Seasonal First Impressions is a column where I detail my thoughts, however brief or long, about a currently-airing anime’s first episode or so.
There are a handful of interesting cultural currents running through Ninja Kamui. The most obvious has to do with its status as a Toonami co-fund—this is why it premiered so late in the season—and a likely-deliberate invocation of nostalgia for a bygone era of [adult swim]’s action programming. This might be the shallowest of these currents, however; despite the fact that it really would fit right in with [as]’ late-night action programming in the pre-Toonami revival days, and despite the fact that Main Toonami Guy Jason DeMarco has his name on it, I think Ninja Kamui would exist in some form regardless of Toonami’s involvement, and that’s because of the two other currents running through the anime.
The first is the recent spurt in ninja anime again. Not enough to be called a revival, but perhaps the tip of a trend is starting to show up. Over the past couple years we’ve had the straightforward, shonen-y Shinobi no Ittoki and the, apparently, deeply strange Under Ninja (I haven’t seen it), and now, with Ninja Kamui, we have an invocation of the grittier, bloodier ninja anime of the past. I’m probably not the first person to compare this series to ’93 sleaze classic Ninja Scroll, even if it’s only a distant resemblance. This, too, is only a loose thread, probably more indicative of something in the air than anything else. Again, I think Ninja Kamui would exist with or without those other anime. It would very much not exist, however, without Sunghoo Park, the series’ director and main creative brain.
You don’t come to this blog for in-depth production talk, most likely, (and if you do, you’re in the wrong place. I’m not the Sakugablog guy), but Park is a name that’s been well-known and in the air for a few years now. He is probably best-known as the guy who made a good chunk of the first season of Jujutsu Kaisen look as engaging and kinetic as it did. He’s since left MAPPA (I would also leave MAPPA if I were made to direct God of High School, so I get it), and founded his own studio, E&H Productions. Ninja Kamui is not the first thing E&H have done, but it is the first TV series, and thus, in a sense, their big coming-out party. Ninja Kamui isn’t based on anything, so it’s clear that this series’ story is one that somebody at E&H has had in their back pocket for a minute (I imagine Park himself, though I can’t prove that). So with that creative freedom, what did they deliver?
Well, a pretty good action series, so far.
Ninja Kamui‘s premise is very simple; an ex-ninja, our protagonist Higan [Kenjirou Tsuda] has fled to the United States to live with his wife and kid, using Cyber Ninja DisguisesTM to hide their true identities and live in relative peace. Things are great, until one day, Higan’s past catches up to him, and his wife and son are killed as part of his enemies’ ploy to ruin his life. All told, this is a pretty straightforward revenge tale of a kind that dots the whole history of the medium. While there’s something to be said for the baked-in sexism of having your handsome gruff guy protagonist survive while his family are murdered in cold blood, for the most part this is an effective setup. I don’t love Higan, but I like him, and any excuse to hear Kenjirou Tsuda do his thing for 20 minutes is a welcome one, the guy’s a fantastic voice actor.
The supporting cast is solid as well. The case of Higan’s family being murdered is taken up by the local PD, who are of course very much unequipped to handle secret ninja revenge killings. The one cop we spend any amount of time with is Mike Morris [Atsushi Ono], who, despite the obvious caveat that, you know, ACAB, I actually do kind of like as a character. He’s essentially a pretty basic genre stereotype who voices pretty frequent disbelief with the hyper-violent absurdity around him, and of course he’s the token One Good Cop (along with his assistant) in the force, the rest of which is all too willing to ignore a case they have no hope of solving and are ordered to do so by their mysterious higher-ups. He’s hardly revelatory or anything, but he’s fun.
The second episode sets up a further wrinkle in the plot, implying that the CEO of a virtual reality company is somehow tied to both the deaths of Higan’s family and goings-on in the ninja world more generally. This is a nice little twist that helps the show feel a little more distinct, and it’s not like there’s ever been a better time to make a douchebag tech guy your villain; the world is not exactly overflowing with love for Elon Musk and the like right now.
As for style, the series has what you’d expect from Park; lots of absolutely crazy action, with everything else being a little bit secondary. There are a lot of great “what, he can just do that?” moments, like Higan exhaling some kind of magic smoke that makes him grow extra arms (?!) in the second episode so he can more effectively fight off an assailant. Said assailant is disguised as an off-brand UberEats driver, because Ninja Kamui is also a little bit funny with it. The series is also not afraid to invoke truly ridiculous levels of violence and gore, which again makes it feel very much of a piece with [adult swim]’s late ’00s anime offerings. There is a very memorable bit in episode two where Higan, still recovering from the same attack that killed his family, takes out his anger and frustration by leaving one of the offending enemy ninjas tied, hanging upside-down, from the ceiling of a warehouse. Each day he spends recovering, he stabs the guy with a different knife, which he leaves inside of him after he’s done. Then, on the fifth day, when he’s fully recovered, he just lights the guy on fire! It would be downright Jack Bauer-y if he was doing this as an interrogation thing, but he’s not! It’s strictly a revenge play.
Which gets at the one problem I do have with Ninja Kamui which is that even with everything I just said in mind, it just feels a little….basic? So for all the praise I’ve given it here, I wouldn’t say I’m necessarily super invested. I think it’s being beaten out even in the fairly narrow category of “anime I’m not crazy into but which I enjoy watching for their fight scenes” by Bucchigiri?! Still, if you like by-the-book revenge thrillers, you could probably do a lot worse than this.
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