Ninja Slayer From Animation

Episode 9

Ninja Slayer From Animation is not a TV show that one should watch languidly stretched out on the couch. If you're not focused enough to watch it while maintaining perfect seiza, the ideal way to experience this cartoon is to stand in the middle of your living room, bedroom, home theatre, or unfinished basement, looming over the TV menacingly, ready to explode into action at a moment's notice. When the title character YEEART!!s, it's crucial to YEEART!! right along with him.

This episode of Ninja Slayer opens with Ninja Slayer himself facing Nancy Lee and maintaining seiza for something like a minute, with the camera just sedately holding the shot. It seems like yet another cheap, hilarious trick, but then you notice the subtle cascade of glowing green lines suffusing the image, and realize that the scene takes place in cyberspace. Specifically, it's the cyberspace of classic cyberpunk fare like Neuromancer (mentioned previously in this space), Snow Crash, and of course, TekWar, where one can seemingly do anything using the power of the net.

This is a genuinely surprising development, because up to this point Ninja Slayer From Animation has largely concerned itself with doing wry pastiche of western ninja cinema. But this time, we get to see Nancy wield the awesome power of Internet Relay Chat and type really fast... with her mind. The characters do their planning on a mysterious ninja IRC channel, which real-life fans have already repurposed into a twitter hashtag. Using that channel, Nancy doggedly chases down deep corporate data, trying to root out the Soukai syndicate connections within. Eventually, however, activity like this is sure to draw the attentions of a cyber ninja. But unlike the cyber ninja from Metal Gear Solid, or the one from the 1988 film of the same name, this particular cyber ninja is a self-replicating computer virus!

The thing is, visions of huge, all-knowing, all-encompassing Japanese mega-corporations fits perfectly with both 80s ninja movies and 80s cyberpunk. In this episode, Ninja Slayer fearlessly mixes the two. Does Ninja Slayer himself turn into a powerful cyber ninja, in order to repel the attacks of the evil Daedalus? (Note: classic cyberpunk video game Deus Ex features an A.I. called Daedalus. Not a coincidence!) Not really, because the Cyber Ninja from the 1988 movie actually had his soul stolen by the bad guys, and fires knives at people, an action that you can replicate in the tie-in video game. That's actually a pretty cool angle to take, but we all know that Ninja Slayer's power comes from his burnin' ninja soul.

On the dub side, this week we get to see the final stand of cool teen ninja Shogo, who rejects his Soukai destiny to save Yamoto. It's kind of amazing how quickly and ruthlessly the show brushes aside what seems like a key character, but it's all in the service of giving Yamoto, a psychic ninja who attacks with glowing origami sculptures, center stage. The final action scene is ebulliently reflected in villain Sonic Boom-san's luminescent alligator-skin shoes. Don't stick around for the ending credits, as they're just another chilling reminder that we still don't have the soundtrack available for purchase.

Our latest episode is actually really low on action, but the plot developments kinda make up for it. The hacking angle is genuinely surprising and fairly cool, and as the episode winds up we get to see Nancy all dressed up like an oiran, distracting the bad guys for long enough for the rogue bio-ninja faction to show up and get a piece of the action. There's some really great English-language profanity, and the episode winds up with “Hide” by 80Kidz, an industrial instrumental that sounds like it was ripped from the parallel universe version of the Johnny Mnemonic film that was actually good. I remain impatient for more ninja action, and am beginning to want to watch this show on an old cathode ray tube TV.

Grade: B-

Ninja Slayer From Animation is currently streaming on Funimation.