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Ninja Slayer From Animation
Episode 12

by Mike Toole,

How would you rate episode 12 of
Ninja Slayer From Animation (ONA) ?
Community score: 3.1

This latest episode of Ninja Slayer From Animation asks a big-deal rhetorical question: why have a show with a story and characters when you can just parade the bodacious heroine across the screen again and again? Granted, this type of exploitation has a certain place in the great ninja movie pantheon, but it's hard to really make it work without constantly reminding the viewer that what they're watching is just a thinly-veiled vehicle for smutty fan art. (Think I'm exaggerating? Just plug "Ninja Slayer" into pixiv. But don't do it at work!) But before all the raunchiness starts, Ninja Slayer must defeat a giant lobster named Lobster-san.

Needless to say, the battle involves at least one character getting boiled to death, manically snapping lobster claws, and a pair of shuriken, perfectly thrown directly into the antagonist's two eyes. It's fun but dumber than usual, as Lobster-san doesn't even seem to pose a superficial threat to our man Ninja Slayer. "Ninja shall perish," remarks the hero, before tearing his adversary claw from claw. This is all done to save Nancy, who's trussed up in shibari, the powerful ninja art of Japanese rope bondage that I definitely only recognized because of my keen academic interest in foreign cultures. In fact, Nancy is constantly, inexplicably ensnared in this episode, all for the benefit of the camera's extremely male gaze. As she grunts and shouts uncomfortably, the artists working on the show lay her curves out in sharp, nearly pornographic relief. It gets a bit lame, honestly. I mean, just a couple of episodes ago, Nancy was hollering "Take this!!" and beheading cyber-ninja avatars, and now this?

Meanwhile, our nemesis Darkninja must recover after the last episode's battle, which gives the viewer a chance to look upon his drawn, solemn face. (He looks sort of like Richard Harrison, whom I'll be talking about more in this space soon!) Darkninja recovers with the aid of Master Tortoise, who despite the name really isn't that turtly. The mysterious helper returns Darkninja's broken sword, Beppin, and advises him to have it reforged. Ah, here's some familiar territory. The theme of a broken sword being reforged is something you see in all sorts of awesome media, from Lord of the Rings to Adventures of Horus, Prince of the Sun to Ronin Warriors. There's a self-repairing sword in Naruto, but for me the most superior ninja sword that must be reforged comes from an old Nintendo Entertainment System game about a demon sword. I think it was called Demon Sword. Oh sure, if you look up the box art, you'll see a big goofy-looking barbarian, but the game was released in the west during a dark time when all awesome eastern fighting arts were altered or disguised to make games that were marginally easier to understand, but looked way crappier. It'll take about ten seconds of actual Demon Sword gameplay for you to realize that the player character is actually a Iga ninja, who leaps from treetop to treetop, throwing shuriken everywhere and clearing stage after stage to reforge his sword. So clearly, Darkninja getting his Beppin reforged is going to be an important point going forward.

There's some more fun to be had-- a storm of too many title cards, and a great gag where Lobster-san's creator raves angrily about his desire to revive his creation, only he keeps getting interrupted by an uncooperative thunderstorm. This character is a genuine mad scientist-- you can tell he's a doctor by his lab coat, which coincidentally is the same way that you can tell that Henry Rollins is a doctor in the 1995 Johnny Mnemonic movie. That movie may not have aged that well, but it's yet another great companion to Ninja Slayer From Animation, as it trowels on both silly cyberpunk stuff and orientalism. But the bulk of the episode? Yeah, it just concerns itself with Nancy needing to be freed... after the camera gets a good look at her squirming body. You know, there's a limit to how often you can go back to the well with this kind of fanservice, and it's already running dry in Ninja Slayer.

I continue to enjoy the dubbed version, which has lately introduced Trina Nishimura as the English voice of Nancy. She does some fine work, and is only really upstaged by Ninja Slayer himself because the show gives him all of the best lines. I'm still having fun with Ninja Slayer From Animation's aesthetic, as well-- let's face it, that drunken tilting between zero-effort animation and awesome action sequences is kind of the style that director Akira Amemiya trades in. As for my reservations about the treatment of Nancy in this latest episode... I just worry that they're in danger of taking an intriguing character and tossing her in the bin. Plain and simply put, it's hard to maintain storytelling momentum when you keep doing stuff like that.

Grade: C+ Ninja Slayer From Animation is currently streaming on Funimation.


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