Ninja Scroll (1993)

Have some blood sauce to go with your Gore Gyoza…in Hell!

We all have a movie or TV show we used to love as kids, but we wonder how well it’s aged. I’m no stranger to this, especially when it comes to anime. I’ve noticed a lot of my rewatches hinge on a battle between my unhinged teenage self and somewhat reigned in adult self. I’ll find an old title I enjoyed for the silly action and obligatory boobs, that I would put in for thrill of, “this is a ‘cartoon,’ but it’s like this!”

Ninja Scroll was one of these. In terms of bloodshed, it was the bloodiest. The gratuitous nudity was the icing on the gore cake. But the “has it aged well?” question isn’t a new one with me. While I don’t view Ninja Scroll as often as I did back then, I tend to revisit it every few years. “It’s that time again, so let’s go,” says my gut. Then I analyze during it each viewing, breaking down its parts, looking past the blood fountains and areolas. There must be a reason I keep coming back to Ninja Scroll, while leaving other titles like, say, Amazing Nurse Nanako behind.

So why not? It’s that time again, so let’s go.

Wandering feudal Japan with no clan or master as his own, Jubei Kibagami is a vagabond swordsman surviving on mercenary work. He’s so swift that he can throw a rice ball in the air, beat down a gang of thugs, and catch the rice ball again on its way down. Ninja Scroll doesn’t waste time establishing its lead’s badassery.

When an entire village suddenly dies out, a ninja clan rushes to investigate the mystery. Riding along with them is the clan’s poison tester Kagero, who is tired of being sidelined.

But before the clan can arrive, a monster with impenetrable stone skin destroys everyone but Kagero. I called him The Rock Monster when I was a teenager, but after many rewatches, I learned his real name is Tessai. But whether you call him The Rock Monster or by his proper name, one thing’s clear: Tessai is a huge asshole. I mean, combine the top five Hitler-tier villains into one bio-engineered superchode, and then realize Rock Monster is an even bigger dick than that.

Rock Monster drags Kagero back to a tatami hut to rape her. Because he’s as classy as he is hard, he threatens her with necrophilia if she fights back. Jubei saves Kagero, not realizing Rock Monster will track him down later for clobberin’ time.

But through odd occurrences, a battered Jubei ends up on the winning side, leaving Tessai as bloody as the forest he painted earlier. Unfortunately, killing Tessai lands Jubei on the villains’ shitlist. They are the Eight (now Seven) Devils of Kimon, a superpowered rogues gallery. They include a hunchback with a giant wasp nest under his skin, a very naked lady who commands snakes, and a gay guy who murders people with electricity. There’s also a lady who likes to blow shit up with gunpowder. She isn’t naked like the snake woman, but her permanently hard nipples make up for that.

The Devils are involved in a covert plot to usurp the current Tokugawa Shogunate government and replace it with the former House of Toyotomi. The screenwriter didn’t make up these Japanese names, by the way. Ninja Scroll is a period piece, and the story takes place within an actual era of Japanese history. Even Jubei is based on a real historical figure, albeit a romanticized one.

Jubei runs into an old monk named Dakuan, who bears the anime trope that all elderly men have dwarfism. He offers Jubei one hundred pieces of gold for stopping the coup. Jubei, however, passes on the job, as political business violates his principles. So the old man tries a more tactical approach, striking Jubei with a poisoned shuriken to ensure cooperation. If Jubei sees the job through to the end, he gets the gold and the antidote. If he doesn’t? Well, he can just keep vomiting up blood—which he does often—and see where that leads him.

Then Jubei learns the Devils’ leader is none other than his former enemy, Gemma. The news is surprising because Jubei once chopped Gemma’s head off. As a result of that, Gemma is supposed to be, as the dub often reminds us, “burning in hell.” He will prove to be a formidable opponent in the end. Like is colleagues, he is a douchebag. Unlike them, he’s literally immortal.

