Ninja Scroll

It's basicly the Sex, Drugs & Rock 'n' roll of chanbara cinema and for exactly that reason it was quite popular not too long ago at least among teens. My opinion might be still based from when I was younger but it's a fun and stylish action flick with lots of ultra violence. Kawajiri contributed a short to Animatrix so you might have seen something of his. Wicked City is also one of the more well known oldschool anime movies where you will see a "human" venus trap in action ;P.

A movie full of blood, boobs, and butts, it's a movie I can totally see why other people hate it, yet I love it. Jubei is a real bae and the main reason I keep coming back to it over and over.

Honestly this was even better than I remembered. In terms of the US, this was a massively popular early anime, at the time as popular as Akira or Ghost in the Shell. I remembered only that I loved it and that is was really bloody. Both of these things were even more true than I knew. Ninja Scroll fears no nudity and no gore as Jubei, the hero of the film must face down the Eight Devils of Kimon, led by Genma, a man Jubei had already beheaded once before, before he can become the Shogun of the Dark. Genma is also a bisexual as his underlings all strive to be among his sexual partners, in a plot line that seems quite racy for 1993. The movie is lush with the beauty of ancient Japan, and many of the scenes are breath takingly gorgeous. The Eight Devils all have their own unique supernatural ability (except for the blind swordsman, who can just hear really well) and all provide almost impossible challenges for Jubei and his two companions to overcome as they narrowly escape the odds each time. It’s a shame they never made a sequel and that the TV series spin off doesn’t look up to par. It’s also quite strange the the director, Yoshiaki Kawajiri, who was quite successful at the time with other movies such as Wicked City, Highlander, and one of the skits in The Animatrix, didn’t go on after said movies to direct much of anything. Ninja Scroll was such a provocative, well done, and beautiful movie, that it feels like something has almost been stolen from the world by its creator not having more output.

Wars of ninjas in rural Japan.

A wandering ex-ninja crosses swords with a colorful team of supernatural villains, flirts with a posturing female assassin and grudgingly cooperates with a diminutive old spy in this rippling hunk of early ‘90s anime excess. Back in my teens, _Ninja Scroll_ represented everything cutting-edge and cool about so-called “Japanimation.” It delivered flashy swordplay and charged character designs, embraced mature themes, stripped down every member of its female cast and sprayed the countryside with geysers of blood. Everything about it screams badass, from the handsome, give-no-damns ronin protagonist to the rock-skinned super-heavyweight rapist he deposes in an early fight scene. What more could a goggle-eyed adolescent really ask for? Though I surely held it in high regard among friends, a frequent suggestion for overnight pizza parties, this is most definitely not a movie I’d have sat down to watch with my parents.

Revisiting it now, thirty years later, I didn’t want to watch it with my pre-teen kids, either. I’m on the other side of the embarrassment spectrum now. _Ninja Scroll_ is still everything I remembered, and a few things I didn’t. All the thirsty, edgy indulgences are still here, every bit as superficial and titillating as they were in ’93, and its visual stylings have aged like wine. No wonder there: it’s an early feature film flex for Madhouse, the now-famed animation studio. I had no idea the gang behind _Perfect Blue, Wicked City_ and _One Punch Man_ were responsible for this, too, but now that I’m a little more experienced in the genre, I can see their fingerprints all over it. With a wild cast of elaborate character models, an intense knack for dynamic combat scenes, oodles of extreme camera selections and a thick cloak of moody atmosphere, it hits each of their hallmarks. Every frame is a killer, composed to maximize impact and emphasize exaggeration. Even now, well past my impressionable teens, I couldn’t help but chuckle at the sheer, ballsy audacity of it all.

The story, by comparison, is adequate. We don’t get too in-depth about the motives of its power players; why the big boss can regenerate lost limbs or how the dark shogun fits into the larger picture. Suffice to say they’re bad guys, deserving of increasingly merciless ends... and now let’s get to slicing them apart. There’s in-fighting and squabbling in each alliance, changed allegiances and shades of gray which lend the whole picture a sense of unpredictability, so it’s more than your stereotypical case of “line ‘em up and knock ‘em down,” even if the best scenes do fit that template.

It’s action aplenty, in other words, with occasional examples of breathless exposition and/or bare tits to liven the calm between bloodstorms. I had a great time remembering why I wore this particular VHS tape out, and noting its influence in the direction of popular anime since. A fairly shallow parade of grimacing samurai pin-ups and gore-soaked payoffs that’s bound to please both current teens and their fondly reminiscing former counterparts alike.

One of the classic animes of the 90s.

The original title of the film is Jûbê ninpûchô.