Ninja Slayer From Animation

Absurdity kills reason. This is your power. - Naraku Ninja I would almost be willing to rate Ninja Slayer a 10/10 based purely on entertainment value. One thing though. The most entertaining part about Ninja Slayer isn't the dub. It's the audience reaction and kids who absolutely don't get the joke. Here's your warning: if your idea of entertainment is purely based on pretty colors and flashy animation, PSST, you're doing it wrong. Artwork and Animation: Query: Is a black and white movie inferior to one in color? Is a color movie inferior to 3D movies because OH MY LAWD THEY LITERALLY ADDED ANOTHER DIMENSION!? The answeris no. So, to anyone who says that Ninja Slayer sucks because of the animation- just because it uses a different visual style than you've come to expect from the typical T&A anime you watch, it's time for something new. Ninja Slayer is essentially Inferno Cop 2.0- now with a budget! So, if you saw Inferno Cop: you know what to expect from the style here. It's an Adult Swim-styled in betweener short if you haven't. Lots of iridescence, reds, explosions, and booms, bangs, and fire. Sound and Voice Acting: 10 YEEEAARRT! AUUUUAAAGHHH! YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAARRRTTTT! AUUUUUUUUAAAAAAAAAGH! RECITE YOUR DEATH HAIKU! SAYONARA!!!!!!!!!!!!! BOO00000OOM The rest of the cast recites their death haikus appropriately, also with a lot of explosions. These voice actors are great at producing explosions on the mic. It's basically like listening to the collab mixtape I did with Papa Franku. Sound and Voice Acting: F'real this time Christopher Sabat does the best cool macho man there's ever been. He's been a suave black dude, a pedophile priest, he's been several violent psychopaths, an enormous muscleman, a lot of various anthropomorphic beasts, and probably most famously Vegeta. Add kickass badass superpowered ninja slaying monstrosity to the list. Couldn't ask for better. Characters: Too many to count. Ninja Slayer dispatches about 5 ninjas of various thematic origin per episode, plus a thousand clones, meaning at least half a million ninjas eat it by the end of the show's run. However, we do have some standouts: the sexy IRC hacking blonde: Nancy Lee, Ninja Slayer's partner in dispensing sweet, sweet justice to the asshole ninjas that rule Neo Saitama. Her superpower is directly connecting her consciousness to IRC via an ethernet port on her head, where she hacks everyone's life and Ninja Slayer just rekt.exe 's them. There's also Yukano Dragon, the young amnesiac granddaughter of Ninja Slayer's master, Dragon Sensei, Forest Sawatari, shellshocked leader of the Survival Dojo fresh out the jungles of 'Nam, Koki Yamoto- the ubiquitous schoolgirl that every show must have, Shogo, white boy sporting a rad-ass afro and no shirt, because he's a punk ass, too. Story: As nonsensical as one would believe Ninja Slayer to be, it does actually follow a plot. Kenji Fujikido's family was ruthlessly torched by ninjas sent by the Soukai Syndicate, run by the 30 foot tall giant Laomoto Khan. On his deathbed, he accepts a ninja soul, Naraku Ninja, and with his newfound power vows to kill all ninjas, ESPECIALLY whoever it was that killed his family. The first half or so is a set of really disconnected threads featuring a lot of different characters who take over the main spot for a short arc, and then in the second half, it's all brought together by their interactions and various confrontations with Soukai ninjas- kind of like a Tarantino movie, taking a lot of random unassociated people and tying up their motives and actions together, except with a lot more YEEEART. (There is a lot of hilarious and clever dialogue, courtesy of the narrator though.) Enjoyment and Overall: It's hard to really nail down what makes Ninja Slayer so much fun. If one is not amused by absurdity and parody of parody, Ninja Slayer is probably not going to be a lot of fun to watch. However, absurdist humor is popular with anime watchers. I know this, because besides the ubiquitous "guy falls on girl and ends up grabbing her boob" joke that's in every boob and butt show now, anime is a medium that lends itself to absurdity and being far removed from realism. Why am I laughing at a cross dressing shark and a bunch of 13 year old girls with superpowers blowing up giant robots covered in tons of food, all while hopping from planet to planet and throwing galaxies like baseballs? Because it's ridiculous, that's why. And that's why Ninja Slayer works. It's ridiculous. YEEEAAART/10 10/27 Unnecessary Clarification: The whole idea of Ninja Slayer (and I left this out because my review was crap already) is that it was written by two Japanese dudes posing as American weebs writing a parody of 80s ninja action schlock in the schlockiest way possible. Expository Statement: That is, it's a parody of a parody, parodied in a parody style of animation with double layer parody dialogue and, well, actually a fairly decent plot. I don't want to call it Tarantino-esque, but... Tarantino-esque. You have a bunch of disconnected random characters who all end up tied together in the overarching plot. It's not The Usual Suspects or anything, but it gets the job done well. Revenge tales historically have been fairly easy to write (because there's a specific goal) with a lot of wiggle room for