This Movie Can Only Be Described With One Word.

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

An interesting, distinctly Japanese low budget flick. The story revolves around the origins of infamous Ichi the Killer. The movie starts with Dai, a de facto high school fighting champion trying to maintain his status as the toughest kid on the block. All the while a weakling, Satoichi, discovers that he gets sexual gratification from violence. The movie doesn't really take off until the appearance Onizame, a sadistic new kid on the block who is more than a match for Dai. This is the point when the whole thing turns into an orgy of violence, perversion, and general creepiness of absurd proportions.The most noticeable flaw of this movie is unnecessary odd editing and various cheap video effects, a common ailment of many amateur film makers. The director probably felt very self conscious of the movie's shoe string budget and tried to use all possible means at his disposal to "thicken up" the production values. Unfortunately, the only thing that that did was cause an unnecessary distraction from an otherwise decent story line. Nonetheless, 1-Ichi is definitely worth a watch for the fans of the genre, or anyone who is interested in seeing an alternative to the stuff put out by Hollywood. The best thing about this film is Kôji Chihara (playing Onizame), who steals the show as a psychotic bully.

Ichi-1 is the prequel to Ichi The Killer. It's not the best movie in the world, but it's a lot better than I thought it would be. It's about Ichi in high school. He gets bullied and that's when he starts to go nuts. It's got some great fight scenes too. It's also of course got a few nasty scenes. The baseball scene was pretty disturbing. The main problem I had with this movie though was the fact that there were no teachers at the school. I can't believe not one teacher stopped any fights at school all those kids had. I didn't see one teacher at all at the school period. I guess all the kids scared them off or something. Ichi-1 is a low budget movie, but much better than most low budget movie I've seen. It's also got a bit of comedy in the movie too. The movie is all in Japanese though, so unless you can speak Japanese you'll have to read the English subtitles. It's worth checking out if you liked Ichi The Killer, but it might disappoint some people. I recommend renting it first.I give Ichi-1 a 7/10

Quite possibly the worst film I've ever seen, especially considering it's not even a FILM, but rather a shot on digital video, no budget, poorly acted, poorly directed, and poorly scripted amateur fest from beginning to end. I can't fathom why others on this site have given this decent reviews. This high school level project was obviously a failed plan to cash in on the success of Takashi Miike's film, which, in case you're too thick to figure it out, has EVERYTHING to do with Takashi Miike, and little to do with story. This piece of crap should be left to rot in the bargain bins. I wouldn't accept a free copy of it. Utter crap. Don't waste your time on this dud. What's next, some idiot with a video camera doing a prequel to Audition?

'Ichi-1' was a no budget movie with no plot or point until the very end, and even that is simply to tie it vaguely to "Ichi the Killer". It would have served more of a purpose as source footage for some flashbacks to Ichi's past in "Ichi the Killer", rather than a full length movie. In other words, if you liked "Ichi The Killer", you really don't need to watch this movie. There are a few slightly humorous parts though - the movie seems to waver between twisted comedy and just plain twisted. It did have the actor who played "ichi" in "Ichi the Killer", and TEAH from City of Lost Souls, which helps counteract the otherwise amateurish feel of the movie - a few good actors helped float the movie even among the rest of the bad actors and the lack of purpose to this movie. I'd say watch it if you have nothing better to do and can get it real cheap, or if you just have a need to watch every Japanese movie at least once, no matter how bad (like me).