Ninja Collection

For the past couple of months, I have searched far and wide for what is subjectively the worst anime of all time. A search that can only be described as "enjoyable because they're so bad they're good." I have searched through the classics as well as the worst of the seasonal anime trying to find the one that will truly boggle my mind.

Ladies and gentlemen, it beings me the utmost pleasure to say that I have found it. The worst anime of all time. For if Ninja Collection is not the worst anime of all time, then God help us all.

First we must ... ask ourselves, what is Ninja Collection? Is it really a series of ten 4-minute episodes of ninjas? Who are the ninjas? Are we going to see a collection of them? The answer to all of these questions may surprise you... in which my answer is "I don't know either."
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So what really is Ninja Collection? To answer this question, we must first delve into the foundations of the genre itself, meaning we have to question "What is anime?" Merriam-Webster defines anime as "a style of animation originating in Japan that is characterized by stark colorful graphics depicting vibrant characters in action-filled plots often with fantastic or futuristic themes." In the present day, we might find this definition of "anime" to be inaccurate. Look at any romance or slice-of-life anime and you will find that we have plots that are not really "action-filled" or have "fantastic or futuristic themes". In short, our definition of anime can be broadened to the following: "a style of animation originating in Japan that is characterized by stark colorful graphics depicting vibrant characters." To be an anime, it must be an animation. Oxford languages define animation as "the technique of photographing successive drawings or positions of puppets or models to create an illusion of movement when the movie is shown as a sequence." In other words, animation should create the illusion that something is moving in the first place. This gives us a very broad definition of "animation"; after all, even a rapid sequence of pictures could count as "animation" because of how we perceive time. But that philosophical tangent can come another day.

Does Ninja Collection fit into the definition of anime? A quick look at the season and you'll see that the characters in Ninja Collection move at a pace that averages somewhere around 1 frame per second. You fucking heard that right. ONE FRAME PER SECOND. In reality, the frame rate ranges from 5 frames per second to 1 frame every 5 seconds. The damn thing is so inconsistent that you can't help but remember the horrible anomalies that are the more-than-occasional "1 frame every 5 seconds". How did anyone watching this thought this was a good idea?

To put in perspective, animation is typically done at 12 (unique) frames per second, such as Your Name, Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse, and Studio Ghibli movies. That means that Ninja Collection can be about 60 times slower than most other animes you watched! Now if anyone could possibly argue that one frame every 5 seconds can create an "illusion of movement", I would laugh at their face. Thus, Ninja Collection is not really animation. Hence, by definition, Ninja Collection is actually not an anime!
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But we're not here to see anime because of the animation, we're here to see the ninjas, right? It's their story that matters...

Right, the story is fucking abysmal too.

To lighten my pain and suffering, I sped through the 10-episode 4-minute anime at a blazing 4x speed. I am astounded... astounded to say that I was fucking bored to death by episode 5. I actually felt like I wanted to cry by episode 5. Notice... this is minute 5 we're talking about here since I am blazing through this at 4x speed. I swear to God, watching paint dry for 10 minutes would be less painful than watching these 10 episodes again.

Why? How did a 4-minute story-based horror anime somehow manage to make Pupa look like a goddamn masterpiece? We first reiterate the fact that this is a 4-minute story-based horror. Apart from jumpscares, most techniques that result in the "spook" require time. The ever increasing build of tension, the creepy atmosphere, and the sense of impending doom all typically need buildup in order to become effective. Four minutes is far too short to build any effective effect (and going in 4x speed does not help its case.) However, this isn't what pissed me off the most.
What made it unbearable was that all episodes were exactly the same. The story structure is literally: 30 seconds explaining that Tokyo is run over by ghosts (THEY REUSE THE SAME 30 SECONDS EVERY. SINGLE. EPISODE), main character has a regular day, the author presents a slight nightmare, it seems like the character is in deep trouble, then some deus ex machina happens as some random guy does some stuff and we have a happy little ending. Like... the fuck? THIS IS WHAT YOU CALL A FUCKING HORROR STORY? First of all, they change the main character every episode so honestly I don't give a fuck on who appears and who doesn't. It would be fucking nice to maybe... MAYBE kill them off after the deus ex machina shows up for maybe some uncertainty? Like fucking hell, give me SOMETHING that says that these main characters may not make it? But NOOOOOO IT'S ALWAYS SOME DIVINE INTERVENTION THAT SAVES THE DAY. It is brutally annoying and the most BORING way to fix everything. Like seriously, this gave the classic "He's supposed to die here BUT NOOOOOOO SOME BULLSHIT HAPPENS AND HE LIVES" cliche.

Yeah it got old... and stale......... so... fucking... stale...