Soon Kagero joins up with Dakuan and his begrudging partner. And Kagero, we discover, carries heavy burdens. The poison testing has rendered her entire body venomous. She cannot risk being intimate with anyone, as it means their death; even a mere kiss is fatal. She feels frustrated over her condition, degraded over how her former clan has used her. The earlier sexual assault has also left her traumatized. Self-loathing drives her to suicidal behavior, leading to several scenes where she throws herself in harm’s way and Jubei has to keep rescuing her.

Kagero resents Jubei at first, finding his criticism of her behavior rude. But his personality is disarming enough that she warms toward him. Soon she’s struggling with romantic attraction, and their will-they/won’t relationship runs alongside the main plot.

Ninja Scroll never gives Jubei or Kagero a moment of rest. For 90 minutes, they run, jump, climb, and sustain injuries. The movie progresses like advancing stages in a video game, with a new Devil showing up like a boss at the end of an old beat-em-up level. The formula is as follows: the three characters will move to a new location. Plot happens. Then a Devil of Kimon shows up, and Jubei has to solve the problem. The monsters also get more formidable with their powers, and Jubei keeps climbing that ladder until he fights Gemma at the end of the movie.

Returning to the dub a moment, I’ve watched the subtitled version maybe once my entire life, when I bought Ninja Scroll on the then-new DVD format. It’s not that I’m opposed to the sub, just that I’ve listened to the dub so much more. Now, the dub isn’t bad; believe me, I have suffered through much worse. But someone over at Manga Video had the bright idea of making Jubei into the John McClane of Japanese ronins. In many situations, they write him hitting one-liners out of the park. Sometimes, though, that ball goes through a window. Like when he’s fighting a blind samurai Devil who monitors sound to strike his targets: “The only sound you’ll hear, is the sound of your own voice screaming.” Good Lord, if it were me in that moment, I’d say, “hand me your sword.” Seppuku is my only way out after enduring such a witticism.

So, maybe in the subtitled version, Jubei is more a normal man and less an American cowboy. I’ll get around to finding out one day. But regardless of which language track one chooses, the animation is very good. Between the backgrounds and the fluid movement, Ninja Scroll is gorgeous to look at. The action sequences are storyboarded so well, I forget I’m watching something animated. Intensity radiates from it.

Alright. Here, I am about to surprise myself. I’m going to sound like a ‘90s soccer mom or Web 1.0 evangelical reviewer.

So there was a time, about 27 years ago, when I might’ve said, “Stuff it with this Tokutomai shit and show the snake lady’s boobs again.” Or maybe I never said that at all, and someone else did. You’ll never know. But the point I’m making is even though I’m older, I still appreciate Ninja Scroll for its quality. The movie has all the right elements in place, working in its favor. The animation, script, pacing, action, historical detail, character development—this is a good movie.

And because it’s a good movie, with all those high quality components…is all the over-the-top blood and gore in Ninja Scroll necessary? The picture in my mind is of a hyperactive middle schooler, adding nuance to his class assignment:

According to my Microsoft Encarta CD-ROM, the Tokugawa period lasted between 1603 and 1868. House of Toyotomi, Battle of Sekigaharand Jubei started slicing them up and blood gushed from their neck wounds and there was blood all over the place. PSSSHH!!

The scene where Rock Monster gulps down the dude’s arm blood is about the grossest thing I’ve seen in anime outside Urotsukidoji, or those rabbit-things in Blood-C. Ninja Scroll’s gratuitous tits and arm blood guzzling are all for shock value. But the appeal of shock is drawing larger audiences to theaters. Why not trust them to praise Ninja Scroll for how good it looks and sounds? I could understand if they needed blood and boobs to sell more video tapes to American grunge-era misfits. Except the Japanese make anime for themselves first before they worry about us. Their primary audience isn’t—wasn’t—people like me in the ‘90s.

It would be a bad indicator if I didn’t find Ninja Scroll as appealing as my teenaged self used to. Yet here I am, declaring the movie an essential stop on anyone’s anime deep-dive. You just have to wipe the blood away to see it shine.

Final Rating: *** ½