Ninja Scroll

Original Title: 獣兵衛忍風帖
Romanized: Juubee Ninpuuchou
Literal: Chronicles of the Wind Ninja, Jubei

Plot Synopsis

Ninja Scroll, set in the days of Samurai, Shogun, and Ninja, follows Jubei Kibagami, a wandering rogue ninja, and Kagero, a cold and deadly female Ninja. Pulled unwillingly into a plot by the Shogun of the Dark and some very nasty demons to overthrow the Shogun and conquer Japan, the two are forced into an uneasy alliance against the forces of evil.

For a complete synopsis on the rather convoluted plot, see the notes section.

Quick Review

Rating: 4 / 5
Reviewer: Marc
Review Date: 2003-08-03

Ninja Scroll is everything you'd expect from a gory anime ninja action movie: lots of ninjas, a corresponding volume of blood, a big group of superpowered bad guys, a cool good guy to cut them into little pieces, a sufficient selection of strange erotic situations, and a convoluted plot. It takes all the earmarks of a tried and true formula and nails every one of them, wrapping the whole package in slick art with lots of style, seasoned with plenty of smoothly animated action.

Though it's hard to call original and it occasionally pushes the limits of good taste, Ninja Scroll has everything a fan of the ultraviolent ninja genre could wish for, and the production values are high enough that even people who don't usually go for that sort of thing might find it worth watching. It is, for all intents and purposes, the quintessential animated gory ninja movie.

US DVD Review

The DVD includes an English 5.1 soundtrack, the Japanese Dolby Pro Logic soundtrack, subtitles, and a caption track (which doesn't quite match the English dialogue--it uses the same text as the subtitles, with written sound effects added). It also includes attractively illustrated menus, with some music, that provide access to a chapter index with still frames, a long plot synopsis, and a block of text about each character, as well as the theatrical trailer, the Manga Video promo video, and a "Manga Video Fan Club Video", which despite an impressive title is just their price list. One complaint: although the Japanese soundtrack is included, and doesn't feel like an afterthought, they neglected to include the Japanese cast, a rather annoying oversight.

There is also a 10th anniversary special edition coming in late 2003; it will feature remastered audio, and a remastered widescreen video presentation (though even the original release was apparently in standard TV ratio), among other things.

Content Guide

Featuring some extreme violence and gratuitous sex, this is most definitely not for the kids, or even most younger teens--definitely 16-up.

Violence: 4 - Lots of hacking and gore.

Nudity: 3 - A few nude scenes, nothing extremely graphic.

Sex/Mature Themes: 4 - One random sex scene, a semi-rape scene, and some other adult situations.

Language: 2 - Relatively mild language.

Notes and Trivia

Jubei Ninpucho (more accurately written "Juubee Ninpuuchou") is a somewhat hard to translate title; Jubee is of course the title character's name, and "Ninpuuchou" is made up of the characters for ninja ("nin"), wind ("puu") and "chou", a character roughly meaning story. The title, therefore, can probably be translated as something like "The story of the Wind Ninja, Jubei."

The English title "Ninja Scroll" has little if anything to do with the original title, or the movie--there isn't even a scroll in it (though in a stroke of irony, there is a different ninja movie that does involve scrolls, released a bit later--Ninja Mono, aka Ninja Cadets). However, the Ninja Scroll title has become well known enough that some Japanese promotional materials for the new TV series has a subtitle of "Ninja Scroll" in English under the main Kanji title (for example on the cable network Wow Wow's Ninja Scroll page).

As a second note, there is a legendary wandering samurai-ninja character from Japanese history who was called Jubei Yagyu; I don't know if the Jubei Kibagami in this movie was supposed to be of any relation or just had the same given name (not family name), but I wouldn't be surprised if that legend at least inspired this movie.

Finally, since a lot of people seem to get confused about this, let me make it absolutely clear that Ninja Resurrection is not a sequel or otherwise related to Ninja Scroll--it clearly tried to capitalize on the popularity of this movie (particularly the US marketing), but the productions and stories have nothing to do with each other. For reference, the Jubei in Ninja Resurrection is supposed to be Jubei Yagyu, not this Jubei.

Since the plot was pretty darned convoluted, once you've seen it (or if you don't really care about having anything given away), you may be interested in this more complete synopsis: The story begins when the demon Tessai attacks and wipes out the Koga Ninja, leaving only one survivor as his plaything--Kagero. Kagero is rescued from the unpleasant fellow's clutches by a rogue ninja, Jubei Kibagami, but Kagero has little thanks, and reports the shady dealings of the "Shogun of the Dark" to her superior. Jubei, meanwhile, has another run in with one of the minions of the Shogun of the Dark, a snake woman. After being saved by a weird Buddhist monk (fancy that), he is promptly forced into service by that same friendly religious man by way of a poisoned throwing star. Jubei is left with only a short time to live before the poison kills him; to get the antidote from the monk, he has to help him (the monk is actually a government spy) find out what that pesky evil Shogun is up to. Well, it's not long before Jubei and Kagero run into each other (and a bunch more nasty agents of evil). Since they both have the same goal now, they join forces, and soon find that the Shogun of the Dark is trying to get his hands on a shipload of gold from a secret mine--which he will use to gain power and eventually take over all of Japan. Furthermore, the Shogun of the Dark is an old enemy of Jubei's, who he thought he had killed years ago. Obviously, both Kagero and Jubei are going to do something about this, but will they be able to stop the Shogun of the Dark and his many superpowered minions?

Availability

Available in the US from Manga Video on a "Special Edition 10th anniversary" bilingual DVD (buy from RightStuf or AnimeNation). It was previously available on bilingual DVD (Manga's second), subtitled, or dubbed VHS.

Looking to buy? Try these stores: RightStuf (search) | AnimeNation | Akemi's a(nime)Store