Ninja Scroll

1993. Movie. 91 min. Historical adventure/fantasy. dir Yoshiaki Kawajiri. scr Yoshiaki Kawajiri. mus Kaoru Wada. des Yoshiaki Kawajiri, Yutaka Minowa, Hiromasu Ogura. -bc

Ninja Scroll offers a spectacular range of fanciful ninja-themed imagery as spies and mercenary swordsmen battle the monstrous 8 Devils of Kimon in a struggle to keep the Shogun of the Dark from achieving power in feudal Japan. A triumph of art direction and action scenes over narrative.

In Tokugawa-era Japan, a swordsman-for-hire named Jubei is recruited by Dakuan, a government spy disguised as a traveling monk, to help find out what the 8 Devils of Kimon had to do with a village wiped out by a plague. They are joined by Kagero, the female poison expert of the Koga Ninja clan, whose comrades were all killed in a battle with one of the 8 Devils, Tessai, the Rock Ninja. Kagero had been abducted and molested by Tessai, who was then killed by Jubei. Jubei is compelled to take the job because Dakuan had hit him with a slow-acting poison and possesses the only antidote. En route to the afflicted village, they are confronted, one by one, by the other 8 Devils, including Benisato, the snake woman; Shijima, with the metal claw; Mushizo, with a hive of wasps in his back; and Zakuro, the explosives expert. All are working for Gemma, Jubei’s former boss, whom Jubei had decapitated (and thought he’d killed) when Gemma had betrayed him years earlier.

Eventually all the parties wind up at Shimoda Village, where the Shogun of the Dark has sent a ship to pick up a cargo of gold that Gemma’s men had waylaid from a grounded ship. The Shogun of the Dark’s plan is to use the gold to finance a war to topple the Tokugawa shogunate. Gemma’s men had poisoned the water in the village well to eliminate all witnesses, hence the “plague” that destroyed the village and kept rescuers from going in. Finding themselves with no allies and no backup, Jubei, Dakuan, and Kagero face the fight of their lives as they seek to stop the transfer of the gold and the unholy alliance of Gemma and the Shogun of the Dark.

Ninja Scroll: The Series (2003, TV, 13 eps.)

Ninja Scroll stands out most in the areas of character design and art direction. Director Kawajiri’s specialty is bold linework and we see it here in every character, each distinct and memorable, with strong features and detailed countenances. Each of the 8 Devils is a fascinating and vivid creation, from Tessai, whose skin turns rock hard when angered, and Mushizo, who carries a hive of live wasps inside his hunchback, to Benisato, the alluring woman whose snake tattoos come to life and attack the hero. These are not the grotesque, misshapen monsters with tentacles and gaping jaws that dot some of Kawajiri’s other works, such as Wicked City and Demon City Shinjuku. Even the rock man and the wasp man are still recognizably human, while the others are even less monstrous, with two of them, Benisato and the scarred Zakuro, actually quite beautiful, if deadly.

Jubei and Kagero are coarser, rougher-edged versions of Taki and Makie from Wicked City and Kyoya and Sayaka from Demon City Shinjuku, but they’re also more interestingly designed. They are more experienced than the characters of the earlier films and, while still good-looking, their faces show the scars of their hard lives. Their faces also gradually reveal the scope of their feelings for each other, kept so well bottled up for most of the film.

The settings include impeccably detailed natural landscapes, such as the river the heroes have to swim through using a log and branches as camouflage, with a very high waterfall in the background, and the bamboo forest where Jubei has a swordfight with a blind challenger. Some of the settings have a more otherworldly feel, as if the characters had suddenly entered a dark dimension where the 8 Devils rule. The lighting and color schemes in these moments range from hellish red to eerie blue, signaling to the heroes that something dangerous is afoot. These include the hot spring where Jubei goes to heal the wounds incurred by the rock ninja and first encounters Benisato and her snakes; the abandoned seaport warehouse bathed in red where Kagero, under the hypnotic influence of the 8 Devils, attacks Jubei; and the thick moonlit forest where the Koga Ninjas are first torn asunder by the whirling blade of Tessai. At one point in a blue night setting, Dakuan announces, “Heaven sent this mist to help us,” just before he falls down a ravine in a trap set by Shijima, the claw demon.

Adding to the eerie mood is the evocative score by anime composer extraordinaire Kaoru Wada. Quite frequently Wada uses traditional stringed instruments that effectively establish the period mood and a sense of Japan’s storied past. He also uses ominous brass sections to signal impending doom, enhancing some of the most dramatic moments in the film and recalling scores from some of Japan’s live-action cinematic classics.

Yoshiaki Kawajiri uses Ninja Scroll not only to pay homage to ninja anime of the past, including Dagger of Kamui, on which he worked as an animator, but to infuse traditional ninja motifs with his stylistic excess to create a beautiful and bloody spectacle quite unlike ninja epics of the past. Not only is it filled with a steady stream of extraordinary imagery, but the numerous action scenes are staged with such imagination and clever twists that they stand out in the viewer’s memory far more than similar action scenes in other anime. Each of the 8 Devils is such a formidable opponent, each with such a clever power or skill, that the encounters are always unpredictable and quite satisfying. Kawajiri’s directorial command enables these scenes to flow into each other seamlessly as the characters make their way through this perilous landscape, the horrors they face so wondrous that we can’t look away from the screen even during the celebrated moments of ultraviolence.

