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CrowLia wrote:

I agree that Ninja Slayer's joke grows stale by episode 4 or 5 and never really tries to push the boundaries, but what actually made me drop the show was its insistence of sexually assaulting or otherwise threatening to rape the hacker girl. It was entirely pointless and gratuitous, served no purpose for her character, just to put her in humiliating "sexy" positions for the camera and it came to a point that i couldn't stand watching it anymore, found it too gross

Same here. I was a fan of Inferno Cop, and the first two episodes of Ninja Slayer I found hilariously off-the-wall. But eventually some of the treatment of female characters in the show was offputting enough to the point that I unceremoniously dropped the series and didn't look back. It also seemed like the show couldn't decide whether or not it wanted to go all-in with the aesthetic established in the first episode, which made it come across as weirdly uneven, and eventually annoying to watch.

Saying it only has one joke is akin to a variation on the popular saying of someone "not being able to see the forest for the trees"; rather, it's intentionally and stubbornly staying far away from the forest, possessing such blurred vision that the entire forest is seen as the one tree in this reviewer's case.

It's more how everything comes together: the hokey parts of the cyberpunk elements like people implanting modem/ethernet ports and IRC servers into their bodies or their vehicles to connect to IRC rooms-- the main method of online communication in the dark, dystopian, darkness of the futuristic Neo Saitama, the way "bio-" is added on to half the things in the series to make them more powerful or effective, Ninsatsu language in general, the semi out-of-place use of English profanities (especially in Japanese), inconsistencies like other races of people being around and types of buildings specifically being referred to as "the projects" when in the NS setting Japan has (re?)instated isolation, the interchangeability of Chinese and Japanese terms and culture, the traditional etiquette and politeness even among people that are about to kill each other to death, the very spirited and entertaining narrator, etc etc.

But whatever. It might be very cliche to say such a thing as a defense, but maybe there are people that just don't get it. Or maybe I'm too on the inside looking out. I became a fan after watching the anime due to the designs, art, music (ED3 and the one with the guy from Ling Tosite Sigure that totally doesn't sound out of a Psycho-Pass S3 are the best ED themes), humor, ninjas, and the characters, and didn't mind the cutout animation too much, though I will echo some other people in this thread saying the style chosen for didn't really do it any favors, and pretty much ruined any chance for the franchise to become big outside of Japan other than for a niche audience. Even the Japanese Ninja Heads (fandom) was split on it, with some saying the style is fitting, and others saying it should have been similar to the manga, more on that below, and/or be a 2D version of the novel PVs, which I agree with.

thekingsdinner wrote:

Honestly I freaking loved Ninja Slayer. Guess it's just my type of humor. My friends and I are still shouting YEEART and GWAAAARGH randomly during conversations.

Honestly, I want more Ninja Slayer. Great fun.

I still subconciously say "Namu Amida Butsu" (the saying translated in some NS media, including the dub of the anime, as "Oh My Buddha!") when something unbelievable or brutal happens in another show or IRL.

You and anyone else who enjoyed it should really check out the manga adaptations, specifically the main one published in English by the ever-awesome Vertical. It adapts stories that were either relegated to mere seconds in the episode 25 "clipshow" episode of the anime, or not done at all (Atrocity in Neo Saitama was pretty cool with how crazy/badass Yakuza Tengu is, and seeing Ninja Slayer, Forest Sawatari, and Genocide team up in the western-inspired Three Dirty Ninja-Bond was great, also Wataame A CUTE! in the latter story). Even the stories that were also adapted by the anime are worth reading again because the manga in general doesn't truncate them to fit in 12-15 minutes or less and are more effective. It also has excellent art (CG for Clone Yakuza mobs aside) and action which far surpasses that of even the anime version's Kanada-style animation segments. The only problem, though, is that it's non-linear and often jumps around between stories on the timeline because what determines what the two mangaka behind it adapt is chosen by fan vote.

http://imgur.com/a/39bSw
To explain, yeah, Ninja Slayer has multiple parts.
Part 1 = Neo-Saitama in Flames <== anime adapts most of this including the "beginning" and "ending" stories.
Part 2 = Kyoto: Hell on Earth <== main manga has adapted some stories from this part (villains are a different group called the Zaibatsu Shadow Guild, their insignia showed up in the very last part of the last episode of the anime)
Part 3 = Ninja Slayer Never Dies (villain is Laomoto's son spoiler[or one of them.]. Just completed serialization.)

JR-1 wrote:

I also feel the same about the manga version. I enjoyed the hell out of the 2-3 volumes, but after that it becomes too grating as the border between joke-y and honest ultraviolence blurred.

That is the point of the entire franchise all the way back to the novels. Similar to playing a Mortal Kombat game (which could be one of the influences of the two "Americans" behind the novels, in addition to those Godfrey Ho "ninja" movies and Ninja Gaiden, also having worn out their VHSes of things like Ninja Scroll, Bubblegum Crisis, Akira, and Ghost in the Shell before saying that they're gonna make their own ninja story with blackjack and hookers while having the Wu-Tang Clan's Enter the 36 Chambers CD playing throughout their brainstorming and writing) Ninja Slayer in general has a lot of silly stuff but is played 100% seriously.

As a side note, it's weird how many anime/manga fans I've come across that struggle with something that has more than one tone (two recent examples off the top of my head among others: Drifters, March comes in like a lion). Wonder why that is?

Lemonchest wrote:

Making it 24 episodes long was an idea so dumb I can only assume it was at Kadokawa's insistence.

You probably don't give 2 shits either way, but it's not dumb; Trigger was most likely given a 13ep x 24min budget to adapt Part 1 of the novels and made it into 26x12min for what they were trying to do with the show and to "animate" the most stories in that part as possible.

Koda89 wrote:

I enjoyed the hell out of Ninja Slayer.

However I did not enjoy the marketing done for Ninja Slayer heading into the show's debut. The PVs only featured the fully animated bits of the show, and while I get why they decided to run with that(because they honestly couldn't market the cardboard cutout animation), it gave everyone false expectations because people were hoping for a fully animated show. Which made a lot of people's hate for the show even worse.

I was one of those. Went in expecting some Ninja revenge action, instead got cardboard cutouts. I am no Aqua Teen Hunger Force fan, but even ATHF was better than Ninja Slayer.

It intentionally was made to be like those cheesy martial arts movies and not take itself seriously. In addition to how anime-based Hollywood are poorly received, this is almost a must: an awful adaptation of a show that is intentionally a horrid show.

It's "so INTENTIONALLY bad it's good" not so bad its good. It purposefully was created in this way, not a poorly made TV show with people who weren't equipped to create a show. That's my only real issue with this review. Of course I score it higher, but this is a show that really divides audiences.