inversion, subversion, and likewise. It's a very flexible narrative. Commentary: Whacking Ninja Slayer for the story is a bad point to pick, at any rate. (not that I would). I mean, I know not everyone liked the animation style, that's personal preferences. I know that it seems like there's basically no character progression (there's not much), but the fun isn't in analyzing it for its literary depth, because that's not its bag, baby, yeah. I read some of the translated part of the novels, and the show is basically a 1:1 visual and auditory recreation of the dialogue and scene setting. Whoever wrote it had to have given Trigger permission to animate it like that, and probably thought it was hilarious that something that's a parody of a parody looked as bad as it read. Statement: You just gotta see Ninja Slayer for what it is, and that's up to the individual to make of it- but to me, it's just plain laughable ludicrosity.

Remember that everything that is written here is part of my opinion and should not be taken as truth. You can draw your own conclusions about this series by watching it. This review is free from spoilers. First of all Ninja Slayer From Animation is one of those anime that makes a critic about the current anime industry, using - if anything - poor animation techniques, strange music and a really basic plot to bring the potential of a series not by the anime itself, but by how it was conceived... And once you get graps of it, everything makes sense. This anime is based upon anovel made by some people that doesn't exist. I'll explain it better... This anime was fruited from some rumors made by a group of japanese translators who said that they would translate a project made by some americans (that did not existed in the first place) who created a stereotypical story with ninjas, karate, very tall buildings, etc. The translators faked the original authors. They made the novel themselves, writting about a Japan twisted like some hollywood-like movies represented it on the 80's and 90's. Having that in mind, let me tell you the ratings I gave to this anime. Story 9; It is passed on a twisted Japan where mafia and revolutionary groups exists, in the city of Neo-Saitama. It's a very simple story about a man who wants revenge from the killers of his family and the basic plot follows his acts while pursuing that revenge. The one thing that is great about this anime is how this "revenge-like" steps are being executed. You can feel the difficulties the protagonist have while following his path of hatred. Sound 10; The OST for this anime is a mix of some classical japanese sounds with some technobeat. It really changes the atmosphere of the anime in some parts. Also, the Ending Theme for this anime changes every single episode (with some exceptions). It is the perfect match for an anime passed on a future-like Japan, with the clash of past-present references. Character 9; The characters are all stereotypical of the movie/anime industry of 80's and 90's. The thing is we can find these characters very enjoyable! Really, almost every character have a personal - and very common - drama of himself/herself and it is explained in a very simple way, so we - the audience - can understand them and so get inside the plot and their reasons to do what they are doing. Enjoyment 10; Having said what I did in the begining of this review I will explain why I enjoyed this anime so much. If anything, TRIGGER should be the first responsible for this overexcitement. From the way this anime is executed - Short episodes of 10-15 mins, released in the web, with "strange" animations, following a very simple plot - it had everything to be a fail... If it wasn't by the information on how the "original novel" was conceived. When I got that information, I could get grasp on what TRIGGER was trying to do. And the answer is simple, an anime of 80-90's in these days is complete madness! We are on the pinacle of animation techniques, with 3DGCI all over the place and the quality of textures being outstanding, TRIGGER choose to make an anime with poor animation sequences, with a really simple plot and with some basic soundtracks mixing old and new type of music. But everything, EVERYTHING makes sense on how great this anime is if you understand that they are making a critic about how the West had seen the East in the two final decades of the twentieth century. With that in mind, I enjoyed this anime so much. I could just enjoy this anime, expecting nothing but a great anime, not creating any hype on how great could be it's story, but just expecting to enjoy an anime where everything I got to see from the 80's and 90's could be conceived. Overall 10; My overall note represents mostly my enjoyment with this piece of work. You must understand that this anime is a critic, made upon a novel that did not existed in the first place with a poor plot, released in some awful animation quality over the web, with some strange composed music remixing classical japan instruments and modern beat. It is very like the "Kung Fury" movie. It is an anime that blends every single trait of a 80's and 90's work and put together to create a great anime! Ninja Slayer From Animation will be remembered as one of the greatest anime ever made by the people who watched it. It really is a masterpiece! Hope you like the anime so much as I did. Have a good day.