Through it all we have Jubei and Kagero, not young innocents like Kyoya and Sayaka from Demon City Shinjuku, but hardened fighters who still have a sense of honor and loyalty, and are clearly the most moral characters in the corrupt landscape of the film. Kagero is a particularly tragic figure, given her status as a poison expert whose kiss or embrace would kill any man who gets close to her. She must forever be alone, yet she falls in love with Jubei (and he with her). Eager to uphold the honor of her clan, she finds her employer, the Chamberlain, personally repellent. When she first reports the massacre of her comrades to him, he’s in the act of sodomizing one of his women, and Kagero’s face betrays a revulsion at the callous hedonism which compels him to continue even as she’s giving her account. Like other Kawajiri heroines (e.g., Makie in Wicked City), Kagero is subjected to sexual abuse, here by Tessai, the monstrous rock ninja, but the beneficial side effect is that her poison is released into his system and unknowingly weakens him to such an extent that he becomes vulnerable to the deep cuts from Jubei’s sword when the swordsman comes to rescue Kagero. The slow buildup of Jubei and Kagero’s romance adds an emotional layer to the mix that comes late in the game, perhaps too late to be as effective as the romances in Wicked City and Demon City Shinjuku.

If there is any area in which Ninja Scroll suffers in comparison to Kawajiri’s other works, it’s in the story, which was written by Kawajiri himself and not derived from an earlier source like most of his other films. The overall plot is the least compelling part of the film. The question of whether Gemma makes off with the gold or not doesn’t have much urgency—for us, or for the characters. We get no inkling of what exactly is at stake other than Dakuan’s worries about Tokugawa being overthrown, which makes for a curious lack of suspense since we all know that didn’t happen until a century or two later. And there seems to be little reason for Jubei and Kagero to be particularly concerned since their involvement is based on a set of contrivances rather than any real stake in the action. They’re also not as well developed as we would like. They’re appealing and interesting characters on the surface, but a little backstory would have helped to make them more emotionally engaging.

Ninja Scroll: The Series, a thirteen-part series made for a satellite pay TV service in 2003, is something of a follow-up to the movie, but considerably lighter in tone, with Jubei more of a laidback wandering swordman, as apt to deliver a wisecrack as a sword thrust. The new crew assigned to the series had more of a background in comedic anime, including the director of Martian Successor Nadesico and a writer for Dragon Ball, Urusei Yatsura, and Ranma 1⁄2, so there wasn’t quite as much interest in replicating Kawajiri’s singular vision. Granted, there was still enough gushing blood and violent swordplay to please action fans, although none of it as inspired as Kawajiri’s brilliantly choreographed carnage.

Director Yoshiaki Kawajiri had been an animator on Rintaro’s ninja epic, Dagger of Kamui, and its influence shows in this film. Prior to his directing career, Kawajiri had been an animator on Tezuka’s Cleopatra, Miyazaki’s Future Boy Conan, and Rintaro’s Harmagedon, among other films, and an animation director on the classic 1970s judo series, Judo Sanka. He made his directorial debut in 1984 with a space science fiction film, Lensman.

For many anime fans who came of age in the 1990s, their first glimpse of just how different anime was from American cartoons came with the early scene in Ninja Scroll of a thick forest at night as a group of Koga ninjas is being wiped out one by one by Tessai, the Rock Ninja, his whirling blades of death slicing through tree limbs and human torsos with equal ease (all masterfully underscored by Wada’s doom-laden brass section). When Tessai captures the last of the male ninjas, he pulls the man’s arms off and holds them up to let the dripping blood pour into his mouth. It’s an impressive, gory spectacle which aroused a lot of curiosity about the genre. Many of these fans had never seen non-Disney animation this sharp or fluid or any animation whatsoever this bloody.

There’s a great Kagero moment at a Buddhist temple situated deep in the woods, where Jubei has gone to seek information from a nun who resides there. He suddenly finds that the “nun” is really Benisato and he is quickly surrounded by hundreds of writhing snakes. When Kagero enters and holds a dagger to Benisato’s throat in a bid to rescue Jubei, Benisato grins with evil delight and summons a poisonous snake to bite Kagero on the thigh. Unaffected by the poison, Kagero barely flinches and Benisato’s overconfidence disappears.

The roots of Ninja Scroll are found not only in Rintaro’s epic saga, Dagger of Kamui (1985), on which Kawajiri worked as an animator, but in several earlier ninja-themed anime TV series, most notably Sasuke and Ninpu Kamui Gaiden, two 1960s series based on manga by Sanpei Shirato (The Legend of Kamui). The latter series, seen here only in a single episode dubbed in English and retitled Search of the Ninja, includes a ninja fight in a forest at night involving the favored ninja throwing stars that looks forward to the nighttime battle in Ninja Scroll.

Ninja Scroll aired on the cable music channel MTV for a special “Anime Weekend” in April 1995.

violence Many scenes of extreme violence with lots of bloodshed and dismemberment. nudity There is female nudity, the sodomy of a maid by the chamberlain, and one instance of sexual abuse as the Rock Ninja fondles the captured heroine, Kagero.