Ninja Scroll: The Series

I remember a time when I would search the web for sites of big companies such as McDonald's or Pepsi, and they barely had anything up and it looked like crap. I remember looking up some of my favourite things, but the best thing I could find was a blue-over-white fanpage with 33 consecutive animated GIFs. I remember a time when I didn't use Google as a search engine, but savvysearch, Wired's hotbot and metacrawler. I remember looking up Ninja Scroll and barely getting any results.

Boy. Am I glad I revisited that last one.

Since 2003, apparently, Ninja Scroll had a TV series. Thanks to the miracle of YouTube and veoh, I finally got yet another great item from Boss Internet.

39,000+ people have watched it, and you might not be one of them. So here's another gooooooooooooooooooogle hit for Ninja Scroll through my blog.

I ate the 13 episodes in a single night. I had my reservations, but I think a lot of us would be willing to eat leftovers when it comes to Ninja Scroll goodness.

Now, I hate friggin' YouTube comments. They make me not want to post anything on YouTube. Along with these episodes are a slew of various comments, regular idiocies and anti-climactic debates about whether this is a follow up to Ninja Scroll or not. So before you run off and start watching, I will state a few things here that are comments are my own here in this silent corner of the web. Those of you who haven't seen the movie can leave early.

The 13 episodes follow Jubei Kibagami the wandering samurai, as he once again encounters the likes of the Kimon. Quite frankly, whoever made the characters time around should be making videogames, or playing less Samurai Showdown. The devils in this one make the 7 from the movie look like house pets. They are really f-ed up and strike fear instantly with their powers that are almost guaranteed to fell any mortal, and they would SO be great to have as new fighting game or RPG characters.

What sucks to the dust-devil, is that Jubei has gotten even better at what he does. Forget fights that bring his energy gauge to "danger". Not even close. Too may perfect scores, and you'll be sad to see some characters leave the stage so early. Don't expect any battle to be even near "epic", but you'll still get a good kick out of the enemies that don't go down so easily. So if you wanna see some messed up stuff.. like.. Sword of the Berserker messed up, give this one a viewing in full-screen.

The series is laced with quite philosophical undertones that hit home with me to some degree (yes, I'm now modeling my life after emo japanimation). Jubei's one liners are sometimes hit and miss, but can sound the clever alarm from time to time. Overall, I found the dialog to be very satisfying, but the encounters to be loopy and repetitive.

There's only one more returning character from the movie, and I won't spoil that part for you. Not voiced by the same actor, maybe that's why Jubei does not address him as an acquaintance. Jubei is still wearing his "best hat", and I would argue that this is indeed a follow up, because it still bares the dent that Tassai tore into it when he went to rescue the female ninja in that oh-so-unforgettable scene.

So, without any further adieu, go get whatever just ding'ed in your microwave, here's ep1 (part 1 of 3). When I tube, you tube.