Ninja Slayer From Animation

Episode 11

Ninja Slayer From Animation always knows exactly how to bounce back. I gripe about the lack of action, it delivers a great fight scene in the next episode. I wonder what happened to Darkninja, Ninja Slayer's purple-clad arch-nemesis who killed his family, and presto! He appears in this episode, striding towards the camera purposefully, in a transparent callback to the way the Evangelion 00 unit looks and moves. Ninja Slayer's got a cure for Dragon Gendoso, the so-called Roshi Ninja, but that's where Darkninja comes in. “You've become a problem that we can no longer overlook!” he snarls, belting out a line that's been used in dozens of ninja, samurai, and yakuza movies, not to mention manzai comedy routines.

It's here we learn that Ninja Slayer's karate is no match for Darkninja's iaido—but perhaps Roshi Ninja can make the difference! He enters the fray late and dressed in funeral garb—implying that he returned from hell to get Darkninja off of Ninja Slayer's back! He accomplishes this by using a pro wrestling move. I don't think it's one of the real ones, though, but a special move made just for the show.

This episode has a lot going for it—it's got an exciting fight that ends with the kind of bizarre, uncomfortably dilated joke that reminds me of one of the ultimate goes-on-for-so-long-it's-funny-again jokes from when The Simpsons was really funny. (I'm betting that many of you reading this were not alive when The Simpsons was funny. That's fine! You were also not alive when American Ninja 2 was awesome. Don't worry, though, it still is!) It's got a cameo from Yukano, Dragon Gendoso's uncomfortably bodacious ninja daughter. And it's got this great wind-up where Darkninja unsheathes his sword and invokes its name. Lots of famous swords have names like “Masamune” or “Jiganemaru” or “Sword of Omens,” but not Darkninja's. His is called “Beppin,” which is a word you might use to describe a pretty girl in a magazine photo.

That detail, while hilarious, actually exposes a small problem I have with Funimation's Ninja Slayer subtitles. I don't know if it's by fiat of Trigger, or whoever's doing the foreign licensing, or just a result of the usual speed-first approach of simulcast translation, but Ninja Slayer From Animation is frequently under-translated. Numerous times in this show, characters have evoked the power of the ultimate ninja power, cha-do, the Way of the Tea. We more commonly refer to it as “Tea ceremony.” Sure, you and me might know that without a dictionary, but what about the rest of the kids watching at home?

My favorite joke in the episode is actually one of these under-translated deals. When Darkninja unleashes his ultimate attack (which must be seen to be believed, so go watch the episode!), he cries out, “Kiri-sute gomen!” That's actually an old expression pertaining to the samurai right to draw their sword and fight if their honor is impugned, but it's still used today, usually as kind of a “Sorry, not sorry!” smartass non-apology. You can see a really obvious use of it in the TV miniseries Shogun, which includes a couple of scenes with black-clad ninja and Toshirō Mifune, so it totally counts as a ninja movie. Shogun's aged kind of poorly, but it's a fabulous example of the kind of hammy orientalism that Ninja Slayer From Animation is a reaction to, with an Englishman looking generally terrible in hakama, stumbling around using improper keigo in a fictionalized Warring States Era Japan.

The toughest thing about watching Ninja Slayer from Animation is staying excited for it. But I'm starting to worry a bit less, at this point—there have been several episodic speed bumps, but every time, the show recovers with balletic, almost ninja-like grace in the next one. I'm hoping that this episode's pivotal fight is just the first in a whole series of epic battles that go on for about thirty seconds too long.

Grade: B+

Ninja Slayer From Animation is currently streaming on Funimation.