Ninja Scroll
with Yoshiaki Kawajiri
(Manga Video)
by Eric Johnson
Japanese animation began to get “hip” in 1991 with the U.S. video release of Akira. Despite the fact that Japanimation gained a certain word-of-mouth cult status among the many recovering geeks who grew up watching Starblazers, or any of the other weekday afternoon Japanese cartoons aired during the mid-’80s, the release of additional films in this country has been excruciatingly slow… So now it’s 1996 and suddenly there is a video distributor called Manga Video, which has released over a dozen Japanimation titles, most of which I have never heard of before. One of these titles is Ninja Scroll, which I have had the privilege to see first hand.
Ninja Scroll takes place in feudal Japan and tells the story of a lonely ninja named Jubei, who wanders around the countryside bisecting local bullies for money and food. Kagero is a female ninja working for a small clan who manages to survive a massacre while investigating a deadly plague in a small nearby village. The two meet and the stage is set for destruction and an eventual romance, although any sexual encounter between the two warriors is complicated by the fact that Kagero, a food taster, has ingested so much poison over her lifetime that any sexual contact with her will make even an eight-foot-tall stone giant disintegrate. The two are recruited, against their will, to fight a dark warlord and his eight superhuman demon warriors.
Compared to most of the Japanese animation that has been released in this country, Ninja Scroll is a simple action movie. There is nothing particularly mindblowing about the scope of the film, or the quality of animation. It is simply a fairly solid and entertaining action movie. Although not as spectacular or innovative as Akira, it is much better paced and doesn’t drag as badly as the technically superior epic. The film is that it is however, filled from beginning to end with fabulous fight sequences that never get repetitive or boring because the action is wonderfully varied throughout the film. Someone used their imagination and came up with unique skills and unexpected weapons for each of the demon characters; immensely important since works like Fist of the Northstar, whose hero has the power to make a man’s head explode with one punch, gets extremely lame after ninety minutes.
If you are interested in Japanimation, there are a few facts that should be understood before such a film is purchased: #1) Not all of it is good. In fact, when Japanimation is bad it is excruciating; exercise great caution before any purchase. #2) It is not the best animation in the world. When properly inspired, American animation is far more technically innovative (check out The Maxx or Heavy Metal if interested in seeing what happens when American animators stop doing kiddie musicals). Japanimation, unfortunately, has the stigma of possessing an almost universal “look” that strips it of much of its individuality and people who are interested in the technical aspects of animation may only feel as if they’ve seen it all after only a few films. #3) Always choose subtitles over dubbing, since more attention is paid to the dialogue. Ninja Scroll has a few verbal snags, but this is probably the result of sloppy translation. It’s hard to imagine that the original version possessed Kagero’s immortal line: “You are the first person I have ever met who treated me like a woman, and not just a ninja warrior who was completely expendable.” #4) The films released in this country are not the weirdest, or most bizarre stuff out there. Similar to the recent release of Jackie Chan’s (Hong Kong) films in the U.S., we are being exposed to the least frenzied and surreal works first, eased into the dark and twisted reality of the Japanese fantasy world like a timid child inches into the shallow end of a pool. As a sophomore in college, a friend of mine became so interested in Japanimation that he would purchase bootleg copies of films that hadn’t even been dubbed into English. One of these films had a sequence where this demon with nine penises has sex with two human women floating in a pool of amniotic fluid. His tentacle-like organs fill every possible orifice of both womens’ bodies and when he ejaculates, both explode with the force of it. Then, rising from the bowels of the Earth, he destroys Tokyo with giant beams of unknown force summoned by his unholy orgy in hell.
The recommendation on Ninja Scroll: If you are interested in Japanimation, this is a good one to get; it is a solid and entertaining piece of work. It is by no means the very best, but it holds its own. If the world of Japanese animation is new to you, this is a very good starting point, since you don’t want to get spoiled too quickly but you do want to know what the good stuff tastes like.
