Ninja Ryuukenden

The NES Ninja Gaiden games are known for their high quality and challenging gameplay. They also don't have very complex stories, so you'd think a fifty minute adaptation would be able to provide a pretty good experience, if only for fans of the series. You would be wrong. Let's start with the story. A scientist supposedly develops a cure for cancer, although this entire piece of information turns out to be completely pointless but I'll go into more detail about that later. Some reporters hear rumours that he's been performing unethical human experiments so they break into his house to find out that the rumoursare true and the scientist is involved in a plot to revive the evil Gods. To be fair scientists trying to revive the evil Gods could be a good Ninja Gaiden plot. The problem is that the execution is horrible. You'll notice that the entire cancer cure could've been left out without losing a single thing. There's actually a lot of padding involved in this. Establishing shots drag on and there are several scenes in the beginning that don't have any impact on the plot whatsoever. There's also a lot of clunky dialogue that really doesn't serve a purpose. You might ask, are the action scenes at least good? Well, no they aren't. Part of the problem is the monsters themselves, I'll get to that later. There's also the more serious problem of them being boring. The characters go through the enemies very quickly and they don't seem to pose any real threat which causes a complete lack of dramatic tension. In the games slicing thorough hordes of enemies works because you know that a slight error could result in you dying, but in this it's just boring. As for the characters, Ninja Gaiden II has very few important characters. There's Ryu, Irene, and Robert. This OVA takes place directly after Ninja Gaiden II. All three of these characters are included along with Sara, Jeff and a random girl with glasses. This is another problem. They have too many supporting characters. None of whom are given developed personalities or characters. The worst part is that the story focuses more on the support characters than Ryu, and he's the bloody protagonist of the games. Aside from the cardboard cutout support characters, let's look at the characters we actually know from the games. Robert is reduced to the cliche, grumpy, ex-soldier. As for Irene, remember in the NES games when she was actually competent and the only reason she got captured was that the odds were heavily against her? In this she's a completely incompetent and cliched damsel in distress. She can barely shoot a gun, when she tries to use a sword she fails miserably, and she gets captured by two guys without even struggling. It's really a disservice to her character since she was a CIA agent in the second game. Where did all her skills go? Ryu isn't even done well. What little we get of his character makes him look like a melodramatic moron. Let's move into the art. It's bad, even for 1991. The backgrounds are just lazy. When they're actually present they're done as simplistically as possible. There are a lot of cases of characters going cross-eyed for no reason. As for the monsters, I told you I'd get to this, they look ridiculous. Any dramatic tension that the battles might have had vanishes when you see the monsters. They look like they belong in a children's fun house rather than a legitimate threat. The sound is bland and the voice acting is pretty bad. None of the actors emote very well. This is especially a problem with Ryu and Irene, voiced by Nanba Keiichi and Touma Yumi respectively, since they both get some lines that should be emotional. I honestly blame the Direction since I've heard both Nanba Keiichi and Touma Yomi deliver very emotional lines. Zoisite in Sailor Moon and Refill Sage in Tales of Symphonia being two obvious examples. There's no yuri in this. So its yuri factor is a 1/10. It's just as well. Given the writing it wouldn't have been any good anyway. My Final rating for Ninja Gaiden is a 2/10. It's very bad. The premise could have been good but everything else is just terrible.