People talk about context being the key to either understanding or appreciating this anime and maybe that's true on some level. However, I don't think that the context of the show is actually necessary to enjoy it. Instead, the only real requirement is the ability to not take yourself or the world around you too seriously. Almost everything is beautiful if you look at it from the right angle and finding that angle is easiest through a playful attitude. For a child this comes naturally. Playing is how children explore the world. They don't actively try to categorize meta behaviors like what constitutes intelligence orwhat might make you seem erudite or cool. Instead, the world seems to be taken in by them through their wondrous sincerity. For adolescents everything changes. Expectations. Strong emotions. Desires. An ego begins to grow. They're not so much caught between the aforementioned two worlds but rather living in a kaleidoscope constructed from the shards and shattering images of their reality. Life isn't play anymore, it's work. And what confusing work it is when you're confronted with an anime like Ninja Slayer From Animation that does the one thing a teen doesn't want to happen anymore: it subverts conventional anime with a continuous, sometimes jarring, onslaught of sincere cliches. It doesn't just subvert anime, it obverts it. Bad is good, good is bad, quality is bad, shit is good. The adult has transitioned, perhaps somewhat unknowingly, from childlike sincerity through a whirlwind of emotion and angst, to a joyless adult. But with enough anime like NSFA she can find that place again. here's the numbers. * Story 9/10 -- The show has a simple and concise story lovingly cribbed from every anime in the 80s and 90s. However, if you really think about it and can see through the humor it's actually quite a sad story despite it presenting itself consistently as just funny and generally badass. * Art 10/10 -- The throwback 5:4 aspect ratio art swings wildly from absurd south-park-esque flash animation, through colorful and gorgeous pans and scans of cityscapes and characters, to gloriously epic BUDGET animation. * Sound 10/10 -- The sound, from the bgm to the sfx to the 26 fantastic ED songs, is nothing but perfect. * Character 9/10 -- The characters are, as with the rest of the show, homages to anime's 80s and 90s heritage. They're chock full of all of the fun cliches that make anime the cultural powerhouse it is. And yet, if you're like me, you're gonna find yourself empathizing and fist pumping with the characters. * Enjoyment 10/10 -- For someone who has watched not only a lot of anime, but a lot of very diverse anime, feeling nostalgic while watching a show that reminds you of another can be somewhat bittersweet. You're reminded of what was and what cannot be again. With NSFA you get slapped by nostalgia with the right and slapped by youthful enthusiasm with the left. The effect is better than nostalgia, it's life. You know that feeling you had when you watched cartoons as a kid? That's what you get with NSFA. So there you go. I gave NSFA an unironic 10/10.

After all these years, this anime is still a masterpiece. What I like about it, is that it's basically inferno cop with a higher budget (but the biggest difference with the png parts is that their mouth moves, unlike inferno cop). The humor is pretty good for its time (and I think it still holds up till this day). Though one problem i have with it, is the female voice actors in the English dub, they sound like they are not even trying (amnesia is probably the best example, along with yamoto too). Ost is my favorite part, sad that most of it has not been uploaded yet. Finalepisode was probably one of the most hype things, kinda makes me wonder how was they going to do a season 2 with ninja slayer's new look (if they ever made one)... Last thing I'll mention... "YEEART" "ABBAH" "AIIEE" "AAAUUUGHHH" Overall, of course this anime is not for anyone, but if you like dumb silly good humor with a good plot with it all, then I recommend watching this anime.