends up a target of two rival ninja clans who insist that he gives them the stone. Jubei's special abilities are fearsome but so are those of his opponents, one of whom has cat-like reflexes and another that attacks from underground.

Episode 3: Forbidden Love:
Jubei fights a ninja with spider-like powers that really wants the Dragon Stone. He also crosses swords with Old One Eye as he closes in on Shigure to give her the stone. Jubei fulfills his initial quest and hands over the stone to Shigure but keeps close since her enemies seem to be legion in number.

Episode 4: Broken Stone:
Jubei recovers the stone when thieves steal it from Shigure but he is captured and the stone s split in two when he tries to return it. Jubei takes on the assignment of being her bodyguard when she is captured. Can he save her? Can he recover the stone? With both of them together, the evil clan would be able to revive the Toyotomi.

I thought the series was okay but the limited style of animation wasn't really to my liking. The story was more about the duels between the various ninja clans and Jubei were the true vocal point. If you like such duels, you may like this series a lot but it wasn't worth more than a rating of Rent It because the lack of story, cohesive plot, character development, and production values limited it's appeal. I liked the music, there were even a couple of interviews with the composers, but it sounded like the same two pieces used over and over again.

Picture: The picture was presented in 1.33:1 ratio full frame color. The picture had some grain to it and video noise in certain scenes, particularly ones with lots of red and black colors. It wasn't as good looking as some of the newer releases from other companies but fans of the various Ninja Scroll/Jubei series will be satisfied.

Sound: The sound was presented with a choice of either a 5.1 Dolby Digital English track, a 2.0 stereo Japanese or English track and optional English subtitles. The sound effects showed the most separation between channels with some for the dialogue. The Japanese vocals were superior to either of the other two tracks but you could hear what was said in any of them. The subtitles were a bit off in a few cases, timed slightly slower or too fast, depending on the scene and didn't match exactly what was said on the English dub tracks.

Extras: The best extra was the interviews with Kitaro and Peter McEvilley: the two soundtrack composers. Kitaro is well known for his music and this may be good exposure for the genre if fans of his explore what he's done here. Both interviews took some time discussing the thoughts of their respective focus and were fairly long. Another decent extra was the storyboard to feature comparison where the two were compared to one another. There were some trailers, a quick short on the drawing of the dvd cover art, an art gallery, and a paper insert that listed the chapters of the dvd.

Final Thoughts: I'd heard some great things about the series and having seen this volume, will question those sources more thoroughly in the future. It wasn't bad but aside from some violent action where creatures were cut in half, spurted blood, or otherwise fell victim of Jubei's blade, there wasn't much else. To me, that's just as limited as watching any other series that repeats the same action repeatedly.