"Of course you are excited by battle! We all love violence! We all love getting drunk! We all love sleeping with women! Some of us even enjoy sleeping with men! The point is that we are MANLY men and that is nothing to be ashamed of! Now lets go kill some fucking demons and celebrate with some fucking beer!"- Robert Sturgeon from Ninja Gaiden: The anime Overview: So besides having one of the greatest speeches in anime history, why should you watch Ninja Gaiden? It is a fun, old school, schlock anime that knows exactly who its audience is and what it wants to be. If youare a fan of classic NES games and early 90s cheap OVAs, this is a real treat. Story: This is a direct sequel to the original Ninja Gaiden game from 1988. The world is constantly under threat by demons, who are held at bay by the ninjas of the Hayabusa Clan. Our hero is Ryu Hayabusa, who currently lives in New York City and does...uh...ninja things. His girlfriend is a Chinese American named Irene who runs a Chinese antique shop. In my head canon, it's the rival shop to Uncle's from Jackie Chan Adventures. Suddenly, a pair of mad scientists want to summon demons and bring chaos to the world. One of them also kidnaps Irene, so now its up to Ryu and his 2 American mercenary friends to save the day! The plot is simple, but it works. This is an adaptation of a game where the main plot is that you keep getting knocked into holes by birds. This doesn't need to be Shakespeare. Characters: Ryu is a stoic, badass ninja who kills people in awesome ways. This anime doesn't try to force a tragic backstory or shoehorn in some forced character moments. It knows it only has 40 minutes to tell its story and those 40 minutes should be filled with cool Ninja stuff. Honestly though it is Ryu's mercenary pals that steal the show. The character Robert Sturgeon is voiced by the incomparable Norio Wakamoto and it just shows how a great actor can take a cheesy speech and make it GLORIOUS. Think Raul Julia in the Street Fighter movie and that's like Wakamoto in this anime. This is the guy who voiced Cell, Alexander Anderson, Oskar von Reuenthal, Vicious, M Bison, and everyone's favorite, the floating cat from Azumanga Daioh. His charisma is off the scales and here he is allowed to ham it up as much as he wants. Animation: This anime was made by a nobody studio on a limited budget in 1991. Considering all that, it looks pretty damn good for what it is. The action scenes are plentiful and the blood is heavy. It has an annoying habit of often being lit really dark to hide the limited animation, but besides that I have no complaints. Overall: So this an adaptation of a video game with a 3 sentence plot, made on a limited budget by a nothing studio. This has NO right to be a decent anime, and yet it honestly is. Who directed this beautiful schlock? Mamoru Kanbe. Of COURSE it was Kanbe. I have never seen an anime director so good at salvaging the worst possible situations. This dude is like The Wolf from Pulp Fiction. Why do I say Kanbe is underrated? Just ask the internet what it thinks of Elfen Lied. "Ugh..it's overrated crap for casuals just like Sword Art Online, Attack on Titan, Tokyo Ghoul, and Code Gayass!" Is there a difference between Elfen Lied and those others? Why yes there is. All of the other "casual trash" anime had budgets 40 times higher, were made by A-tier studios, and were based on red hot properties. Anybody could have directed Attack on Titan or Tokyo Ghoul and it would still be a hit. Kanbe was able to take a frankly horrendous manga and with a terrible studio and limited budget, craft one of the most beloved anime of its decade in countries around the world. The man has some SERIOUS talent. Ninja Gaiden is no masterpiece...obviously. However, it is an enjoyable piece of oldtaku schlock that will only take up 45 minutes of your time. I honestly enjoyed it quite a bit and I think other people who love old, bad anime will get a kick out of this one.

It's just a single episode story, and I just watched it maybe five hours ago. I read through the story description/synopsis. I recognize some of the names. And that's about it. In short, this anime was so exceptionally unexceptional, that even though I watched it mere hours ago, it's all a wash. I retained almost nothing from this. Nothing of interest -- at least nothing worth remembering. At all. Well, I guess the quality of the artwork and animation were decent enough. But what's the point if the storyitself is so...bland and generic and uninteresting, that it's completely forgotten almost immediately after?

No complaints here. This is classic 90's OVA with tons of violence, blood, and action. I won't call it "ultra violent" because there's certainly darker stuff out there, but the fountains of blood and dismemberment will definitely scratch that itch. Animation quality is surprisingly good when it comes to sword fights, and you can tell that's where most of the budget went. It would be amazing to see this on a proper Bluray remaster. The Laser Disc I watched this on was good quality, but you can tell there's a ton more detail that's possible. If you're a fan of violent 90's anime then thisis a must watch.

Merchandise

Links may contain affiliate references

Studio

Themes