Juubee Ninpuuchou: Ryuuhougyoku-hen

After watching the original movie and falling in absolute love with it I learned of the TV series. I was so ecstatic to watch what I thought would be an incredible series, to say I was dissapointed would be an understatement.

Story: This isn't where this anime fails. In fact I don't even mind the story, it's interesting but not incredibly original. Everyone wants to kill Shigure and there's only Jubei and two minor characters to protect her. Storyline progression isn't that great, I found myself in the 5th episode going "is something going to happen?"

Animation: Watching this anime ... didn't make my eyes carefully try to understand what I was seeing. Sometimes when I'm watching an anime (mainly Gankutsuou) I read the subtitles as quickly as possible so i can appreciate the art. Not so here.

Sound/Music: Honestly, when it comes to anime I believe that music is one of those subtle things that makes a great anime even greater, or a terrible anime much worse. Or whichever combination you like. I actually enjoyed the music in this, it did suit the feel of this anime.

Characters: Here is where this anime fails miserably. For people who have seen the movie you'll definitely recognize the monk and Jubei. The other characters are all new. The characters are all one-dimensional. I never found myself rooting for any character because the outcome, I knew, was going to be the same. All enemy ninjas bored me, every single one of them. I'm not a huge fan of monsters in a ninja series, i like them to be more human. I mean sure, throw in a couple monsters, but....when every character except the main party are monsters...it gets really boring. And they're all the stereotypes. I felt all the characters to be very Trigun-ish and when i looked it up, the character designer for Ninja Scroll was also the designer for Trigun. It worked for Trigun, it doesn't work for Ninja Scroll.

Enjoyment: I almost didn't want to finish this series. 13 episodes long, a little over 4 hours and i didn't want to finish it. I chuckled a few times, was entertained for a little bit each episode. But not nearly enough for me to actually have a good opinion of it.

Overall: A series which, compared to the film it was based off of, is horrible. If you haven't seen the movie you might disagree "I think your opinion is terrible, I quite enjoyed this series." I came in expecting to see something that would satisfy me the same way the movie did, and it didn't. I would however, recommend this if you're just needing some ninja-action.

What a terrible anime.

I truly had high hopes for the Ninja Scroll anime series, based of the classic anime movie. Boy I was in for a major disappointment. The anime takes place fourteen years after the movie following Kibagami Jubei who's still roaming Japan and meets Shigure a priestess and things go down hill fast from there. Ninja Scroll the movie was a classic. The story was concise, the animation was great, the action was exciting and the characters were interesting. The series on the other hand was the complete reverse. The story was unbelievable and the tone of the anime had no drama for ... the story. The animation wasn't very good. The music was good, and that's the only thin that kept it from getting the one. The characters weren't interesting and you couldn't care about, even Jubei was one of those characters. God I wanted this to be a good anime. I am truly sad it wasn't.

Well since I am not gonna piss anybody of with this one, the kid gloves... stay on. It is not nice to excessively hurt a dying anime.

This is the anime about the well known movie and it failed to deliver on the enjoyment that we got from the movie.

The story is an a quest to get the ninja scroll from the title, but weird stuff is in the way. This normally would earn any other anime a 4 to a 5, but here I had the movie in the back of my mind and that made the story worse then I expected. It was a ... steeper slope down from the movie to the anime then I expected.

The art and sound are very standard for an anime from the time so that is just fine.

Characters... Well... Juubee is in it again and he is still fun, the problem is not him, it is the others. Juubee helps people that never come back in any way, not even in the way of a flashback about a lesson or whatever! Then the villain is not that interesting, which in the immortal words of Roger Ebert "Each film is only as good as its villain. Since the heroes and the gimmicks tend to repeat from film to film, only a great villain can transform a good try into a triumph." , so that would be a low score for that one too.

These things make it all seem like one of those episodes of pokemon where Ash and whoever is with him is lost in the forest to [fill in blank] town and team rocket is trying to get a pokemon. You get the idea that everything is filler but for the first episode and the finale. And that makes it a bad show, because it does not reward the spectator with a satisfying end where most things come together in one way or another. And lets just say that the end is a mind fuck for people that watched the movie and even for people that watched the show.

I almost think this is a troll show (it is like if they in Basilisk suddenly say that the villain and a big good guy are babies in robot suits, that is how greatly troll the ending is, please tell me they did not do that in Basilisk)

So, love, hate, objection or confusion is taking over your mind? Then let me know on my profile. I love all that.