Site Index | Blog What's New? Review List Stuff Review Outline Why Hate Anime? Wheat RoD: The TV Haibane Renmei Teen Titans Chaff Akira Legend of the Overfiend Black Heaven Renting anime at, say, Blockbuster can be tricky business. Some places have a whole wall of the stuff, including lots of neat obscure titles you're hard pressed to find in any respectible video store. Some have a few choice titles squirrelled away in the Action or Foreign sections. Some just have some Pokemon stuff over in the kiddy area. "We're ninjas, right? We'd better have a fight in this bamboo forest." The local anime rental situation is pretty slim pick'ns; most places around here tend to have some Sailor Moon, some DBZ, whatever Miyazaki flicks Disney isn't sitting on, and Ninja Scroll. They all have Ninja Scroll. For some reason or another, Ninja Scroll is pretty popular with the American anime crowd. More than a handful of folks claim it as the movie that they lost their anime virginity to. However, running a Google search for the title doesn't turn up a single fansite of any real worth. Gee, I wonder why that is? Characters: Ninja Scroll is primarily about three ninja warriors: Jubei, Kagero, and Dakuan. These three characters are rooted so deeply in stereotypes that you can't even call them cookie cutter. You'd have to picture a giant industrial strength cookie cutter, the kind that can cut like ten thousand cookies at once. Maybe the Keebler elves have a cookie cutter big enough to serve as a mental image for how mass-produced the characters in Ninja Scroll are. Beware the letter opener of doom! Jubei fulfills our "master swordsman with a dark secret past but is a nice enough guy anyway" role. He's a wandering ninja-for-hire, who weighs need and circumstance more heavily than gold. He also has a strange taste in hairstyles, a trait that is common among anime ninjas. Kagero is our "thick-skinned tough ninja girl who deep down only wants to be treated like a woman" character. She spends most of the movie following Jubei around like a shadow, using the excuse that she's repaying a debt - anything but admit that she's attracted to him! Because ninjas aren't supposed to love. Or whatever. In any case, her excuses don't float with me because for every time she mentions how she's indebted to Jubei, she threatens to kill him twice. Unfortunately, * Kagero is the only one of the three who is killed off. * Dakuan rounds out our trio as "grizzled old ancient ninja guy who never tells all he knows". His job is to plot, scheme, and manipulate. He strings Jubei and Kagero along like rats through a maze, explaining away all the violence in the film (more on that little tidbit below) by revealing telegraphed plot twists. In other words, Dakuan is a fortune cookie with a stick and a silly beard. Story: Ninja Scroll is set in the time of feudal Japan, and its story is only a paper-thin excuse for Jubei to chop limbs off lots of very-human-looking demons. While wandering around aimlessly, Jubei stumbles in on a big rock-skinned demon while he is busy raping Kagero. He and the demon duke it out and, eventually, the rock-thing dies. Gollum gollum. Later, Jubei is taunted by Dakuan, and is told that he's been caught up in a devil-plot so big it could topple the government. See, Dakuan is part of the ancient Japanish equivalent of the CIA, or something, and is out to uncover what the Eight Devils of Somethingorother are doing. When Jubei refuses his help, Dakuan blackmails him by poisoning him, promising the antidote only after the mission has been completed. A few uninteresting scenes later, Kagero saves Jubei's life from a naked girl with a snake fetish, then agrees to team up with him. We learn that Kagero * is immune to any form of poison, and posesses the ability to poison and kill any man she sleeps with. * Jubei and Kagero (and Dakuan, if he feels like being in the scene) stumble around Japan fighting demons and pretending to advance the plot, until a climactic scene in which Kagero learns * the only way Jubei will live is if she has sex with him. * Eventually, once there are no more demons to fight, the plot finally decides to finish itself by * killing of Kagero, who realizes she is in love with Jubei too tragically late. Jubei then goes on to kill the main bad guy and avenge her death, and a bunch of gold sinks to the bottom of the ocean. * Irritatingly enough, Jubei survives despite * having never boned Kagero... this little inconsistancy is never explained. * Animation: The animation in Ninja Scroll is very murky and grainy. Everything is colored in such a way to make the entire world look too-dark and drab. There were Saturday morning cartoons on TV in 1993 that are more attractive than Ninja Scroll. Most of the fight scenes are just re-hashed from previous fight scenes in the movie. The only way the viewer realizes he's watching a movie about ninjas and demons is that each character mentions that he is a ninja (or a demon, as the case may be) every few moments. For example, instead of using some fantastical sword-style to defeat a foe, a Ninja Scroll character would yell "I am one of the Kookamunga Ninja Clan! Feel my wrath!" Sometimes twice. Generic Ninjas TM   provided by Generic Ninja Staffing Services. One thing the animators apparently couldn't get enough of in Ninja Scroll is blood spray. Now, I'm not talking about the typical blood trail and/or splatter you see in a normal movie when someone gets stabbed, shot, or slashed. I'm talking full-out Mortal Kombat blood spray. Even the most minor of cuts and scrapes in Ninja Scroll causes an endless torrent of bodily fluids to spew forth from the wound. There's one scene in which a character is decapitated. We watch in slow motion as his severed head (with a horrified look on its face) falls down behind its former neck, with a literal geyser of blood shooting upwards in regular motion. Yep, hacked-off limbs, split brains, stubbed toes, and gallons upon gallons of vomited-up-blood are the order of the day, each over-the-top mutilation scene gorier than the last. In other words, it'd be a bad idea to watch Ninja Scroll after a meal. Culture Shock: As mentioned earlier, Ninja Scroll is set in feudal Japan. Normally that'd be worth three hamhams right off the bat, but in this case I'm not even sure if the guys making the movie knew anything about their own culture. Aside from the fact that I'm apparently supposed to know (or care) about all the clans and dynasties and factions mentioned throughout the film, there's very little culture shock to be found. I have two theories to explain this. Either the translation is so watered down that all of the important tidbits were lost, or the story is just naturally one-dimensional and doesn't draw anything from its setting. I'm actually placing my money on a combination of both. One thing Ninja Scroll has taught me is that female ninjas don't wear anything under their robes. At all. Ever. Use this information for good, kids. This chick is always naked. Probably to show off her tacky tattoos. The reason there aren't any Ninja Scroll fansites is because the anime, on the whole, is entirely underwhelming. Even people who are introduced to anime through Ninja Scroll just use it as a jumping-off point to newer, more appealing features (note: not necessarily better) and build fansites about those instead. At least, that's my hypothesis. Links Animenation Listing IMDB Listing Ninja Scroll combines all the fun of a boring ninja story with all the excitement of a girl who is having trouble getting laid. If that sounds like the kind of thing you'll like, by all means head down to your local Blockbuster or Hollywood Video. If you can't find it on the shelf, find out who their geekiest cashier is and then check their Employee's Picks section. Overall Rating:

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