Ninja and an Assassin Under One Roof

Episode 3

I had wondered what exactly A Ninja and an Assassin Under One Roof would become once we got beyond the constant murder jokes. Now, don't get me wrong, I don't think those jokes have gotten stale or overused—I greatly enjoyed our ninja-of-the-week who spouted out all her motivations (along with her weakness) in a single monologue. However, you can't build an entire series on a single joke and expect it to succeed forever.

This episode makes it clear what the series is about when Satoko isn't actively being targeted by ninjas: social commentary. This episode's focus is on low-pay part time jobs. Satoko, bored sitting around the house all day while Konoha is at school, decides to get a job to pass the time—to experience the world outside of her ninja village. Thus she is introduced to resumes, job interviews, and the kinds of jobs that will hire 15-year-olds pretending to be 18-year-olds.

We see how being truthful basically blacklists Satoko from every job—even jobs where her cooking and cleaning skills would make her overly-qualified, if anything. Then, she lies on her resume and in her interviews—giving exactly the information that an employer would expect and making her just another face in the crowd. The only job she ends up getting is doing illegal, backbreaking work for the mob: disposing of bodies—which is doubly hilarious as it is the same job she does for Konoha, but for less pay and more hours.

Then we get the real punch in the gut: Arisa's story. She's a recently graduated ninja and the bottom of the assassin rankings. To get by while waiting for her first murder job, she works at a (not) Starbucks and hands out tissues with advertisements that she has to prepare herself. Her only luxuries are a few plants on her one-room apartment's balcony.

And so after she's tasked with killing Satoko—and is killed in short order in the process—we get this painfully real bit of dark humor. We see another person has already taken her coffee job, someone else is handing out tissues on the street, her apartment is left abandoned—with boxes of half-prepared tissues its only occupant and her plants doomed to die without water—and her leaf-corpse is swept up and dumped in a garbage bin. No one has even noticed her death—not even her fellow ninjas. No one cares that she disappeared—especially not her jobs who replace her easily with another expendable young person. This episode is practically shouting: “This is the sad fate of young people in Japan who move to the big city looking for work!” And the worst part is the kernel of truth to it all.

All this social commentary is delivered with expert comedic timing—which is to be expected. After all, Director Yukihiro Miyamoto served as chief episode director in the second and third seasons of Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei—another show with an absurd concept used as a vessel for lampooning society and culture. If this is what we can expect from A Ninja and an Assassin Under One Roof going forward, this show looks to be both a hilarious and poignant ride.

Rating:

Random Thoughts:

• What a downer of an episode. Thank goodness the episode at least ends on a little sketch between Satoko and Konoha that reveals a bit about Konoha's past and her addictive personality.

• Kuro likewise has issues getting a job and is basically freeloading off her girlfriend while being tempted into gambling in the hopes of making a quick buck. More social commentary right there.

• I never expected to see the infamous Hanazono Room's “that pool” as a place for dumping bodies, but there you go.

• I love how Konoha and Satoko are constantly in these cliché yuri situations but their total lack of attraction for each other keeps making them go awry.

Ninja and an Assassin Under One Roof is currently streaming on Crunchyroll on Thursdays.

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