It's not a sequel, but a reboot. The two Onechanbara films are independent adaptations of the same game, with different writers, directors and actors. Any game character who died in the first film is now alive again, although Tomohiro Waki and Taro Suwa have vanished. This film is much more female-focused than the other one, with very few male characters. (The baddie has some male henchmen who never speak and at one point Aya picks up a throwaway boy-in-distress.)

The tone of the straight scenes is similar to last time and reminds me of Westerns. A girl in a cowboy hat roams the desert/wilderness without saying much and kills baddies. You wouldn't have been surprised to meet Clint Eastwood.

The fight scenes are less stupid. You can sort of believe in them... except for that silly sword towards the end. It's as big as Sagara Sanosuke's zanbatou in Rurouni Kenshin. (A zabutou could supposedly cut a horse in half and they're popular in anime and manga, but there's no evidence that they ever existed.) This one's also covered in big spikes and would be unusable. The director adds CGI light swooshes whenever it moves to hide the fact that it's obviously impossible to fight with.

Again, the film's not sleazy. Slightly more cleavage, including an impressive neckline for the gun-toting Reiko, but no actual nudity. I don't hate this film, which I suppose means I prefer it to the first one, but it's also less interesting. I didn't care. No characters I engaged with. No Tomohiro Waki-a-like. The film feels stoic, without much sign of a personality or a sense of humour. It's passable. You could watch almost all of it without throwing things at the screen. It's taking its silly concept seriously and trying to tell a proper story in this post-apocalypse world. It's just not particularly good.