Oh yeah, in addition to changing up the main character, they also change up the deus ex machina character every episode... in which by context I THINK are the ninjas. But like... the fuck so the ninjas are now nightmare slayers? Who the fuck are these guys anyway? The answer... is in the Ninja Collection trailers. I kid you not, I learned more about the ninjas from THE TRAILER OF THE ANIME than in the actual anime. I legitimately can't...
(My favorite memory while watching the series came from episode 8. My friend and I were watching through a call when suddenly my mom came in and asked me to test the milk to see if it was spoiled. It took me a couple sips, but I concluded the milk wasn't spoiled. I look back to find I missed the entire episode, and when I asked what I missed, he said "nothing". I replied "Yeah, you're right. Drinking the milk was probably more entertaining then watching that episode anyway.")
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And now, we get to the best part of the anime: the OST. With how god-awful the animation, graphics, story, and characters are, you can... well actually probably can't imagine how low the bar is to be the best category. For fuck's sake, even if the production put the happiest idol song as the ED of a "grim" horror story, it would STILL EASILY be the best part of the season. But to my own surprise when I searched up the song, the full version of the ED does not have a chorus! Ladies and gentlemen, the best part about Ninja Collection is a song... without a chorus.
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It brings me no end in pleasure saying that I have achieved my goal of finding the worst anime ever. There is almost 0 animation. My soul started to hurt after 5 episodes of the story. I learned more about the characters in the trailer than in the actual anime. The best thing in the anime, which is the music, doesn't even have a chorus. There is nothing redeemable in this "anime".

1/10. The actual score should be closer to 0/10 for creating a black hole that made me seriously reconsider how I rate other bad animes.

I have a soft spot for short anime. Even if they don't give mindblowing experiences, they can be fun times that are quickly done so they don't waste your time. Joshikausei is an example of a short anime I really enjoyed.

Sadly, Ninja Collection isn't a good experience.

The anime follows a group of ninjas (I guess?) that defeat evil spirits (I think?) in an episodic fashion. The plot is incredibly simple but it is still confusing as hell due to a lack of explanations and just weird events in general. In the first anime a fog is turning students into zombies, the ... next episode there is a devil, the next one ghosts. And the explanations of what they do, where they come from, what the reason is for doing the things in the show or even just why they exist? No explanations, just random "creepy" shit happening. And I put "creepy" in quotes because it is not creepy at all.

The reason why it is not creepy is because of the horrible production values. This anime is a spin-off of Yami Shibai and that had limited animation, but that was clearly an artistic decision since the artstyle was really good with some great lighting effects to go along with it. With Ninja Collection the limited animation doesn't feel like an artistic decision but a budget cut. The drawings themselves are ugly and the lighting effects are nothing to write home about. When things do move characters just slide across the screen. I once noticed that they forgot to draw the rest of an arm since it slide too far into the screen.

And then the voice acting. Did they just pull random people of the street? Because the voice acting is noticeably bad. Lack of emotion, awkward dialogue delivery and just a general feeling of unprofesionalism makes the voice acting not good.

When I first saw the 3.59 MAL score I was shocked. No way it could be this bad! But it was. If you actually want something similar to this but actually good, check out the original Yami Shibai. That anime will actually frighten you while this anime only will make you feel bad for it.

Deliberate, but afwul animation style choice. 1980s VHS filter. Stiff, paper cutout style characters with non-articulating limbs. For example, when a character points, his arm is stiffly down by his side, then the next frame he is stiffly pointing, with a cheesy 'blur' effect to indicate there was movement. I heard someone refer to this as "Powerpoint anime". I can't emphasize how horrible and lazy this looks, even if it was on purpose. It's just so, so bad. Episodes are 4min long which is fine; I don't mind short anime. This is easily one of the worst attempts at being "original" that I've ... ever seen. This feels more like a high school kid's art project than an actual official anime. I most absolutely did not enjoy this.

Ninja Collection, despite its title, isn’t a collection of 13 short stories about ninjas so much as it is a collection of short horror stories in which a ninja appears for a few seconds at the end.

It is a spin off of the long-running short series Yami Shibai, and very much in the spirit of it insofar as being a collection of 4-minute long one-off horror shorts with no protagonist throughout. Ninja Collection differs however by having a small cast of recurring bishounen ninja we know nothing about, who take turns showing up and killing the ghost or monster of the episode.

Almost every episode ... of Ninja Collection plays out as follows:

A person living in Tokyo is having a normal day, until something Weird happens. Things keep getting Weirder until they become Scary, and the person realizes they are in danger, being pursued by some kind of malevolent entity, like a ghost or a demon. Right before this threat can hurt or kill them, a ninja shows up and saves them by killing or otherwise containing the entity, and then they disappear in an instant and the person is left wondering if any of that actually just happened. Cue upbeat ending song.

