Ninja Slayer From Animation

Episode 10

I could tell that fatigue was setting in, because as the episode's narrator explained that Ninja Slayer and Nancy were infiltrating a hot water bottle factory, my brain objected. “Huh?” I thought. “I thought this was a humble tofu factory.” The tofu factory was several episodes ago. This time, they're jacking into cyberspace to get some vital data on Yoroshisan Pharmaceuticals, part of the deady Soukai Ninja Corporate Keiretsu Conglomerate. Last episode, Nancy's attempts to infiltrate via an IRC channel were rebuffed by the cyber-ninja, Daedelus. The hack, it seems, has to happen on the premises.

But then Ninja Slayer and Nancy are interrupted by those lovable rogue bio-ninja. The four-armed, Goro-esque Notorious quickly gets in over his head, a victim of being completely unable to stop bragging about his unstoppable Bio-Iaido technique. I generally like Ninja Slayer From Animation's lo-fi approach to animation, but this fight really needed a cut or two of good stuff-- it should have had something, but it didn't. Of course, this still leads to an amazing sword-throwing standoff between Ninja Slayer and haunted Vietnam vet Forest Saruwatari (is the Vietnam thing a riff on Enter the Ninja, with its Vietnam veteran hero Cole? Or maybe it's Blind Fury, since both Forest and Rutger Hauer from that film swing their swords with such incredible precision).

Before you know it, Nancy is jacked in, and once again confronted by Daedelus, who's kind of a creepy customer. You see, he wants to penetrate Nancy's black ice, to use awkward 80s cyberpunk parlance. He keeps trying to threaten her into letting him direct-connect his LAN to hers (hey, you're gonna need a crossover cable for that, pal!), but she doesn't even let him finish his sentences, interrupting him with a brisk “TAKE THIS!” and a beheading. When he overwhelms her with copies of himself, only one thing can save the day: a spoofed ninja login! Like most on-screen cyberpunk fights, this one ends with a shadowy figure wearing VR goggles, slumped over a console in defeat.

I've really grown to appreciate the look of Ninja Slayer From Animation. Its bright, lurid color scheme is strange, but as you get used to it, the characters start to appear to be perpetually lit by harsh neon-- another cyberpunk hallmark. Ninja Slayer's backlit in bright green; Nancy in a shade of teal. It's a really distinctive and effective approach, so I have to give Trigger credit for it-- a lot of the manga and book illustrations I've checked out don't really go this route.

Another thing I'm really starting to enjoy about Ninja Slayer From Animation is the voice cast. The characters are fun to hear unleashing YEEART and AIIEE cries, but Toshiyuki Morikawa as the title character smolders with hilarious intensity, and I'm also always happy to hear Tesshō Genda playing the cloned yakuza goons-- largely because almost every time, they simply unleash a cry of “Hey, screw you!” Gets me every time. The show's real revelation is Chiwa Saito as Nancy. I actually once met her, way back in 2003, just after she'd really broken through as R.O.D. the TV's Anita, and she was busily selling herself as a good pick for young, cute characters. More recently she's impressed as Madoka Magica's dour, intense Homura. I wouldn't have expected her to pull off a femme fatale role, but she does it here.

As much as I appreciate the show's attempts to mix up a myriad of background characters and conflicts, I'm once again getting impatient with the plot. It feels like we've had several episodes since any real appearance by series heavies Darkninja and Laomoto Khan, let alone the vengeful Naraku Ninja spirit that allows the title character to attack with such brutal effectiveness. The episodes' brief running time, while good at keeping things brisk, also means that the story really needs to stay on point, and it hasn't been doing so in these past two episodes. The show strikes a really fine balance-- one between comical stiffness and fluid fighting, and between absurdly hackneyed storytelling and surprisingly nuanced characterization. When it walks that tightrope like a true ninja, everything's fine, but it's been wobbling lately.

Ultimately, despite a couple of amusing fight scenes, there's not a whole lot going on in this episode. I wondered if I was being too hard on the proceedings, but rewatching it revealed a detail I'd missed the first time: the whole thing takes place in a short hallway. There are a few other fun bits of bizarre orientalism - more riffing on tea ceremony, and a root password that has to be entered in elegant calligraphy, or the hacker DIES - but this episode is definitely one that's short on substance. Hopefully the Ninja Slayer gets back on point next week.

Grade: C

Ninja Slayer From Animation is currently streaming on Funimation.