B Plus Movies

When I was a teenager, often my mom would ask me when I was going to stop watching cartoons. With Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or Thundar the Barbarian on the TV in the background, I’d say “never”. As I became an adult, I was exposed to Japanese Animation (Anime) and I found mature themes incorporated into the medium that grew along with me, allowing me to still enjoy animation while not having to only experience it as a tool for telling juvenile tales.

One of the first full length Anime works I saw, one that set high expectations for any other Anime I might watch. It was called Ninja Scroll.

Ninja Scroll is a period piece, starting with a ninja for hire named Jubei. He roams the earth, basically spending time being an unparalleled badass more concerned with fulfilling obligations than personal gain. He crosses paths with a ninja girl named Kagero who is on a mission to find out the truth behind plague that has killed a village. The two of them soon discover there’s much more to the death of the village than simple illness.

Jubei meets up with a government agent who presses him into service by poisoning him. The trio continues the investigation and soon find themselves facing a group of supernaturally powerful warriors, one of whom has a history with Jubei. The more they find out the more danger they find themselves in and the price of knowing what is really going on just might be their lives.

Ninja Scroll is remarkably accessible for western audiences as compared to some other Anime which practically expects you to have a native understanding of Japanese folklore and social idoms. Ninja Scroll runs like a pretty standard action movie and displays just how much violence and drama you can pack into a cartoon.

In addition to being beautifully told, it’s also beautifully presented. The approachable nature doesn’t get betrayed by the fantastic elements (including a villain who can turn his skin to stone and another that is capable of electrocuting people with the just a length of wire and his force of will). On the other hand, the fact that it is a cartoon doesn’t dull the edge of the very bloody violence nor the near rape scene nor the sex scenes nor any of the other elements to this rich piece of animation.

Anime has influenced western cinema for years now, like The Matrix or even has been adopted whole cloth, like The Dark Knight prequel, Batman: Gotham Knight. If you wish to delve into this art form but don’t want to have to already understand the significance of giant drops of sweat and spontaneous nosebleeds, then Ninja Scroll is a excellent, if brutal, starting place.

And for that reason I give Ninja Scroll a B+. And not because I fear the Shadow Warriors coming after me for rating it lower. Definitely not.

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