#453: Ninja Scroll
A cult classic of early 90s anime
Initial release: 1993
Director: Yoshiaki Kawajiri
Madhouse — if there’s a studio that more defines anime’s early period of growing appeal in the west, I don’t know it. And a big part of that appeal was their reputation for anime intended for mature audiences, stuff like Barefoot Gen, Perfect Blue, Paprika, Wicked City, Demon City Shinjuku, and of course Ninja Scroll. (And it’s worth noting that these last three were all directed by Yoshiaki Kawajiri, who might perhaps be considered the Roger Corman of anime: while he doesn’t have the same level of output as the King of B-Movies, he was equally pioneering in bringing a harder edge of sex and violence to the medium.)
Ninja Scroll is, by all accounts, one of the best examples of this early 90s anime craze: ultraviolent, hypersexual, beautifully animated, completely bonkers — and relatively obscure today, despite often being included with fellow stand-alone anime films Akira and Ghost in the Shell as helping make more mature anime more popular in the west, and also being specifically cited as an influence on The Matrix. It’s the kind of thing hundreds of western kids absolutely should not have been watching 30 years ago, and yet they watched it anyway, because their parents assumed it was just a cartoon.
Or, as one-time video store owner and brief mid-00s internet sensation The Gord once put it, in speaking to the father of a pair of kids who wanted to rent it:
“I don’t believe I had to come in here just so [my kids] could rent a cartoon!”
“Well, the movie is inappropriate for children.”
“Just give me the movie.”
“If you want, but sir, I must warn you the movie is exceptionally violent and has material inappropriate for children.”
Well he was having none of this. A cartoon is a cartoon, so he rents it and leaves…
…only to return an hour later!
“What the hell is this? You rented pornography to my kids!”
“Actually sir, you rented an inappropriate movie for your kids, not I. I warned you.”
Set during Japan’s Tokugawa period, when the country was unified after a century of warfare but also purposefully isolated from the rest of the world, Ninja Scroll is a classic jidaigeki — essentially, a very Japan-focused historical fiction, set in Japan’s past up to at least the Meiji restoration but more frequently during the warring states period or the Tokugawa era. It tells the story of Jubei Kibagami, a wandering swordsman with a dark past who finds himself roped into a mission to stop a plot to overthrow the shogunate.
Along the way he meets Kagero, a female ninja who is immune to poison and is the last surviving member of a ninja team sent to investigate a town overrun with a mysterious plague only to be brutally slaughtered by supernatural ninjas. Kagero has a grudge against these ninja, called the Devils of Kimon, especially after being sexually assaulted by one of them, and she spends the majority of the movie demanding to be taken seriously by Jubei. Jubei, for his part, is only in this because an old man poisoned him and promised him the antidote if he does the job, but there’s also the lingering question of how it’s all connected to an evil warlord he used to work for five years prior, and the illicit gold mine they had been protecting.
Ninja Scroll is absurd. That’s the best way I can put it. It’s the most Madhouse film to ever Madhouse. The villainous Devils of Kimon are a Hideo Kojima-esque collection of weirdos, ranging from a guy with a wasp hive in his back to a snake-tattooed woman who seems to be in communion with snakes, if not actually made up of snakes herself. The blind swordsman with astonishing hearing is probably the least weird of the bunch.
Jubei is a classic jidaigeki protagonist — tall, handsome, and chivalrous, but bristles at being told what to do. He almost feels misplaced in this film. I recently discovered a subgenre of jidaigeki called zankoku or cruel jidaigeki, which was a brief movement in the 1960s of more mean-spirited, film-noir influenced jidaigeki films, often shot deliberately in black and white and featuring violent, often unlikable protagonists, with titles ranging from cult favorite Shura to the Akira Kurosawa classic Yojimbo. Though it’s not black and white, Ninja Scroll’s muted color palette and good use of light and shadow certainly makes it feel like kin to this older era of Japanese filmmaking — and yet Jubei feels like a character from a different kind of movie, as can be seen in how he treats Kagero. Somehow, it works.
While we can make a lot of hash about the amount of sex, violence and other nonsense in the film, it’s clear that Ninja Scroll’s lasting influence lies almost entirely in its presentation. It’s a beautiful film, with lovingly detailed backgrounds; the animation is smooth, and the fight scenes — the film’s biggest draw — are an absolute joy to watch, violent and quick. The characters are all distinct from one another, with their own quirks; Kagero, with her body so infused with poisons that making love to her is a death sentence, presents her own twist on the femme fatale, especially given her need to be taken seriously as a ninja in a male-dominated Japan. The background of Tokugawa-era politics provides a solid base from which the plot builds itself on, and the film’s big surprise seems to come from out of nowhere, until you look back and see that the signs were there all along.
Ninja Scroll is not for kids. On some level, that’s kind of its whole raison d’etre, a spit in the eye of those who would enforce an animation age ghetto in which cartoons must forever be children’s fare. Sure, you can find plenty of anime that tackles more mature topics in thoughtful ways, but when you absolutely need to utterly smash a preconception about anime you make something like Ninja Scroll.
