Ninja Scroll (1993)

 Ninja Scroll (1993)

8/10 

Starring the voices of

Kōichi Yamadera
Emi Shinohara
Takeshi Aono
Daisuke Gōri

Directed by Yoshiaki Kawajiri

Ninja Scroll is one of the first (if not the first) anime I saw when I was a child. It took an old friend to remind me of its existence before I can even recall that I saw an anime as such. This is one of those classics that live up to the hype. The story is very engaging and the mystery is held up so you have to be fully invested before you can get what is going on and why.

This anime does not play for the children, this is adult based with nudity, sexual molestation, killings, blood and some gore.

I want to believe done back in 1993, this is one of the few that made it easy for others to follow suits.

The animation is well crafted and the fight scenes are not overly glorified. This is a man (a ninja) with a girl trying to stop a whole team of ninjas known as demons where each has some sort of special powers.

The gap between the ninjas with special powers and the real people is much, but then the skill of the lead character Jubei made up for the distance between the demon ninjas and him. Then as you would expect the final battle was everything you would expect from such a movie as this.

The plot of Ninja Scroll starts with us meeting Jubei as he kills some men with skills that I felt were setup to show off the kind of person he is.

From there we see the powers of these demon ninjas, there are eight of them and they have killed everyone in a town and made it as so that these people were killed by a plague.

We see their ability to manipulate corpses, some have the ability of not being able to be pierced and some can even manipulate the surroundings before you.

Kagero is a lady ninja and part of a clan of ninjas that were sent to investigate what had happened in the city. On their way there, all of the ninjas were killed, except her. She was taken as a token of one of the eight demons. He took her to a place so he can rape her and he had already begun when Jubei showed up to interrupt.

The fight was brief and Jubei and Kagero were able to escape. The demon chased them still and got himself killed.

Jubei and Kagero part, with Kagero reporting the mater to her superiors who ask her to further investigate. Jubei was approached by an old man who tells him to work for him for a hundred pieces of gold. Jubei turns down the offer and soon he was attacked by another of the eight. This time this one wanted revenge, Jubei was able to escape thanks to the old man, who then went on to poison him. Now he had a problem, the old man had the antidote to the poison and was not willing to give it until Jubei helps him.

The man wants Jubei’s help to kill the remaining seven demons, while he investigates what happened to the people of that town. Their paths cross again with Kagero who then joins the group, as we see them fight their way with the remaining seven to get to the bottom of the case and Jubei faces up with a ghost from his past.

Ninja Scroll is one of the best things you can see when it comes to anime or animation.