There are some outliers, but they aren’t different enough to challenge this formula. Even if a ninja doesn’t save the person we’re following, at the end of the episode one does show up and slay that which killed them anyway. Even if the random citizen of Tokyo turns out to be the monster of the week, we still follow them as if they are the victim of some supernatural harassment, until they are found out and a ninja kills them. There are just 2 episodes that are more about the ninjas than a random citizen, but we barely know these ninjas, so they don’t feel any different from the one-off citizens really. In both a ninja is transformed into a demon themselves and dispatched by another.

These titular ninjas are by far the weakest element of the series, for a few reasons. One, their AnimeProtagonistTM designs clash with the otherwise realistic characters and mundane setting that is Real Life. Two, they don’t have names and don’t function as characters, so why include them as part of a recurring cast? And three: the promise of every threat being neutralized by one of these random ninja at the 3 minute mark undercuts any tension throughout.

It would have made more sense for this series to more closely follow something like Kagewani than Yami Shibai. If you’re going to create characters to connect otherwise completely unrelated shorts, then they should… be characters! We should follow them, like we followed the protagonist Banba in Kagewani as he explored scenes of various supernatural horrors, with a loose plot that spans the entire series and leads to a conclusion. Instead of closing each episode with one of a handful of ninja showing up and stabbing a ghost, the episodes should open with us following one of these ninja as they pursue the ghost of the week, or perhaps investigate a grisly scene, or set a trap to catch a horror we wait in suspense to see.

The main gripe I see against this show is that it is badly animated, or not animated at all. And yes, those claims are true, but this style of animation (which means to invoke kamishibai, a traditional story-telling method that uses still images) isn’t unique to Ninja Collection – it’s also used in its main series Yami Shibai, and in other horror shorts like Kagewani and Sekai no Yami Zukan. The visuals may turn off mainstream viewers who have no interest in this type of show, but there is clearly an audience for it. So why is it rated so lowly in comparison?

My belief is that Ninja Collection stands out as particularly bad compared to other entries in the genre of “barely animated horror shorts” because there is no reason to include any ninjas, and no effort made to integrate them into a series of shorts that would function better without them. The main differentiating element of this show isn’t just superfluous, it actively robs the much more prevalent horror element of any tension.

I don’t believe Ninja Collection deserves to be touted as the worst of the worst when it comes to anime – it’s a masterpiece compared to the likes of Skelter+Heaven, etc. But it is dull and conceptually ill-conceived enough for me not to feel compelled to defend it much more than that.

Aaahh, another summer, another Yami Shibai season.

The discerning reader might be thinking: "Oi there lad, this is called Ninja Collection, what are you on about?" and indeed, the name is different but the substance is the same, only severely worsened by taking away what (precious little, truth be told) good the Yami Shibai series retains.

For anyone who unlike yours truly hasn't watched all 7 (or just one, for that matter) Yami Shibai seasons, I'll explain the template: each episode lasts a bit less than 4 minutes (if you take away the soundless boring intro and the atrocious ED, which you should). They're episodic, with no ... real recurring characters (there are a few in this one, but it really doesn't make a difference) and they all follow a very strict structure within the allotted time.
To put it into perspective, all Yami Shibai seasons got either a 5 or a 6 from me, except for one season which got a 4; so, why is this Ninja Collection, made by the same Yami Shibai studio (and two more, goodness knows doing what), so much worse?

The answer is simple: they took away what made Yami Shibai interesting and at least entertaining: a relative unpredictability and danger. In a Yami Shibai episode, the character we followed could very well die in more or less imaginative ways (never shown, just hinted) or something else could happen; maybe the character would be safe and sound, maybe he or she'd suffer a different fate entirely. It's those kinds of episodes that were particularly intriguing.
With Ninja Collection...the character lives. In two episodes (yeah, spoiler, no, not really) a character dies but in 11 episodes, you know the character will be saved by one of the four "ninjas" (we know nothing about them, literally) before anything happens to them. In Yami Shibai characters usually deserved what they got, in some way or another, but here, they really are "oh, this absurd thing happened to me without any reason at all" and it's so uninteresting that it's just painful to watch.

Right, for the various categories...
Art: 2. I'll include animation but I really shouldn't, there isn't any animation to speak of here. It's the same as in Yami Shibai but somehow they made it even worse. When two characters look at the camera and talk, they simply make them open their mouths for a couple of seconds, it really looks like a couple of fishes wearing human skins while high on shrooms...it was always more "stop" than "motion" but this is laziness on a whole other level.

Story: 2. None, as mentioned above.

Sound: 2. Pretty horrible. Since there isn't really anything actually creepy going on, the only thing you'll notice is how you can rather literally picture the voice actor (they all sound like they got someone from the middle of Kabukichou and asked them if they wouldn't mind saying some words in the microphone) reading the lines. Again, this can be lessened to some extent with things actually happening in the background, a smidge of music, a few sound effects, a teeenie bit of tension but...no.

Character: 2. None to speak of, this category is more of a DNS

Enjoyment: 3. Right, I've described this as atrocious and trust me, it is, but while it was mostly boring it was still a "meh, whatever" way to spend a half hour of my life. Call it a recurring habit, after 7 years of Yami Shibai it's rather amusing to watch the same muchstopnomotion crap, even though it's significantly worse. Should they not go back to Yami Shibai and persist with this dreadful new course, I'll probably decide to find less idiotic ways to spend that half hour, admittedly.

Overall: 3. I wouldn't recommend this to literally anyone. If you're interested in "creepy" (more or less) short stories, I wholeheartedly recommend the Yami Shibai series. S2e07 and s7e12 are quite lovely, if I had to single a couple of episodes out. Avoid season 4 like the plague (it's about as awful as Ninja Collecton, albeit for different reasons) and have a blast. This isn't getting a score below 3 because anime like school days and clannad after story exist and this one at least didn't piss me off for days or make me feel nauseous and unclean. But that's pretty much the best that can be said about it.

I doubt anyone will reach this point. If you have, my congratulations lad (or lass), this review is probably 5 times longer than the script for all 13 episodes of Ninja Collection put together. Let's all hope we can go back to better times...

闇芝居の時間だよ？

Ninja collection is one of these anime which have a good and intriguing premise but for different reasons they end up as a wasted potential.Let's start the review spoiler free [not that I could ever do spoils for this tbh] STORY While the plot isn't bad the execusion of ninja collection is a mess with all the meaning of the word. The anime doesn't even try to be good while it's an episodic short anime it's doesn't show us nothing it's literatly a compilation of pictures with almost zero plot and while I don't have problem with anime which haven't a plot in ... ninja collection nothing happens.It's the same pointless thing again and again without a progress without even a hint it's really a waste of time. Art isn't that different from yamishibai for me it's just fine.Now for the sound the ending is not bad but forgetable and the voice acting nothing special.And now the characters are nonexistent even the protagonists literatly dissapear after one episode.Ninja collection is probably the most forgetable anime of the year it's a huge waste of time and it doesn't gives you not even entertaiment If you still want to watch just one or two episodes because it's literatly nothing happens. 4/10

this is my first 1 and it will stay like that because omg i am about to drop this horrible 2020 summer weird anime that is hated and desevers it. How they did the animation is not good. loos weird and in 1 scene this girl could not even run but just slide across the screen which looked hella stupid and should not be there. the stpry was kind of intresting but then how they did it was horrible. sound i felt like nothing. characters: I did like the first ninja you see and the person who worked at a salon but thats not even ... close to saving this anime. most of my friends watched this and either hated it or dropped it. I really had hope for this show but it is super bad and needs to burn with the animation of seven deadly sins and other stuff. i did not enjoy this at all. Plus you dont even know the characters own names which does not make any freaking sense. overall i am almost done with this show and was thinking of sapraing it for like a 2 maybe 3 but no this show is just horrible. do not recommend and it should not be anime. Thank you for reading this.

This slide show is a collection of short horror stories. That's right, there's not really any animation; it's mostly a cardboard cutout puppet show. You won't understand much of the story and it's just unsettling. None of it makes sense, but who cares it's supposed to be spooky. These 4 "ninjas" you see on the cover are barely in the frames of each episode and you don't learn anything about them. Even though you don't understand what's going on, everything is predictable as it always ends the same. The title and cover are misleading though, it should just be named a shit collection and an ... image of a crumpled-up tissue with cum inside it because shitting and cumming is more productive than watching this rubbish.

I wish there was an opening, but you get every hentai intro there is with the same line of text at the beginning of each episode. By the way, each episode is 4 minutes long with the intro and ending taking up half of the episode. Also, how the fuck did this show get produced; it's appalling something like this got aired in 2020.

It's a pathetic shit show, but a good time waster with your friends if you're ever bored. The only reason this isn't rated lower is that the ending song is pretty fire. They literally spent their entire budget on the ED.

If you plan on watching this show, don't expect much.

This anime got so many bad reviews, that i just had to watch it to see why, and tbh I can see why, it had this very off putting VHR or 1990's type filter on it which just made it look bad and they animation just kind of sucked even if it was a small anime short, but ngl the story had to much potential, like if it was just done a little better that i can totally see people fan girling over the main boys in the story, like I really did like the whole scary aspect of it, but even if ... the story was okay, i didnt at all get what was going on which the good girls and it left me wondering so many things, I wouldn't recommend it at all, i mean if you are bored and wanna rant about the point of this anime then sure

but i did kinda like the ending sound